13–Lever #1:Your Income (Part One—Toil and Trouble)
Is work "double, double toil and trouble" or part of God's great design?
To answer the tagline question, it’s “both-and.” However, one of the most important things about work is that it results in income. And your current and future income are significant components of the “financial life equation.”
We’ve discussed your starting wealth, whether positive, zero, or negative. I called it Lever #0 because it’s not a lever you can pull—it is what it is at any point in time, but it doesn’t have to stay that way.
In this article, we’ll discuss Lever #1, your income, and we’re focused not only on your current income but lifetime income, i.e., the sum of your income over the next n years (∑Tt+n ). Of course, we don’t know precisely what “n” will be, but probably 50 years or more.
Remember how income fits into our financial life equation (FLE)?
Future wealth = Starting wealth + Sum of all income (∑It+n ) – Sum of all taxes – Sum of all giving – Sum of all living expenses + Sum of interest earned – Sum of interest paid
Income is one of only two things that add to starting wealth (the other is interest earned). Therefore, your goal is to increase your income at a rate that at least keeps up with inflation.
Regardless of your choice of profession, vocational success comes through skill, hard work, and wisdom. Your income and ability to increase it during your lifetime will significantly help you build wealth (as long as you don’t spend it all, let it get eaten up by taxes, or spend it all on loan payments, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves).
The recipe is pretty simple: 1.) Acquire valuable (meaning someone will pay for) skills. 2.) Get a good job/position at a company (or start your own). 3.) Work hard. There are other dimensions to success and joy, as I used to tell my kids each day before school, “B-G-W-H-H-F”: Be good, work hard, and have fun—good for kids and maybe adults too, I think. (Notice I had the “work hard” piece in there.)
Proverbs 10:4 says, “A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.” (ESV) Hard work is a virtue, but we need a broader biblical perspective on work before examining the financial side. The Bible has a lot more to say about it.
This article’s tagline (from Shakespeare’s Macbeth) mentions “double, double toil and trouble.” A biblical perspective sheds light on the human condition and our relationship with God. In the Bible, toil refers to difficult or exhausting labor resulting from the curse placed on the ground after Adam and Eve sinned. Genesis 3:17 explains: “And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life” (ESV).
The implications of this “curse” became far-reaching, especially after Caine and Abel (Genesis 4:11-12), impacting all living creatures and the earth itself. All forms of work, not just food production, became more difficult.
There weren’t many white-collar jobs back then, except for the head of the “Garden Club,” (sorry, I couldn’t resist), but modern-day work has also been “cursed,” more so due to sin and its effects on that human heart than the curse of the ground.
But that’s not all the Bible says about it. Work isn’t from the devil—God created it. I’m not going to go in-depth into the practical theology of work (I will share a couple of good resources with you at the end), but it’s essential to know that God created it; we were created in God’s image, so we were made to work (see Proverbs 6:6-11).
God also created many different kinds of work. Some work is more difficult than others. Still, work can be fulfilling but challenging and sometimes very hard. That is not because working as a “thing” is terrible, but because we have to work in a fallen world with sinful, broken people and bring our own issues to the workplace—”double, double toil and trouble.”
Job satisfaction seems to be, at least in part, related to pay. (Not a huge surprise, I guess.) But maybe it has less to do with the work and more with lifestyle and contentment.
In a recent survey, most people said delivering contentment would take a significant pay bump. The respondents, who had a median salary of $65,000 a year, said a median of $95,000 would make them happy and less stressed. The highest earners, with a median income of $250,000, gave a median response of $350,000.”—Empower Financial Happiness Survey, August 2023
As I stated earlier, the keys to having an income and then growing it for at least some of your lifetime are to acquire good skills, find the right job/career, and work hard. It's pretty simple stuff. It also helps if the world needs its work and that you can be paid for. If you would love to do it, it would be all the better (more on that in the next article).
God has designed the economics of the world in such a way that you will be rewarded according to your effort and ability. That’s why the best way to get ahead is to acquire valuable skills, find the right career/job, and work hard. A lynchpin verse for work is Colossians 3:17: “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (ESV).
And as Tim Keller wrote in “Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work,”
If God’s purpose for your job is that you serve the human community, then the way to serve God best is to do the job as well as it can be done. There’s great value in doing work with excellence that adds value to the lives of others even if it’s not what you’d consider “world-changing.”
I also think a good way for Christians to look at this is the intersection of “what you love to do” and “what the world needs,” which I’ve identified as “calling” or “mission.” To paraphrase Jeff Goins in his book “The Art of Work”: A calling is what you [come to] when you look back at your life and make sense of what [God] has been trying to teach you along the way.
I think that’s a good way to think about it. When you consider the unique circumstances you’ve faced, the obstacles you’ve overcome, the types of things you’ve been drawn to, and the ways that God has gifted you and laid things on your heart, you’ll often see a pattern. These are probably the clues God has given you about what he’s calling you to do with your life.
Work is the primary way we provide for ourselves and others. One big reason we work is because we need to provide for ourselves. Scripture clearly instructs heads of households to provide for their families (if you’re single, then you’re the head of yourself; well, God is, but you know what I mean). In 1 Timothy 5:8, Paul tells Timothy, “But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (ESV).
Those are strong words, but Paul seems to say that you’re in a worse place than an unbeliever who has rejected God’s offer of grace if you fail to provide for yourself or your family. God clearly holds work and providing for oneself or one's family in high regard.
So, regarding your finances, your “human capital” through work is your greatest asset. You can’t give, consume, save, or invest what you don’t have. (Maybe you could borrow it, but that’s the bank’s money, not yours.) Your God-given ability to work and earn an income is your greatest asset, not your money, investments, or possessions. So, be grateful for God's gifts and work to refine and apply them through education and professional development.
Another great source of satisfaction and fulfillment in work is to achieve things because you worked hard and earned them. A job that requires or expects little of you will be discouraging and defeating. Look for jobs that challenge you to earn your success.
There is also a challenge here. As Christians, we have to keep our careers in their proper place. Work, though a significant part of our lives, is one of many areas. Work can be highly demanding of our time, sapping our physical, emotional, and spiritual strength. Therefore, we must try to balance it with the other areas of our lives. As important as it is, work can become an idol like any good thing.
It can often be related to another idol: money. A recent survey by the Wall Street Journal asked 2,000 people, “How much income is enough for you to be content?” The answer? More. It didn’t matter how much the person made. $25,000? More. $250,000? More.
The writer of Ecclesiastes could have answered this survey for them 3,000 years prior. Without God, how much do we need? More and more and more. According to the study, most people said delivering contentment would take a significant pay bump. The respondents, who had a median salary of $65,000 a year, said a median of $95,000 would make them happy and less stressed. The highest earners, with a median income of $250,000, gave a median response of $350,000.
Money is a significant factor in our lives (it’s hard to get by without it), and there’s nothing wrong with making more money (contentment doesn’t mean passivity). But there’s another temptation besides the desire for “more.” The world’s view of work is to put it at the center and make it the primary source of identity, fulfillment, and satisfaction. Generally, to achieve financial “success,” power, status, reputation, etc.
As Christians, work is an integral part of our lives, but it’s not the essence of our lives; we don’t find our identity in our work but in Christ. Galatians 2:20 explains this well: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (ESV).
The primary purpose of our lives is to live for God’s glory because of the Gospel, in and through Jesus Christ. Like all the other areas of our lives, work is to be done for God’s glory.
For reflection: What is your perspective on your work? Is your job something you dread when you get up in the morning? If so, what’s “out of whack” regarding your career (or position) choice based on the dimensions in the chart graphic above? What do you need to do to address it?
Verse: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11, ESV).
Suggested resources:
“Every Good Endeavor” book by Tim Keller and Katherine Alsdorf
“48 Days to the Work You Love” by Dan Miller
“Work is a Glorious Thing” article by John Piper (Desiring God Ministries)