Someone living in England once told me he believed with conviction that the dominant value in UK culture is work. Work comes first. It is more important than anything else. If this is true, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that it is, then people are measured by their productivity and by their usefulness.
My conversation with this man reminded me of something I once read in The Little Book of Calm. “If you tend to get overly serious about your work and your responsibilities remind yourself that the most common deathbed regrets have to do with neglected relationships, not unfinished business.” The truth is relationships are the most important thing in our lives, not work. Of course we need to work, but we do not need to define ourselves by our work. If we define ourselves by our capacity for work we lose touch with what it really means to be human. We are, after all, called human beings not human doers!
The consequences of a culture that makes work the number one priority are many. Words like busyness, ambition, competition, exhaustion, burn- out, depression naturally come to mind. But there are other things too perhaps less obvious. Those who are unemployed or unemployable feel worthless. Those who stay at home to look after children feel devalued. Those who take time to relax and play feel guilty. The work ethic that drives western culture and that supposedly creates prosperity does not make people feel any happier about themselves; in fact it makes them feel worse.
Jesus put relationships first. For him who we are is much more important than what we do. When Jesus spoke about the Kingdom of God he was not speaking about territory or politics or the exercise of power. He was speaking about the way people relate to one another and to God. Jesus sought to create an inclusive community, a community where people would experience relationships that are just, caring and compassionate. For us, two thousand years later, the challenge remains the same: to make relationships, not work, our priority.