Nearly every large company presents itself to potential employees as deeply concerned with helping the new employee achieve “Work/Life Balance.” The particulars might be different for each company, but the promise is the same—we will teach you the calculus by which the scales of life can be balanced. But in truth they offer little more than guilt management techniques enabling the employee to decide how much of his life he is willing to trade in order to be professionally successful. This balancing act always feels like a compromise because balance really isn’t the problem. The problem is work itself. Or, at least the way we experience it living as we do in our post-Edenic world.
Man the Worker
By examining the nature of work itself, we can also see how it can be integrated into a rich and full life. Work is, as John Paul II said, “a fundamental dimension of man’s existence on earth” (Laborem Exercens, 4). It is fundamental because it is part of his nature to work and be perfected by it. The Book of Genesis reveals this through God’s commandment to “fulfill the earth and subdue it” (Gn 1:28). Man is a worker because he is made in the image of God the Creator. He Who made all things, made those things so that man could bring them to their completion. In perfecting things, man himself would be perfected.
But we know that is not the end of the story. In choosing to “become like God” (Gn 3:5) on his own terms, man damaged his true God-likeness. Work was infected by the curse of the Fall and work became labor. Work itself became disintegrated. Plagued by thorns and thistles, man becomes overly focused about the perfecting of things and forgets that work is primarily meant to perfect him. As Pius XI put it, “for dead matter comes forth from the factory ennobled, while men there are corrupted and degraded” (Quadragesimo Anno, 135).
Even this is not the end of the story however. The Son of God made Himself a worker so that work would get caught up in the Redemption. Rather than succumbing to the heavy burden of work, we can submit to the yoke of Christ. Work is still labor, but by laboring in the Spirit of Christ, it is no longer an obstacle but a means of sanctification. Christ was, as John Paul II called Him, “a man of work…Who preached the ‘gospel of work’” (LE 26). Now by accepting the labor associated with work as punishment for our sins and offering it as reparation, work becomes redemptive.
The Two Dimensions
Work then has two dimensions—objective and subjective—and both must be good in order for the “gospel of work” to penetrate our work. In the objective sense, work is the practical manner in which man “subdues the earth.” This means that the work itself must in a very real way facilitate the Common Good. The good produced must be good for society and the work done on the “intellectual toolbench” must be ordered to the truth. For many of us, our professional work will be the place where we fulfill our obligation to the Common Good. It must in some way help others to truly thrive. That is the only way to ensure a proper return for the talents that the master gave to the servants.
John Paul II had great concern for the changes to the nature of work that were coming about because of technology. He was not a troglodyte who feared technology but thought that efficiency was a dangerous measure. He saw technological development as a great good if it facilitated man’s work and enabled him to grow in virtue. But, “technology can cease to be man’s ally and become almost his enemy, as when the mechanization of work “supplants” him, taking away all personal satisfaction and the incentive to creativity and responsibility, when it deprives many workers of their previous employment, or when, through exalting the machine, it reduces man to the status of its slave” (LE, 5).
The subjective meaning of work is the pre-eminent dimension. Works gains its value from the fact that it is a person who is doing it and not primarily by the work done. Some work is objectively better than other, but good work is that work which makes the worker morally good. The best work for any individual is the work that will make him grow in virtue. This is why the work itself, as long as it is good, does not matter so much as its character building effect on the person. If more emphasis is placed on the subjective dimension of work, then we will cease to value work merely for its pay.
Realizing that the most important thing we make in work is ourselves, we can see why “Work/Life Balance” goes about the problem of disintegration in the wrong way. It is a subtle attempt at redeeming work on our own, rather than allowing God’s original vision for work to permeate our actions.