The Career Idol
Most of us will not change the world. So what do we do instead?
I remember entering university with the idealistic dream of changing the world through nuclear engineering. My vision was to one day travel overseas to restricted nations as a missionary, using engineering as my cover—a noble goal, for sure.
Then reality set in. I quickly realized that nuclear engineering is a slow-moving, monolithic industry—highly change-averse (for good reasons) and driven by policy. In other words, it was the complete opposite of my personality. After that, I joined a software start-up, thinking it would be a rocket-ship success. While we did well in those days, it was mostly just a grind of features, bugs, and a struggle for survival. It was good work for a good cause, but certainly not world-changing or glamorous. So, my career journey began with the realization that work is, well… work.
We’re conditioned to believe in a "you can change the world" narrative, reinforced by the books we read, the movies we watch, and the cultural icons we celebrate. I remember watching the original Iron Man movies and thinking, Real-world engineering is nowhere near this cool.
Pick a career—and unless you’re at the very top, most of it is just grunt work. And at the top, it’s mostly just sacrifice to stay there.
The Career Illusion
Why does this matter? After nearly 20 years of working with university students, I’ve noticed that career ambition is one of the biggest obstacles to effective co-vocational gospel ministry. The years from 18 to 30 are the most strategic years of a person’s life, yet many young people spend them chasing an ideal career—one that, from a kingdom perspective, is often a fool’s errand.
Along the way, they sacrifice what truly matters: relationships, mission, and disciple-making. The whole strategy is a Faustian bargain.
Yes, some people do change the world, and we should celebrate that! But for the vast majority, their careers will land them in mid-level jobs, contributing incrementally toward an undefined goal. Changing the world through one’s career requires a rare mix of above-average intellect, talent, perseverance, grit, luck, and networking. It’s like trying to make the NFL—while not impossible, the vast majority are not successful. While this may not be inspiring to hear, it’s reality.
By their 30s, many start to realize that the life they chased in their 20s probably won’t pan out. So what happens? They trade world-changing ambitions for lifestyle upgrades.
They might not say it out loud, but their actions reveal the thought: Well, if I can’t change the world, I might as well be comfortable. So they buy bigger houses, move into fancier neighbourhoods, accumulate possessions, and collect experiences—all while letting go of kingdom priorities.
Evangelism, discipleship, church community, generosity—these slowly fall by the wayside.
A Better Story
But there’s a better story—one that applies to everyone, whether they rise to great heights in their career or simply work faithfully in the background.
Not everyone can change the world, but everyone can change their world.
By living in covenant community. By faithfully sharing the gospel. By discipling the least of these whom the Lord places in their lives.
We need to cast a more biblical vision for our careers—one that moves beyond personal fulfillment, ambition, and comfort. Here’s one:
Our work is important for three reasons that everyone can fulfill:
To provide for our families and communities.
To enable generosity toward our church and others.
To solve real problems, no matter how small, in a meaningful way.
Much of the faith-and-work movement is solving the wrong problem. We have built a massive idol of career in the Western world, including within the church. We’ve loaded too much weight onto our careers to fulfill us instead of faithfully serving Jesus.
In many ways, that’s the goal of my current company, Engage Spaces: to employ people to build a good product, provide for our community, and solve real problems. Furthermore, we employ people in a way that allows them to keep missional living at the center. It’s pretty simple—but is that a bad thing?
Work is good—not because it’s grandiose, but because we were made to work, to provide for ourselves and others, and to improve the world in small but meaningful ways. That is worth celebrating just as much as the corner office (and everything else that represents to our culture).
We should work hard, but not as an aim unto itself, lest we find ourselves building another Tower of Babel.