Are You an Employee or Partner of Being?

Of Labor and Spirit

Much has been written on the difference between employee mentality vs. partner mentality.

Employees feel owned by their work and so they live for time-off.

Partners feel invested in their work and so enjoy it as an expression of themselves.

Employees have no upside, but are spared the volatility that comes from attaching their identity to the success of their employer.

Partners rise and fall with the ship.

What hasn’t been explored is how this dichotomy, easily understood in terms of behavioral psychology, sociology, and economics, maps onto spiritual life and theology.

The Torah—and many religious traditions—posit a covenantal relationship between God and humanity.

A.J. Heschel writes that we are partners in Creation with God.

But has this language of partnership been thought through a modern economic lens? I.e., that what Heschel is saying—regardless of his original intent—is that we rise and fall with the ship? We aren’t contractors who can come and go as we please; but nor are we supposed to be reliable cogs in a machine—we’ve been charged by God to act as if we co-own the company (the world).

It’s a powerful idea and one I don’t think too many self-identified religious people embody or accept. On the contrary, it seems that popular religion often leads to a sense of being an employee—doing the right or pious thing because it’s what’s required. Religious obligation is a chore one does to live for the metaphysical weekend. Heaven, as it were, is time-off, not equity.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz thinks that being religious is about submitting to God’s will. Anything else is idolatry. But what if God’s will is not that we (always) submit but rather act spontaneously and wisely in the gaps where it is unclear what we are supposed to do?

What Deists call the absent God and what Nietzscheans call the death of God is actually part of God’s intentional governance structure, aimed at catalyzing us to be partners and not employees. With no God in the office to consult—the Lord got tied up in an important meeting that’s run 2000 years over schedule—we must live as if we were co-owners with God.

If this God language doesn’t work for you—think about Being—or some other word for that which endows your life with purpose.

Is your being here a kind of employment so that what you really want is time off, or do you feel inspired that you’ve been acqui-hired to do something nobody else can, not even the One who hired you?

P.S.—In case you missed it, check out my tweetstorm on Leo Strauss.

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