My work is my service

Do you see a man skilled in his work?
He will serve before kings;
he will not serve before obscure men.
Proverbs 22:29

I not so humbly confess to applying this little proverb to myself. God being the royal one, me being the skilled on. Boasting? I think not, and show me where in the Bible demeaning oneself is encouraged. On the other hand, it tells us to use our gifts wisely, and strive and struggle and endure. To work. An absolute prerequisite to me doing my job is self-consciousness, that I claim knowledge and know-how in my profession. No one else is likely to do it for me, rather it´s a common tactic in negotiations and other social games to belittle your opponent. If I let that get to me, those things I´m set as an architect to defend and safeguard will suffer. Hail banality and ugliness!

Through Adam labour is divinely appointed and part of the human condition, just as the labour of Eve. Not always glamorous, but it needs be done none the less. There is a deep fulfillment in store for anyone who choose to take this seriously, a lifetime in the coal mine for those who see it as wage slavery and a mere interruption of leisure.

There are doubts of course. There are, God knows, days when it seems absolutely obvious I´m serving nothing but superficiality and speculative commercial interest. The question whether my labour bears good fruit is highly relevant and can´t be brushed aside. Not all work is good work. Some destroy the worker, body and soul, some destroy this world we live in or our fellow man. Some work is more pointless than digging a pit and filling it up again. What I deal with as an architect is giving aesthetical form to practical realities. Humans have in effect transcended the natural godgiven environment. We have become dependent on artificial environments, co-creators with God. It may sound like hybris, but that´s the way things are nowadays. As an architect my job is to see to it that man´s creation strives for the same qualities as God´s: order, complexity, beauty and power. This is of course impossible given man´s present condition. Try achieving order when disobedience rules the day, complexity when stubborn and lazy single-mindedness abounds, beauty when image is advertising and mind-meddling, power when half the population glorifies sheer force and the other half has a serious authority problem.

Everytime I see a beautiful church or a luscious garden or the ultimate work of art, a vibrant city, I´m inspired to get at it again, this Mission Impossible. Some degree of success is clearly possible. I also know that we humans will more and more make this earth our own, leave our marks everywhere. And a world without beauty is a foretaste of hell, a world where beauty still glimmer gives a taste for heaven. I believe all beauty is in the end a witness to the glory of God. And at the other end, ugliness and banality does violence against the human soul, giving the idea that we´re as crappy as our surroundings. We´re not, we´re meant to inhabit the heavenly Jerusalem, where God is the architect, hence my colleague! If the work is good enough for him, it´s good enough for me...