Mike Rowe sat down with Vice President J.D. Vance and spent some time talking about the dignity of work. Mike reflected on the time he was on “Meet the Press” ten years ago. During the conversation, he mentioned J.D. Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy.  Since that interview, people have been saying that the two of them were singng out of the same hymnal: different tunes, but the same message.

Mike Rowe said we need to think about the dignity of work, which he observes “has been really confused. I think a lot of people in the country think about dignified work through the lens of the circumstances of the job itself, the conditions, is it too hot, is it too cold, do I have insurance, do I have a lunch break?” They concluded that “the thing that gives work dignity is if it blesses somebody else.”

 Mike Rowe talked about the study from a World War II POW camp. Half the prisoners were forced to build a barracks. “The hours were terrible. The work was hard. The conditions were brutal. The other group was basically charged with carrying large vessels of water across the yard and dumping them out into nowhere specific.”

 Although the men building that barrack were essentially slave labor, at least they were building something significant. They were so much better off mentally. The men who lost their minds were the ones dumping water and forced to do meaningless work.

 This was a great conversation about the dignity of work. As I discuss in my booklet on a Biblical View on Work, Christians need to address the issue of work. I quote many of the Proverbs that talk about the value of work. Our labor has meaning because we are created in God’s image.