Should we help our young adults select a career?

Important Considerations for Christians Choosing a Career (August 3, 2023)

I imagine this is how it sometimes goes around the dinner table when a high-schooler is discussing a field of study for university.  The kid wants to work towards a career that is comfortable, creative and fun.  Dad says there are not enough jobs in such areas.  He says ‘You need to get a good job in order to pay off your student loans and move out of the basement.  You can study fun once you have a job.’

There are a number of considerations in choosing a career, such as those mentioned above.  Also consider aptitude, academic ability, physical strength and endurance, and whether you need to leave town to get work.  Yet, for young Christians, and older ones looking to change careers, I think one of the more important factors is generally not explored.  That is, what kind of challenge will the chosen line of work pose to your Christian morals.

I think this is not often discussed because there is a sense that most jobs are equally challenging in this regard.  This is not true.  There are careers that have deception built into them, such as politics, law and high-value sales (e.g., automobiles, real estate, investments).  There are others that purportedly are based on trust, fairness and customer satisfaction, but devious upper management decide otherwise.  And there are businesses with high standards of ethics that routinely get ignored when management imposes unrealistic performance goals and blind themselves as to how employees are forced to bend ethics to achieve the goals.  There are several media-reported instances of banks and call-centres doing exactly this. 

So, how does one try to figure out the least ethically-challenging career path?  One idea is to take a look at polls that determine the degree of respect that people have for various professions.  When taken as a whole, the public have a good sense when professions start to go bad.  For example, in a Canada-wide poll run by Insight West in 20171, 27 professions were assessed for respect by the public.  Interestingly, only 7 scored 50% or lower, while 20 scored higher.  This suggests Canadians are generally a trusting bunch.

Seven professions scored 85% or higher.  These were: nurses (92%), doctors (89%), scientists (89%), farmers (88%), veterinarians (88%), architects (87%) and teachers (85%).  As mentioned above, seven scored 50% or lower.  These were: lawyers (50%), realtors (50%), bankers (50%), business executives (47%), pollsters (34%), car salespeople (28%) and politicians (24%).

These figures will change based on when and where the poll is taken, and on what is in the news around the time of the poll.  However, such poll results are easy to find through the internet because it is a popular subject to poll on.

There are things you could try to suss out the nature of a line of work.  Taking advantage of co-op education work-terms can give you a preview of what a job might be like, but you likely will not get to see the high pressure parts of work that result in bad behaviours.  You can discuss careers with family, friends and teachers, but don’t be surprised if they leave the seamy stuff out.  Keeping an eye on the news may be more helpful, notably as it reports on the activity of companies in the career fields which interest you.  CBC’s Marketplace and other such programming may help in this regard.

There is an argument to be made that there is spiritual value in being the moral character in an immoral environment.  The beacon of light in a sea of darkness.  Exercise makes you stronger, and for the soul that means regularly taking stands on moral grounds.  In such cases it can be spiritually developmental and personally enriching, but career-defeating nonetheless.  There is also something to be said for staying out of the dark alleys and being both moral and successful at the same time.  After all, bad behaviours that seep into your work day may very well leak into your home life and the raising of children.

For some reason, government workers were not included in the poll.  Personally, I rate the Canadian public service as a fairly good place to work without compromising your ethics.  This is because governments have developed various ways to root out people and systems that encourage bad ethical behaviour.  It doesn’t catch them all, especially in the top ranks, but I think it works much better than in the private sector. 

So, please consider all of this as topics for discussion in church youth programs and at the dinner-table.

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