{"id":29699,"date":"2012-07-15T13:03:47","date_gmt":"2012-07-15T18:03:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/?p=29699"},"modified":"2012-07-15T08:44:29","modified_gmt":"2012-07-15T13:44:29","slug":"his-name-was-niggle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/07\/15\/his-name-was-niggle\/","title":{"rendered":"His Name was Niggle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This post was originally published at The High Calling<\/a><\/strong>; this essay is my own theory of work, and it leads me to ask you this set of questions:<\/p>\n

Some of you have pondered what it means to work? Why? What\u2019s the point? Share with us your wisdom. How do you approach work? Why do we work? How does a Christian approach work? How do we look at the rather ordinariness of so much of what we do? Do you think Tolkien\u2019s approach to \u201cNiggle\u2019s leaves\u201d helps? How?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Julian Barnes, an atheist, claims that he \u2018\u201dmisses God.'\u201d In the midst of his reflections on a life without faith wracked by a haunting fear of death, Barnes reflects on the impact belief in heaven would make on his every day working life. \u2018\u201dBut if life is viewed as a rehearsal, or a preparation, or an anteroom . . . then it [our present life] becomes at the same time less valuable and more serious.<\/em>\u2018\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 It appears that Barnes, if he were to believe in God and a heaven, would see life now as speck of time swallowed into eternity. Therefore, our life now is \u2018\u201dless valuable.'\u201d But because there would be an eternity, life now would become \u2018\u201dmore serious'\u201d because what we do now matters for eternity. But, as Barnes puts it, he misses God and therefore he misses a life that is shaped by eternity.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Roman Catholic British novelist, J.R.R. Tolkien of\u00a0The Lord of the Rings<\/em><\/a> fame neither missed God nor eternity. Were Tolkien alive, he might counter Barnes and argue that our lives now are\u00a0 \u2018\u201dboth<\/em> more valuable and more serious.'\u201d In a typical manner, Barnes confuses Christian belief in heaven with Platonism. Plato believed our bodies and earthly lives really don\u2019t matter and that what really matters is our immortal soul. Such a mistaken view of Christianity alone makes life on earth \u2018\u201dless valuable.'\u201d\u00a0 We dare not underestimate how a Platonic worldview affects our view of work. There is a better Christian way, and Tolkien worked it out for us in a short story called\u00a0Leaf by Niggle<\/em>, a wonderful tale about a little silly man named \u2018\u201dNiggle.'\u201d<\/p>\n

I love this story, and I can only hope that my brief summary of the plot will lead you to obtain a copy \u2014 it\u2019s found in a book called Tree and Leaf<\/a><\/strong><\/em> \u2014 through your local library or through some used bookstore and make the story your own.<\/p>\n

Niggle was single, and he lived next to the Parish family in an out of the way place. The lame Parish and his needy wife were demanding and ungrateful neighbors. Niggle\u2019s passion in life was to paint leaves, but his kindhearted nature made him a likely person on whom others relied. He wasn\u2019t always happy about his willingness to help Parish and others\u2014by patching roofs and running errands\u2014but he helped anyway, sometimes with a curse under his breath. Most importantly for Niggle, these interruptions kept him from getting his leaves painted. Like Barnes and the Christian tradition, Niggle knew death was coming. Tolkien describes death as a future \u2018\u201dtroublesome journey'\u201d with a \u2018\u201dDriver'\u201d who will take him into the next life.<\/p>\n

Tolkien\u2019s sketch of Niggle\u2019s daily passion, his painting, opens up for us a powerful image of how to see our work.\u00a0 Niggle, he observes, \u2018\u201dwas the sort of painter who can paint leaves better than trees. He used to spend a long time on a single leaf,'\u201d he adds. But one of Niggle\u2019s paintings began with a leaf caught in the wind, and then it became a tree with \u2018\u201dfantastic roots,'\u201d and then a country began to develop behind it, and there was a forest and mountains with snow.<\/p>\n

Niggle\u2019s Driver came. After his death, Niggle spent some time working in an intermediary place until a Porter took him to heaven itself.<\/p>\n

It is here that the genius of Tolkien\u2019s theory of work, and I would like to say a\u00a0genuinely Christian<\/em> theory of work, comes to life. Niggle receives a bicycle and he goes \u2018\u201dbowling downhill in the sunshine'\u201d until he realizes the turf under him reminds him of another \u2018\u201dsweep of grass.'\u201d Then he sees the \u2018\u201dTree, his Tree, finished.'\u201d It is the Tree he \u2018\u201dhad so often felt or guessed, and had so often failed to catch.'\u201d He sees it all as a gift. Ah, the leaves\u2014they were all there, as he had imagined them but never been able to paint quite right. Some were there that had only budded in his mind. The Forest, too, as well as the Mountains\u2014they were all there. (And Tolkien\u2019s use of capital letters shows just how important and serious his earlier labors were, but now they stood there in reality, utterly perfect.) Niggle learns that this little piece of heaven is called \u2018\u201dNiggle\u2019s Picture'\u201d and Parish will be with him, and Parish will live in \u2018\u201dParish\u2019s Garden.'\u201d\u00a0 Over time all that remained on earth was a corner from one of Niggle\u2019s paintings. The folks hung it in a museum: \u2018\u201dLeaf: by Niggle.'\u201d As if to make mortality fully clear, Tolkien tells us that the museum burned down one day.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most magnificent dimension of Tolkien\u2019s vision is that Niggle continued to paint, and he found more to paint as he got nearer and nearer to the borders of his picture. The theology here is a theology of work:\u00a0what we do now is a glimpse of what we will do then<\/em>. What we do now prepares us to do what we will do then. What we do now will become the raw materials of what we will do then. What we do now, however incomplete and however below even our own standards, will one day be swallowed up into God\u2019s redemptive perfection and our work will radiate with God\u2019s own glory.\u00a0 The notion that heaven, and I\u2019d prefer to call it the New Heavens and the New Earth, is simply singing in a heavenly choir and that we will float from one praise service to another and that our bodies and jobs will all be left behind is Platonism. That view is not biblical.<\/p>\n

Recently Tom Wright, in his stunningly helpful book\u00a0Surprised by Hope<\/em><\/a><\/strong>, makes the case for a massive continuity\u2014much like Niggle\u2019s discovery\u2014between this life and the New Heavens and the New Earth. That continuity alone renders what we do now as both more serious and more important than perhaps we realize. Tolkien tells that story of continuity and perfection in the story of Niggle and his painting of leaves.<\/p>\n

Let us paint the leaves God inspires in us. Let us also know that what we do now matters and let us do all to the glory of God, for one day those tasks will unfold into what God designed them to accomplish.\u00a0 Let us also know that our frustrations and our imperfections and our failings to realize what we think God wants to do through us now will be perfected someday.\u00a0 Let us know, therefore, that what we do now is a gift from God and that it is God\u2019s work in us now that animates the work we are called to accomplish.<\/p>\n

Leaf by Niggle<\/em> ends with divine joy: \u2018\u201dThey both laughed. Laughed\u2014the Mountains rang with it!'\u201d Can you hear that laughter?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post was originally published at The High Calling; this essay is my own theory of work, and it leads me to ask you this set of questions: Some of you have pondered what it means to work? Why? What\u2019s the point? Share with us your wisdom. How do you approach work? Why do we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nHis Name was Niggle<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This post was originally published at The High Calling; this essay is my own theory of work, and it leads me to ask you this set of questions: Some of you\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/07\/15\/his-name-was-niggle\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"His Name was Niggle\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This post was originally published at The High Calling; this essay is my own theory of work, and it leads me to ask you this set of questions: Some of you\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/07\/15\/his-name-was-niggle\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-07-15T18:03:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-07-15T13:44:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com\/community\/jesuscreed\/files\/2010\/09\/LeafbyNiggle-300x244.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Scot McKnight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Scot McKnight\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/07\/15\/his-name-was-niggle\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/07\/15\/his-name-was-niggle\/\",\"name\":\"His Name was Niggle\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-07-15T18:03:47+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-07-15T13:44:29+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/5919e847c58ffe6efb5899fb61797252\"},\"description\":\"This post was originally published at The High Calling; this essay is my own theory of work, and it leads me to ask you this set of questions: Some of you\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/07\/15\/his-name-was-niggle\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/07\/15\/his-name-was-niggle\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/07\/15\/his-name-was-niggle\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"His Name was Niggle\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/\",\"name\":\"Jesus Creed\",\"description\":\"Scot McKnight on Jesus and orthodox faith in the 21st century\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/5919e847c58ffe6efb5899fb61797252\",\"name\":\"Scot McKnight\",\"description\":\"Scot McKnight is a recognized authority on the New Testament, early Christianity, and the historical Jesus. McKnight, author of more than fifty books, is the Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary in Lombard, IL.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/author\/scotmcknight\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"His Name was Niggle","description":"This post was originally published at The High Calling; this essay is my own theory of work, and it leads me to ask you this set of questions: Some of you","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/07\/15\/his-name-was-niggle\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"His Name was Niggle","og_description":"This post was originally published at The High Calling; this essay is my own theory of work, and it leads me to ask you this set of questions: Some of you","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/07\/15\/his-name-was-niggle\/","og_site_name":"Jesus Creed","article_published_time":"2012-07-15T18:03:47+00:00","article_modified_time":"2012-07-15T13:44:29+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com\/community\/jesuscreed\/files\/2010\/09\/LeafbyNiggle-300x244.jpg"}],"author":"Scot McKnight","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Scot McKnight","Est. reading time":"6 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/07\/15\/his-name-was-niggle\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/07\/15\/his-name-was-niggle\/","name":"His Name was Niggle","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#website"},"datePublished":"2012-07-15T18:03:47+00:00","dateModified":"2012-07-15T13:44:29+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/5919e847c58ffe6efb5899fb61797252"},"description":"This post was originally published at The High Calling; this essay is my own theory of work, and it leads me to ask you this set of questions: Some of you","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/07\/15\/his-name-was-niggle\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/07\/15\/his-name-was-niggle\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/07\/15\/his-name-was-niggle\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"His Name was Niggle"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/","name":"Jesus Creed","description":"Scot McKnight on Jesus and orthodox faith in the 21st century","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/5919e847c58ffe6efb5899fb61797252","name":"Scot McKnight","description":"Scot McKnight is a recognized authority on the New Testament, early Christianity, and the historical Jesus. McKnight, author of more than fifty books, is the Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary in Lombard, IL.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/author\/scotmcknight\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29699\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}