However, the role of DUTY is not to restrict or limit our relationships as Nietzsche supposed.
Nor is a sense of DUTY doomed to suffocate the authenticity of our feelings, as many of us instinctively fear.

Rather DUTY acts as a "shorthand" description of what kind of GOOD we are trying to achieve for others, within each specific kind of RELATIONSHIP  (Romans 15:1-2).

Still, for all the help that Duty can give us in directing our relationships for the good of others,  DUTY by itself is never enough to guarantee the health of our relationships, nor their full flourishing.

We can just as easily use the idea of Duty as a justification to AVOID seeking the good of others (Luke 10:29). Love alone can free Duty to exceed the limits of demand (Romans 13:8).

‘Social-lift’ – the tendency of new “non-middle class” Christians to begin aspiring towards the middle-class social values of the church they have recently joined. Where is the harm in that!?

Different social classes manage their social & moral disfunctions in quite unique and different ways. The middle classes tend to carefully regulate how public their social/moral disfunctions become. This allows for at least the appearance of stable and predictable church life, discipleship & ministry patterns. However, the open and unvarnished manner in which moral/social disfunction is often displayed in communities of social disadvantage, can easily hijack the focus of churches in unhelpful ways.

One of the key factors that cripples ministry within socially disadvantaged areas, is an ingrained failure to understand how social networks operate outside the middle classes. It's a failure I often unfortunately replicate in my own precious relationships. Tim Chester describes the "blind-spot" of middle class social networks this way:

Aren't we all middle class now? We're a nation that proudly self-identifies as egalitarian.   It is no longer self-evident where "Blue-collar" and "working-class",  part company with "middle-class".  It feels somehow un-Australian to even acknowledge the existence of social class.

Work.
It forms such a big part of our lives.
We desperately long for it to have meaning.
But what meaning?

In the paper linked below, I compare/contrast how O’Donovan and Volf explain the relationship between our creational and evangelical work. The introductory section briefly reviews reformed thinking on vocation, before moving on to Moltmann’s,  Volf’s and then  O’Donovan’s proposals.

This paper was originally posted at:
https://graceinvader.wordpress.com/2014/05/27/volf-odonovan-an-evangelical-theology-of-work/