I do not want to digress into a rant about the Carolina Panthers and Steve Smith decision, as I am not privy to any information. What I want to critique, however, is the constant refrain in our american culture, “at the end of the day, it is just a business.”

This attitude seems to suggest that businesses can be amoral, objective entities devoid of emotion. At the end of the day, however, it is not a business decision. I have sat with enough men over coffee to know at the end of the day, after being fired, is left a man whose soul is searching.

At the end of the day, he has to come home to a wife and child and say “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
At the end of the day, he has to stare at the pile of bills and mortgage statement and say “I just might loose all of this.”
At the end of the day, he beats himself up wondering what did he did wrong.
At the end of the day, he crawls into bed unsure of why he needs to get out of bed the next morning.

In Genesis 2, we see that God has given men three W’s of responsibility:
v.16-17: Will–obedience to God’s plan for our lives
v. 19-20: Work–a task to accomplish for God’s purpose
v. 24: Wife–a suitable helper in his life to share the journey with.

Whenever one of these three areas are taken out from under us, we are left wandering in a soul-searching hunger to understand “why am I here?” At the end of the day, it is not a business decision but a deeply excruciating, life-shaking, existential crisis as he wonders and wanders.

To say otherwise completely devalues the meaning of work in our life.

Every time I have had to dismiss an employee from our team, I have wept and prayed for them, because I know at the end of the day they have just been cut to the core. As I recently learned to pray, “God may their disappointment in me cause them to rely on the One who never disappoints.”