Show Notes
What happens when the very thing that makes your work deeply meaningful becomes the exact thing that causes toxic burnout?
Organizational communication scholar Dr. Arianna Molloy joins host Case Thorp on the Nuance podcast to discuss her latest book, Healthy Calling: From Toxic Burnout to Sustainable Work. They explore the paradox of vocational calling, the distinct dangers of emotionally embedded work, and how to build sustainable rhythms that honor God.
Whether you are a ministry leader, a healthcare professional, or an everyday worker feeling the heavy weight of your vocation, this conversation offers practical wisdom for recognizing your limits and redeeming your relationship with work.
Episode Resources:
Dr. Arianna Molloy: https://www.ariannamolloy.com/
Healthy Calling: From Toxic Burnout to Sustainable Work by Dr. Arianna Molloy: https://www.ivpress.com/healthy-calling
Excerpt from Healthy Calling: https://www.ivpress.com/Media/Default/Downloads/Excerpts-and-Samples/A0840-excerpt.pdf
Healthy Calling Press Kit: https://www.ivpress.com/Media/Default/Press-Kits/A0840-press.pdf
Nuance is a podcast of The Collaborative where we wrestle together about living our Christian faith in the public square. Nuance invites Christians to pursue the cultural and economic renewal by living out faith through work every facet of public life, including work, political engagement, the arts, philanthropy, and more.
Each episode, Dr. Case Thorp hosts conversations with Christian thinkers and leaders at the forefront of some of today’s most pressing issues around living a public faith.
Episode Transcript
Case Thorp
The paradox at the center of today’s conversation is this: the very thing that makes your vocational calling so beautiful can be the same thing that makes it dangerous when it goes unchecked. Passion and skills set loose without boundaries can cause real damage to a worker or to the people around them if we aren’t careful. Well, today we’re joined by Dr. Arianna Molloy, an organizational communication scholar who has spent two decades studying about calling, humility, and burnout in meaningful work. Arianna is a professor of organizational communication at Biola University, researcher, consultant, and writer. Today, on this first episode of two, we’re going to discuss her latest book, Healthy Calling: From Toxic Burnout to Sustainable Work, published by InterVarsity Press. Arianna, welcome to Nuance.
Arianna Molloy
It is a delight to be here.
Case Thorp
Well, I really appreciate your time. Every time I see Biola, I think of its history. Bible Institute of Los Angeles.
Arianna Molloy
Yeah, and you know, it’s the kind of place where I’ll be walking on any given day on a sidewalk from one building to another, and I see students doing their normal student thing, drinking coffee, playing frisbee on the lawn and praying for each other. It’s just a really sweet space where they are truly seeking to live out what it means to be growing in Christ in their education and as whole persons.
Case Thorp
Very special. Well, for our listeners and viewers, let me welcome you to Nuance, a podcast that explores what it means to be faithful to Christ in the public square. If you would please like or share this episode, leave a comment. It helps us to grow our work and reach even more people. Well, today we’re going to talk about what happens when the thing that you love most about your work becomes actually that very thing that is hurting you, and Arianna, I’ll already warn you, this episode is for me. I’m going to–we’re going to create this together and then I’m gonna go back and watch it and even process your thoughts ever more deeply.
Arianna Molloy
That’s good, you know, it’s for me too. The more that we talk about this, the more I realize how much we need to keep talking about it.
Case Thorp
Yeah, yeah. Well, let’s set the table with a bit about your background and your work. So, organizational communication. That’s a field that, frankly, I’ve never heard of. So, explain to me what exactly that means.
Arianna Molloy
Yeah, that’s great. So organizational communication encapsulates any type of communication that happens in the workplace or about the workplace. So it could be on a micro level, which is, you know, everyday conversation. I teach classes like small group communication because people working in teams need to know how to do that well. Classes on conflict or concepts on conflict, looking at leadership, impact of culture, impact of change. So, a lot of times we forget that within organizations and within the work that we do, how we talk to ourselves and how we talk with others really creates our sense of what we believe to be true and good and right, and so our actions come from that, our belief systems come from that. Usually when things fall apart, it’s because of a communication breakdown, and so it’s a great pleasure for me, and the way that I like to think about it is this: communication is like the air that we breathe. We don’t really pay attention to it until something stops working, and then we’re like, my gosh, what’s happening?
Case Thorp
Sure. So true. Well, folks know I’m a pastor also at First Presbyterian Church of Orlando, and one of my colleagues, Jack Peoples, is so great about saying the phrase, “language shapes culture and the words that we use and how we use them, it shapes then how we act and how we treat one another,” and he’s helped us do a lot of work in that direction, and so it’s that you’re not talking about marketing. You’re talking about the way in which inside organizations communicate. That’s so helpful.
Arianna Molloy
And I would just love to say that, I mean, of course the Bible has a lot to say about communication. The tongue is the rudder of the ship, out of the heart the mouth speaks, but about 70 to 75% of communication is nonverbal, and so as we’re talking about communication, it’s so important to go beyond simply what we’re saying, but how we’re saying it that really is essential.
Case Thorp
So true. I hate texting. I hate it in that sense with my wonderful wife with whom I would never have an argument, right? Or my children. I will get to the point four or five texts in on a hard conversation and go, you know what? We need to be in person. This is enough.
Arianna Molloy
100%. Yeah, texting is literally the worst way to accomplish anything and it rarely allows for context. I mean, you think about emojis or memes or gifs or whatever it may be, those are meant to supplement what is lost in that face-to-face interaction and they just don’t do the same kind of thing. We always sort of assume what the person is saying with our own filter and so it’s never a good space for conflict resolution and you know, other than like, hey, how are you doing?
Case Thorp
So true. Well, now the subtitle to your book, Healthy Calling, InterVarsity Press is this, From Toxic Burnout to Sustainable Work. Toxic Burnout to Sustainable Work. You’re a researcher and your professional investment is in this direction, but you’re also a person who lives and works in real environments. So I’m sure there’s a bit of your personal journey in this book.
Arianna Molloy
Yes. You know, I started studying the concept of work and calling before I actually felt it myself. I had my sense of primary calling, which was to love God and love others, but I actually had no idea what I was gonna do when I went to college. I mean, Case, I changed my major five times. Five times.
Case Thorp
Wow, what were those? What’d you go through?
Arianna Molloy
Okay, so I went in as a psych major. I loved so much of it. It just wasn’t quite the right fit. Then I went to…
Case Thorp
And you’re kinda doing a little psychology today. Yeah.
Arianna Molloy
Yeah. There’s a lot of integrative work within the discipline of communication. It’s inherently interdisciplinary, and so we pull from some of the other sister disciplines and make use of it as we’re studying human interaction and messages. So I, you know, I liked psychology, but it wasn’t my thing. I was undeclared for a minute. I was a theater major for a hot moment.
Case Thorp
Well, you’ve got the joie de vivre that works with acting.
Arianna Molloy
Thank you. Then I went to creative writing, which I truly loved, but I realized I didn’t want that to be my primary job. So I kept that as an emphasis. Went back to Undeclared, and while I was doing that, I was doing my GEs, and I was a transfer student. My parents, neither of them had graduated college. So they were incredibly supportive of me, but they didn’t always have the advice for a first gen. Broke up with my high school boyfriend. You know, all the things that happened, but I kept taking…
Case Thorp
Well, yeah. Was it over communication problems?
Arianna Molloy
Actually he was a lovely person, but I kept taking communication classes and I loved them, and I didn’t realize it was okay to love your major.
Case Thorp
Okay.
Arianna Molloy
And so I chose that eventually and I don’t regret it for a moment. So my area of research is actually qualitative research, which means that I do interviews and observations and field notes and I look for patterns among human behavior, not so much that would be applicable to every single scenario that’s more quantitative, but that I could make them see what could we learn from this? Does this exist in other places? And when people are talking, how do they make sense of their experiences?
Case Thorp
Okay. Now, you write and you found in your research that people who have a sense of calling are often more productive, motivated, that sort of thing, and they’re also the ones thought to burn out more likely. So walk us through this research.
Arianna Molloy
Yeah, so what’s really cool about the bright side of calling of all the different types of approaches to work, there’s generally three. They’re not distinct. So you could live all three of those in one day sometimes, but generally three. So the first one is that you have a job. You know, it pays the bills. You live for the weekend. The job doesn’t necessarily incorporate your skill set or your passion. It’s just a paycheck, right? And that’s very real. The second would be a career. This is where you see a trajectory of like, in five to 10 years, I want the corner office or I want to be able to buy a bigger home, or I see myself taking this title or position to do good things. In that approach to work, it’s an external reward. We measure our success based on external progress, but there’s that third approach to work, which is calling, and when you feel called to work, generally speaking, there’s deep meaningfulness. It’s meaningful to you. It might not be meaningful to anybody else, but it’s meaningful to you. You can identify a type of a Caller. As believers, we know that to be Jesus, to be the Holy Spirit. That’s the second thing. The third thing is that you incorporate your passion and your skill set together.
So it’s not just that you love what you do, that makes you a great fan. It’s that you have a growing skill set that is developing to be good at it, and then the last part of calling is that it’s for others. It’s pro-social. It’s not just about you, right?
Case Thorp
Okay, this is so good.
Arianna Molloy
And the data all over the place backs up that of all the people groups, job, career, or calling, the most motivated, the most satisfied, the most resilient, the person who’s going to work harder, bring a positive attitude to work, who can withstand all the societal organizational change, it’s those who feel called.
Case Thorp
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and this is for everyone, not just Christians.
Arianna Molloy
Yeah, no, I mean, of course we know that to feel called means that there’s a caller and that the caller is God, but in my interview process, I’ve interviewed people who don’t identify with any kind of faith or who identify in a different faith besides Christianity, and I think that this is really important because I think it shows us that we were hardwired to hear the caller’s voice, whether we identify who that is or not, but I’ve actually interviewed–I’ve interviewed a musician who felt like his guitar was his caller. I’ve interviewed an artist who felt like her paintbrush was her caller or an educator who felt like their classroom was their caller, people who think the universe is their caller. You can even look at like, I think it was a Dodge Ram commercial with that they said like, our calling is to build good trucks for you and things like that. So there’s this bright side, right? But as you said, more than any other people group in the workplace, if you feel called, you’re the most prone to burnout.
Case Thorp
Okay, we’re gonna get there, but let me ask you this. So in The Collaborative, we talk about calling a lot through our Gotham Fellowship, our Orlando Fellowship, which is a gap year program for young adults, our Arts Fellowship, we talk about calling a lot. What if someone just wants that first option, a job, a paycheck? Is it a mistake to try to push them and have them think in the direction of calling?
Arianna Molloy
I think the answer I would give is both simple and complex. So initially I would say no, because every type of work informs us about something, and because work is a process, it’s a dynamic process, and calling is a dynamic process, the work experiences you have, even if you hate them, they will tell you something about yourself, but I’d love to really differentiate between our primary calling, which is to love God and love others in everything we do, and a secondary calling, which can be work. It could also be in personal life and in other relationships. Work is just one way.
Case Thorp
That’s right. As a parent? Well, and I do teach that calling is more than a pay–you’re–what you do for a paycheck, and we’ve got to get our calling straight and then see where and how perhaps the job aligns with that.
Arianna Molloy
Yeah. Right. The other thing that I think is important is that it’s really important we don’t think of work calling connected to the title of the job, because people tend to change jobs between the ages of 18 and 42 about 10 times approximately, and so if we’re tied to this one title, a lot of bad things can happen, one of which is job idolization, where that job becomes everything to us. It defines who we are. It gives us certainty and all of those things, but at the very least, then we’re unwilling to see, hey, maybe I’ve grown. Maybe I need to try something new, and so a calling in the workplace usually involves places that you can do that in multiple areas.
Case Thorp
Sure.
Arianna Molloy
So for example, I feel called to be a professor, but what really gets me excited in life is mentorship, collaborative learning, inspiring others, helping them feel equipped and speaking with others in large groups and small groups. Could I do that in a different job besides being a professor? Absolutely. So for those of the kids and the young adults who are thinking like, it’s okay just to get a job? Absolutely.
Case Thorp
Yeah. That’s right.
Arianna Molloy
I will say though that we were hardwired to long for meaning because we have a meaningful God, and so in that job, look for ways that you can enact your primary calling to love God and love others and be brave enough to pay attention to the skill sets that might be developing and the passions that you have.
Case Thorp
Yeah. Well, until the age of 40, I was bound and determined to be a senior pastor, and I had that career mindset, and I realized on a sabbatical actually at the age of 40, that I want to do most of what I do best, and so I want to write. I want to disciple. I want to produce content such as this, and if there’s a senior pastor role out there that fits that–that the church is big enough, they’ve got the staff to free me up, and that’s great, maybe, but I realized this call, this place, this time here was the best fit for such work, and so now, nine years later, I’ve been here 21, but I have let go of that drive that I carried from 15 to 40 to be a senior pastor at a large church, and it’s just wonderfully freeing, and it’s so enjoyable to be able to do the creative work, and it’s good stuff. Okay, let’s talk about burnout now. You’re saying the calling folks are more likely to burn out or be at risk for it, and I mean, with no research, my amateur answer would be simply because it’s so deeply embedded, and so you spend yourself in your time, your energy, far beyond what you should because you care more than just the pay.
Arianna Molloy
Yes, that’s exactly right, and by the way, the story you say about letting go of that dream, I think that takes a lot of courage because I think we just naturally want certainty. So when we have an image in our mind of something we envisioned in ourselves, it’s really, really hard to have the self-awareness to realize that that might not be where we’re supposed to be now and then to take the leap to try something different. So I think that’s wonderful that you did that.
Case Thorp
Yes. Thank you.
Arianna Molloy
I think that what’s really interesting is that calling is not a thing. It is a relationship. Calling is about a relationship with three different dynamics. Calling is about a relationship with the Caller, God, with ourselves, the one being called, and with others, our community, and so the reason that burnout is very distinct, it’s a deeper, more toxic kind of burnout, is that it’s not simply about the self, right? It’s not like, I don’t like what I’m doing anymore, which is not fun. Right? I mean, I don’t know if you’ve ever been in this situation where, you know, you’re–you’re supposed to go do something that you signed up to do and you can’t get out of the car. You’re like, scrolling your phone. I just like, oh, I don’t want to do this anymore. Right? It’s just a terrible feeling to not want to do something that you used to love to do, and burnout is not a small thing. There’s a lot of really negative consequences to that, but burnout from a calling, because it’s about a relationship with the Caller, the called in community has to do with shame. It is not, don’t like what I’m doing. It’s, I don’t know who I am anymore, and the thing that God has asked me to do that I know I’m equipped to do that will make other people’s lives better. I don’t want to do it anymore. So when I’ve talked to people who work in hospitals, hospital leadership, or staff, or medical doctors, and they feel burnt out, that shame of, I don’t want to do it anymore, is real. When I think with pastors, go ahead.
Case Thorp
They’re ashamed of having wasted the time?
Arianna Molloy
They’re ashamed of not wanting to do it anymore, of just not having the, yeah. It’s not there anymore, and just feeling like, I know that if I could just push on more, I could make a difference, but I don’t have it and I don’t want it, and so they don’t know who they are anymore.
Case Thorp
And it was so deeply embedded that that’s not there anymore. Really really captivating. Do they–so one might ask was there ever a calling to begin with or for these folks or does a separate calling develop? Maybe? Maybe not?
Arianna Molloy
I mean, what I would say to you is what I say to myself and my seven-year-old son, exhaustion is a deceptive filter. So when we get to a place of burnout, there’s actually, can I nerd out with you for a second?
Case Thorp
Bring it. We love nerding out.
Arianna Molloy
Okay, no I love it. So there are actually three things that happen to our communication when we get to that kind of burnout. The three things that happen is we have reduced awareness. Okay, we literally–what happens chemically in our brain when we’re in survival mode is it blocks our ability to see things in the periphery. So it’s kind of like when you have a conversation with someone and you think it’s totally fine. You’re super stressed out. You think it’s like, and later you realize, I think I might have missed several cues that this person was giving, or you–you’re in a meeting and you’re trying to get consensus with people and you don’t notice the grimaces, or you’re at home and you’re talking with your–your spouse or your kids and you don’t notice that–that they are having a hard time. That’s reduced awareness.
Case Thorp
Well, last week, a project I had been working on for two years fell apart and was very frustrating. I was very, very sad and disappointed. I wouldn’t–I never got to anger, but it just was heavy, and I couldn’t see any alternatives, and then as the weekend went on, all right, monday morning now, I can see, all right, that we can take this, it’s not a full loss. It can shift, and this partner will no longer be a part of it, but hey, we can look to the periphery and find another way here.
Arianna Molloy
That’s wonderful, and so when we are in a place of extreme stress, of chronic stress, that withdrawal happens. The other thing that happens is, sorry, the reduced awareness happens. The second is withdrawal. We just wanna withdraw, and it’s actually a survival mechanism to withdraw, especially in today’s society.
Case Thorp
Interesting. Would you tell my family this? Because I like to withdraw and read a little too often.
Arianna Molloy
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, but here’s the thing. Where it breaks down is if we don’t tell people we’re doing it.
Case Thorp
Well, so I actually said, y’all, I need a little space. We were going out to dinner Saturday night. I’m like, look, I just need two hours to just lick my wounds and then I’ll be fine, and they let me.
Arianna Molloy
That’s right, because you communicated it, which is lovely. We tend to withdraw by going to technology, to our phones, the adult pacifier. So that doesn’t help anybody. Yeah, can’t do that.
Case Thorp
True. The adult pacifier. I’ve got a new phrase. That’s awesome.
Arianna Molloy
You know, you might be driving in the car with someone and you say, hey, are you okay? And they will turn their shoulder physically away from you, lower their head and say, I’m fine. That’s withdrawal, right? Withdrawal for high capacity people is choosing other projects to deal with when they can’t handle the thing they should be dealing with. So withdrawal is a way of coping and it can get you into trouble if you don’t tell people or yourself that you’re doing it, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing to take a moment on. So we’ve got reduced awareness, withdrawal, and then the third thing that happens when we have that chronic stress is physical tension.
Case Thorp
So true.
Arianna Molloy
This is where anxiety attacks can happen in our bodies, in our minds, in our psychology. This is where we can have like, I get really bad neck pain when I have a lot of physical tension. People will get stomach aches, not being able to sleep, and all of those things combined. This goes back to your question earlier. Did they really have a calling? Probably they did, but they’re in chronic stress and we were not meant to live that way. Normal stress, that’s different.
Case Thorp
Yeah.
Arianna Molloy
But chronic stress is when that becomes your day-to-day way of living, and to actually not be in it makes us uncomfortable. We’ve gotten so used to that.
Case Thorp
I’ve definitely seen that and it’s very difficult. So burnout signs would be…
Arianna Molloy
I mean it’s really different for everybody but it–it begins when there’s, well I would say for me and then I can tell you the participants that I’ve interviewed for myself. The first sign is I am no longer patient and compassionate with myself or others. That’s the first sign. That’s like if I am impatient or lacking compassion for others, I know that my heart is not centered in the right place. For others it really depends on sort of their shadow self, right? The things that get them going in a negative way. This could be workaholism or job idolization. This could be procrastination, but it’s usually a kind of self-talk where we are very, very hard on ourselves, and very, very hard on others. We begin to lose the ability to strategically think of alternatives. We only see things in very hardcore extremes, one side or the other, and we’ve lost the ability to think creatively, and most importantly, we’ve lost connection to the thing that used to bring us joy.
Case Thorp
So true and it takes self-awareness.
Arianna Molloy
Yes, that is a big contributor. So across all of the folks that I interviewed, the ones that managed, who identified feeling called and managed to not let burnout overtake them. The first was self-awareness. You wanna know another one that’s really funny? It’s doing something not related to your work at all. So the folks that managed to like, not get sucked into the burnout had hobbies that were not connected to their work as a calling. Like pottery class or taking Italian lessons at a community college or something that just sort of took you out. So for me, my husband and I love to run. I don’t love to run, but we run.
Case Thorp
Yeah. I run when being chased.
Arianna Molloy
Right, but so running or cooking, I love to cook because it’s just something other. You know, or being with my son. I just love to hang out with my kid. So.
Case Thorp
I love my cats. Okay, in the book you talk about the difference in workaholism and job idolization. Now it could seem to be similar from the outside, but you distinguish them.
Arianna Molloy
Yeah. Yeah, and they’re not entirely distinct, but there’s some key emphases. So workaholism, if I could give the gift to any of us talking and listening today, it would be to never use that phrase as a compliment ever again, because workaholism is an addiction. It’s a compulsion.
Case Thorp
Wait, as a compliment, I don’t…
Arianna Molloy
Yeah. People will be like, you’re such a workaholic or I’m such a workaholic and that’s why I’m doing this kind of a thing. It’s–I understand where that motivation is coming from, but we have to replace it with something else because workaholism is a compulsion and it can often start off, especially I see this among either newly minted college graduates or folks in kind of midlife where everything else in the world feels out of control. Like we’re becoming aware of our aging bodies or our children are not following what we’re doing, and so work is control..
Case Thorp
I got it.
Arianna Molloy
Right? Or right out of college, they have to prove themselves. It starts off good because at work, if you are all in, you’re the one that they call in. You’re the person that’s in the room where it happens. You’re the one that they can count on. So it feels good to be needed. It feels good to be…
Case Thorp
Yeah. Well, and I’ve found, too, you have power at work, or some people do, and then, you know, that’s right, and then I go home and not everybody does as I suggest or wish.
Arianna Molloy
Totally. You have power…Yeah, either social power or actual legitimate power. Right. Yeah. That’s right. Yeah, and value and certainty, but it moves from that to being wildly uncomfortable to not work. Workaholism is when you have five minutes between things, you can’t help yourself but answer that other email. You can’t help yourself but step away from family dinner or an evening out because it feels awkward and weird to not keep working, and workaholism will absolutely erode relationships. Yeah.
Case Thorp
I’ve had seasons of this.
Arianna Molloy
It’s so easy. I–one of the goals I made for this last year was I’m gonna get off of my work phone, work mode at 5.30 and if I need to check anything, it’ll be after 8.30. So the window of time where my kid is home and awake, and I remember, we were taking him to a bike path and I was watching, the wind, the sun, the grass, the trees was all like, beautiful and picturesque and I got an alert on my phone that was an email, and I pulled it out and I’ll tell you something, I was so tempted to respond but I had to check myself, is this actually urgent? It definitely was not. It was like a clear, obvious, non-urgent one, and it took all I had to put it back in my pocket because part of it is, it’s so overwhelming to have so many things to do and if you can just check off one list, right, but that’s the addiction part. If I just do this one thing, it’ll all be okay.
Case Thorp
That’s right, that’s right. Yeah, yeah. Well, the lesson I’ve learned related to that is Sabbath is really about trust, and are you really trusting God in His call and design to recognize your limits and to honor those limits? And I still struggle with this, but didn’t even have a clue about it for the longest time, and I had to realize there was a deficiency in my love and trust in God that needed some boosting in order to really let go.
Arianna Molloy
100% and I would love to lean in hard and talk about Sabbath in a second if you want because that’s something I talk about too, but before we move on, the reason that we need to talk about job idolization and why that’s different is that unlike an addiction or a compulsion, job idolization is when your work becomes the defining expression of who you are. When work is the definition of who we are rather than a way of simply an outlet to express who we are, when it defines us, when we use work as an excuse to not show up on a consistent basis, there will always be things that require our attention and there may be seasons where we do have to work more or do more, but if we do that on a consistent basis and we get our entire meaning and our worth from that,
Case Thorp
Right. I mean, how does a pastor not do that? Because I don’t, I’m not elevating our profession. I’m speaking to some of its darker, more difficult sides, but the embodiment of being shepherd pastor, especially what everybody else puts on you is inseparable from, I’m a banker, but now I do private investment or I’m a teacher and I had a great season, but now I am running an eBay business. Right?
Arianna Molloy
I get that and I do think that pastoral pressure and pastoral burnout is distinct, but I don’t think it’s…I don’t think it’s unique in the sense that you talk to a stay at home parent who feels called, that’s their job. I mean, they are responsible for raising and shepherding the children in their home. You talk to someone who works in the hospital, whether they are a doctor or the janitorial staff, and they will believe to the core of their being that they all are part of curing cancer, that they are all part of helping that person, and for faculty or educators who feel called, they believe–believe that the future is in the hands of educators who are helping shape and encourage children and young adults in who they believe themselves to be. So that pressure, it’s specific with calling. That’s why I would say, you know, most pastors feel called. So that’s why it’s unique.
Case Thorp
Yeah, that’s all we talk about.
Arianna Molloy
Right, but anytime someone feels called, whatever the job is, it is that part that makes the calling toxic burnout so specific because we feel it to the core of our being that if we don’t do this, fill in the blank, help this person know Jesus, help this person heal from a disease, help this person graduate so they can get a job, help this child in my home be a responsible adult. If we don’t do those things, bad things happen.
Case Thorp
I do consulting with churches and one of the roles is to help search committees find pastors, and it’s always interesting to me that some pastors will speak of being called away from this role and, am I called to that role at that church? And then some will say, yeah, we just want to be near our parents and give me a church in the Southeast.
Arianna Molloy
Yeah.
Case Thorp
And yes, one may be pragmatic to a fault, and one may be head in the clouds to a fault, but I just noticed the difference.
Arianna Molloy
Sure, that makes sense. I think what I would want to know is the people who said, we just want to be close to our parents, do they feel a relational calling to help take care of their parents? It, you know, again, there’s different types of expressions of secondary callings and where we feel that distinct ability to apply our skill set and our passion to positively impact others can exist in all sorts of areas.
Case Thorp
Hmm. Yeah. So good. Okay. For the Christian uniquely, and really for all of us, but talk to me about Sabbath. What have you seen in your research there?
Arianna Molloy
Hmm. I love Sabbath. It is a struggle for me every time. I would say on that.
Case Thorp
And let me just say, right at the start here, if you’re listening to this, we’re not talking about blue laws on a Sunday where you can’t buy a beer. We’re not talking about where you stay home all day and you don’t watch TV and you can’t go out to a restaurant. No, no, speak to what it is and then why and what you’ve discovered.
Arianna Molloy
Right? Yeah, I know, Sabbath is the first thing that God called holy in the Bible. He did it, didn’t need to do it. He told us we need to do it also. It’s a gift. There’s a lot of conversation about whether or not it’s a mandated thing or whether it’s a privilege, and I have talked with a lot of people about whether or not it is a privilege socioeconomically and relationally, because there’s a lot of single parents or people who are working multiple jobs or who are caregivers and they don’t have the luxury of physically resting, but ultimately, Sabbath is a relational act with the giver of all good things.
Case Thorp
Yeah, it is a gift. Sure. Yeah.
Arianna Molloy
It is a tithing of our time to say you are in charge of all of my time, and just as I tithe my finances, knowing that you are the great provider, I will tithe my time. I love how John Mark Comer talks about it, taking a break from the worries, the work, and the wants that occupy our mind, and I don’t know about you, Case. I’m a strategic thinker. So my brain is thinking about 10 things all the time, and I’m a list maker, and I’m color coding the list in my head, right? That’s just how I operate. Part of that is that I’m in a season where I have a young kid. My husband also works full time, and we also help take care of my parents who are aging and have some different health things. So we’re busy all the time.
Case Thorp
Yeah, so true.
Arianna Molloy
Here’s what I’ll say about Sabbath. We take it on Saturdays, and again, I think it’s the spirit of it, right? It’s a relational act. So it’s not that rule-based thing. Some people will take it like, Friday night to Saturday night or all day Sunday. It works for us to take it on Saturdays. I started doing this when I was a single person in my doctorate program, and again, I think also Sabbath in seasons is different. So when you’re single and you’re by yourself, learning how to Sabbath communally is really important because Sabbath and solitude are not the same. They can coexist. They’re in some ways really great partners.
Case Thorp
Yeah, yeah.
Arianna Molloy
But Sabbath is not the same. It’s a pulling away of the tyranny of the urgent, the things that dictate our time on a regular basis and reminds us who is in control. So, yeah, go ahead.
Case Thorp
And the biblical perspective that I had not fully appreciated when I read a scholar writing how Sabbath was an incredible gift to the Jews who were enslaved in Egypt to say, what? You’re giving us one day a week where we don’t have to go out and make mud bricks? What a gift, and I find for non-believers who will snicker and turn their nose up at the word Sabbath thinking of 1950s laying around and doing nothing or legalism, that most people now know the harried nature of email and to do and in some ways the pandemic was such a gift to reset a lot of that. So folks, because of our modern lives, are more open to this strange, weird concept that Christians have of turning it all off?
Arianna Molloy
Yeah, and I think science backs up what the Bible already says. You talk to any neuroscience–you talk to any neuroscience-based scholar, researcher, and they will talk to you about the necessary essential benefits of unplugging for a day…
Case Thorp
I love that. Ahem.
Arianna Molloy
…how important that is. This is not simply theology without basis. This is the best kind of theology, right? Because God is behind the science, so recognizing that, and I would say, when I first got married, my incredible husband who was an Enneagram three, he is an achiever. His–-his day off is to play. My day off is to be still and learning how to do that as a married couple was a beautiful, holy process that we leaned into together and talked about it.
Case Thorp
That’s right.
Arianna Molloy
And now that we have a child who has a soccer game on our Sabbath day, one of the things I’ve learned is it is awesome to go to soccer and sit in a chair, and be outside, and not on my phone, and pray over my child, and pray over the players that he’s playing with, and pray over the coaches, and notice the sky, and say thank you Jesus for this day, and so we have to recognize that physical rest on Sabbath might be a privilege, but emotional, virtual, psychological rest; that’s an essential.
Case Thorp
I was thinking you mentioned Comer’s rest from work worry and want on the one–one–is there a day a week where you don’t buy something from Amazon, you know?
Arianna Molloy
I would say Sabbath is a good day to not do that. Yeah.
Case Thorp
Okay. Okay, so I want to end here on some healthier perspectives on calling. In your research, you argue that humility is a key to healthier and better ways of fulfilling one’s Christian convictions. Talk to us about humility.
Arianna Molloy
I love how God works. I love that he wastes absolutely nothing and that he integrates all that we experience if we give it to him. So I signed up for a research fellowship at Biola when I was starting to feel burnt out. There was a lot of stuff going on in my life, and I signed up for a fellowship that would give me a release from two of my classes to teach. I honestly, Case, did not pay attention to what I was signing up for. I just knew I needed a break. Turns out the fellowship was on studying humility. I was selected with a few other scholars from across the country to study the virtue of humility from all different disciplines, and what I realized when I was studying what humility was, and I was looking back at the data that I had on people who experienced a healthy calling, it was the same thing. It was the same thing. Three key qualities of humility, and we know in Micah 6:8 that humility is literally what is required of us to walk with God. We can’t walk with God without humility. We know that Jesus was humble and therefore humility is not ignorance. It is not a naivety to our strengths. We confuse that. We often think of humility as passivity. Jesus wasn’t passive, so that’s not what humility is. Humility involves three key qualities. The first is knowing our strengths and our weaknesses and not being distracted by either. It’s just like, it really is pride’s different sides. One side of pride is being very full of ourselves.
Case Thorp
I’m writing these down.
Arianna Molloy
The other side is being so insecure that all we do is think of our own faults. That’s being focused on ourselves, and in the workplace in particular, you don’t want someone who is either too full of themselves to be a learner and to be corrected, or who’s so insecure that you’re constantly having to build them up when you really need them to just do their job, right? The way to make sure that that is balanced is to operate from gratitude. So I remember a faculty nominated me for an award that I received early on for teaching, and I had just had like a rough day teaching, you know, was like one of those hard days and they told me that I won and I put my head down and I was like, well I don’t know why I would have gotten that and he said, don’t do that, you’re not only insulting me who thought you deserved it, but you’re downplaying the gifts that God has given you, accept it with gratitude, so that’s really important. The second part of humility is a lifestyle of learning. I love that Jesus, among many names that he was called, was called teacher. He wants us to learn. He encourages us to learn. He invites us to learn. He invites us to sit at His feet and learn. He invites us to ask ridiculous questions, and He doesn’t give up on us when we don’t know the answer or we’ve forgotten the answer. The disciples are perfect examples of this. Even if they get too cocky and they want to sit at the right hand and the left hand of Jesus, and Jesus is like, well, you don’t know what you’re asking, He keeps teaching them.
Case Thorp
That’s so good.
Arianna Molloy
So humility is about teachableness, and in the workplace, that means being willing to delegate to others and taking time to teach others. So knowing your strengths and weaknesses, not being distracted by either, being teachable, and then the third thing is knowing when to take a break, and that goes back to Sabbath, full circle, right? Even Jesus did that. He withdrew so often to get restored, to talk with his father. He did not try to do it all. He could have done it all. He didn’t do it all. So part of humility is knowing that you are not the center of the universe, knowing who is the center of the universe, and so part of rest, that is why rest is essential to work. It is not extra. It is not other.
Case Thorp
Yeah. We rest to work. We don’t rest from our work.
Arianna Molloy
That’s right, and I think there is a type of holy work in resting. If we can think about resting as a process of figuring out where we are weary, and I don’t believe that we can actually have change without rest, because without rest we can’t reflect. We can’t take time to consider where we might need to turn the other way. It’s harder to hear the Holy Spirit if we’re not resting.
Case Thorp
Friends, you can find Arianna’s work at ariannamolloy.com. You can sign up for her newsletter, download the first chapter of Healthy Calling, her latest book from InterVarsity Press. It’s available in print, ebook, audiobook. You can also find Arianna’s featured writing through Faith and Leadership and Intelligent Labs. We will put links to these things in our show notes. Arianna, thank you so much.
Arianna Molloy
This was so fun. Thank you.
Case Thorp
Friends, next week come and enjoy a further conversation with Dr. Molloy as we apply a lot of these things to her life, to her faith and work, and hear how her story is an inspiration for following after Christ. Well, The Collaborative creates content and unique experiences for Christ-centered professionals in the public square, and that would be you. Visit us at wecolabor.com to explore our work. Leave us your email and I’ll send you our journal on faith, and culture called Zeitgeist. Many thanks to today’s episode sponsor, the Pratt Family Fund. I’m Case Thorp, and God’s blessing’s on you.
