Reflections
WORKING UNDER A CURSE
By Pete Hammond
"I think most of us are looking for a calling, not a job. Most of us, like the assembly line worker, have jobs that are too small for our spirit. Jobs are not big enough for people.'' l
This quotation from Studs Terkel's book Working, is an excellent example of the negative view of work shared by secular workers and Christians alike— but it is not God's view. For too many generations the church has taught that work is the penalty for sin. Because we have viewed work as God's retaliation for our rebellion,2 in a hostile attitude toward work seems to be both reasonable and right. This terrible distortion of God's truth has had a devastating effects on both Christian people and the Christian message, including:
A caste system where those who do so-called "secular work" are demeaned— their daily efforts have no value. And yet the Bible's primary characters are workers who produce goods (cattle farmers, vineyard tenders, iron workers, carpenters, tentmakers, textile prducers); managers (of grain supplies, of employees, building projects, armies, finances); public servants (in medicine, courts, community, civil rights, public finance); artists (musicians, sculptors, seamstresses, dancers, worship leaders, writers). God does not view these people and their efforts as ignoble, irrelevant or "secular." By including them in the sacred record, He exalts them as doing His work.
A destruction of self-worth because this view of work denies our creation in the image of God, our intrinsic worth as co-creator with Him.
As Pope John Paul II clearly states, "Work is one of the characteristics that distinguishes man from the rest of the creatures.... Man's life is built up every day from work, from work it derives its specific dignity." 3
The biblical view of humanity is that we are workers in the image of God. This truth is rooted in Genesis, which portrays God going to work every day. He even has a daily work performance review ('Behold all that He had done was good").
With the loss of this biblical view, it shouldn't surprise us when a Wall Street Journal poll finds that there is no significant difference between the churched and the unchurched in their ethics and values on the job. 4
When we view ourselves as trash and our work as irrelevant drudgery, spirituality disappears from everyday life. And we are doomed to perpetuate the shame Adam and Eve felt after the Fall.
This separation of spirituality from life shows up in very specific ways, including:
The idea that only some places are spiritual— churches, shrines, altars in homes, chapels at work or school, religiously owned buildings like schools or orphanages.
The notion that some jobs have more spiritual value than others. In some circles, the scale of spiritual significance look like this:
Highest value: Martyr, missionary, pastor, priest, nun, employee of religious organization.
Some value: social services worker— counseling, welfare, case-worker, therapist, community organizer, health care worker or educator.
No value at all: all the rest— carpenter, banker, truck driver, artist, clerk, farmer, waitress, copywriter, janitor, manager— ending, of course, with "salesman" at the absolute bottom of the scale.
The idea that only certain facets of your work are spiritual. Only some of the results of your work receive praise (large financial gifts to religious causes; a job that allows lots of volunteer religious activity; getting your co-workers to attend church; lending your prestige, or power or fame to enhance the reputation of your pastor or congregation; or donating surplus goods to religious causes). Dorothy Sayers said it well:
"In nothing has the church so lost her hold on reality as in her failure to understand and respect the secular vocation. She has allowed work and religion to become separate departments, and is astonished to find that, as a result, the secular work of the world is turned to purely selfish and destructive ends, and that the greater part of the world's intelligent workers have become irreligious, or at least, uninterested in religion. But is it astonishing? How can one remain interested in a religion which seems to have no concern with nine-tenths of his life?'' 5
It's high time the church recognized the spiritual impact of food harvested and delivered, transportation systems that work, financial institutions that serve all the people, communications, the building industry, etc. Are we really to view these as incidental developments that God could care less about?
A distorted understanding of God's nature— worker/creator vitally involved in restoring His runaway handiwork. When it comes to work, many of us have slipped back into the deist viewof a watchmaker God who makes it, winds it up and leaves the scene. Yet Scripture portrays a Creator who actively holds all things together, and seeks its restoration to Himself. As ones creator in His image, we should work with Him toward these same ends. H. L. Mencken said, "I go on working for the same reason a hen goes on laying eggs."6 Work is intrinsic to our nature because we are made in the likeness of God, and God is a worker. Note that when Jesus found Himself in a controversy over the Sabbath, He asserted that "My Father is always at work to this very day, and I, too, am working." 7
A confusing perspective on eternal life and heaven's activities. We often hear life in heaven described as some kind of eternal choir (for those of us who can't sing, this can be demotivating). But Isaiah and the apostle John envision work in heaven that is painless, effective and fulfilling.
Isaiah looks into the new heavens and the new earth and sees home-building and harvesting without sweat or toil.8 John portrays the new heaven with monthly harvests and no curse affecting the process.9
We will work in heaven without the sweat and toil of the fall, but we will certainly work! God's original design for work described in Genesis 1 will be restored to complete fulfillment in heaven.
The Sabbath becomes a weak parenthesis between weeks of drudgery (which we fill, of course, with pleasurable escapes). But Monday through Friday is not just a long, dark tunnel between wonderful weekends. The work week is central to our very nature as co-creators with God. And the Sabbath is more meaningful when it is recognized as the pivot-point where we pin Him in rest, renewal and celebration of all that we have done together. It is a time to reflect on our work, and to see, in the words of Genesis, that "it is good."
Christians participate in the worldly myth that work is a necessary evil. When we make no effort to recover work as one of the primary ways in which we reflect God's image (the other is family life),l0 we become worldly; for we deny the very nature of God as creator/worker. We demean humanity as functionaries trapped in drudgery, rather than redeemable images of God. And we deny our friends the good news of liberation from their captivity. After all, worldliness is much more than indulgence in a select list of offensive activities. Worldliness is living in denial of who God is, who we are and what our joint roles are as rulers who manage, multiply and utilize the earth's resources. Nelvin Vos captures this distortion when he observes that we view "work as the evil that must be endured to make leisure possible. Leisure is the evil that must be redeemed by work." l1
Christians abuse their work relationships with non-Christians. Our jobs put us in touch with people like no other activity except family life. For 40+ hours a week we toil, laugh,struggle, and care together. This level of involvement calls believers to live beyond self-interest. As Chicago public school teacher, Mike Quinn, says, "The world is not a Fun House Hall of Mirrors everywhere reflecting distorted images of myself. The world is a wax museum of individuals needing to warm each other into full humanity through the touch of love."l2 If we adopted this attitude, we would learn to see our fellow workers as something more than targets for evangelism.
On-the-job evangelism at the expense of true relationship is dehumanizing and offensive to God. We come across as uncaring Rambo-types who view co-workers as potential conquests instead of human beings who deserve our love and respect.
To view a job only as a platform for evangelism is utilitarian. It traps the quiet Christian, who may even like his job, into a role that seems illegitimate. Employers soon catch on and learn to see believers as intruders, deceivers or sluggards. Paul knew of this tendency, and addressed it by calling early believers to: obedience to employers,l3 fairness towards employees,l4 hard work that others can respect,l5 avoidance of idleness that causes unjust dependence on others,l6 and productive labor that removes the temptation to steal and equips you to share with those in need .l7 In each of these admonitions, Paul reflects a high view of both the worker and the work. Even in such a demeaning role as slavery he calls for respectful work so that "God's name and (gospel) teaching may not be slandered." l8 There is intrinsic value in work and we are called to affirm that— instead of using work to suit our hidden evangelistic agenda.
It is time for an overthrow of the TGIF ("Thank God It's Friday") mentality among Christians. The believer, by the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, can proclaim "TGIM-- Thank God It's Monday.l9 I will serve God and celebrate Kingdom in my job." If we do so, we will come to new understandings about the power of the Holy Spirit. We will experience his indwelling just as the tabernacle workers did in Exodus 31 and 35. Their skills in stone-cutting, carpentry, jewelry-making and tapestry are seen as filled with Holy Spirit powerfor productive and Godly work.
Can we, as New Testament temples for His dwelling, hold any lesser view of the Holy Spirit's relation to work? In our fixation of the Holy Spirit's relationship to evangelism, gift-giving and miracles, we have ignored His empowerment of workers. The Spirit can help us to over throw the curse on work and restore God's original design for us as co-creators with Him, workers in the image of a working God.
The world is waiting for a new breed of Christians who hold a high view of work and of God's blessing on it. If only we could stop viewing work as God's dirty trick on His rebellious people, what wonderful, new doors would open for us! What a profound dimension would be added to our understanding of the Kingdom and its impact in a fallen world. At last, we would truly be Good News.
Notes:
1 Studs Terkel, Working (Avon: 1972) page 29
2 Genesis 3:17-19.
3 Laborem Exercens (Catholic Truth Society: 1981), page 4.
4 Wall Street Journal (December, 1983); poll done by the PrincetonResearch Center.
5 Dorothy Sayers, Creed or Chaos (Harcourt and Brace,1949), page 56.
6 H. L. Mencken, quoted by David Weil in Men and Work in ModernBritain, (Fontana 1973).
7 John 5:17.
8 Isaiah 65:17-25.
9 Revelation 22:2-5.
10 These two realms of sin' s curse are central to our nature; seeGenesis 3:16-19.
11 Nelvin Vos, Seven Days a Week (Fortress Press: 1985), page14.
12 Five Guidelines to a Spirituality of Work, by Mark Quinn, in Praying No. 8 , pages 6-9.
13 Colossians 3:22-25.
14 Colossians 4:1.
15 Thessalonians 4:1 1,12.
16 Thessalonians 3:6-15.
17 Ephesians 4 28.
18 I Timothy 6:1,2.
19 See William Diehl's wonderful book by that title, published byFortress Press.
Pete Hammond is a PCUSA elder, a veteran staff member of InterVarsity who directs theMarketplace® division, and is the creative developer, team leader and chief contributor to the Word In Life Study Bible. He and his wife Shirleylive in Madison, WI and commute to Chicago regularly to see their grandchildren.
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