The Theology of Work

Don: What does God say about work? What does God want us to know about work? How does work fit into the life of the spirit? When it comes to work, what are we actually called to do?

It is clear that work was part of God’s plan for Mankind right from the start:

Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. (Genesis 2:15)

This is yet another indication that Man was made in God’s own image, since in the story of creation we see God at work:

God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. (Genesis 1:31)

Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made. (Genesis 2:1-3)

It seems that the work of God is to create goodness—the Garden; while the work of Man is to cultivate and propagate that goodness—the Garden. But why did God need to rest? He cannot have been tired and he cannot have decided to take a break from doing good. It seems to me that the object of the rest was not God, but Man, who does need rest. After the Fall from the Garden, the nature of Man’s work changed. God told Adam:

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you;
In toil you will eat of it
 All the days of your life.
 Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you;
 And you will eat the plants of the field;
 By the sweat of your face 
You will eat bread,
 Till you return to the ground,
 Because from it you were taken;
 For you are dust,
 And to dust you shall return.”
(Genesis 3:17-19)

On Earth outside the Garden, evil grows alongside the good. Thorns and thistles invade space previously occupied only by Goodness. So the theology of work is rooted in the problem of good and evil. In this context, rest—the Sabbath rest—is a conduit for God’s grace for a fallen world. It became a commemoration of the emancipation from the evil of slavery in Egypt; a weekly down payment on God’s liberating grace:

You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to observe the sabbath day. (Deuteronomy 5:15)

As a down payment on grace, no-one can claim to possess it or be its keeper because to do so would be to emphasize one’s own righteousness over that of God. By linking grace with time, over neither of which Man can exercise any form of control, God emphasizes the majesty of his grace. They can only be accepted for what they are, and will exist whether we are ready for them or not. Those of us who value the Sabbath would do well to examine our understanding of it and see God’s everlasting grace within it.

Man’s work on behalf of others is in fact the work of God. It is the cultivation of Goodness as intended in the Garden. Paul and Matthew told us how Jesus set an example:

You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him. (Acts 10:38)

Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.” (Matthew 9:36-38)

We are here to do God’s work, to be his heart and hands in caring for those around us, in taking compassion on the sick and the wounded:

Then it happened that as Jesus was reclining at the table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were dining with Jesus and His disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to His disciples, “Why is your Teacher eating with the tax collectors and sinners?” But when Jesus heard this, He said, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire compassion, and not sacrifice,’ for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:10-13)

In the story of the workers who received the same pay for different work effort, some were capable fo working all day under the boiling sun while others could manage only a few minutes. But all are called and put to work, and the reward for the work is not tied to the amount of work. Like manna (another symbol of grace), we receive as much as we need:

This is what the Lord has commanded, ‘Gather of it every man as much as he should eat; you shall take an omer apiece according to the number of persons each of you has in his tent.’” The sons of Israel did so, and some gathered much and some little. When they measured it with an omer, he who had gathered much had no excess, and he who had gathered little had no lack; every man gathered as much as he should eat. (Exodus 16:16-18)

In any event:

Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve. (Colossians 3:23-24)

The subject of work seems so mundane compared to peace and love and faith. The spiritual connection seems somehow less. But is it?

Jay: Peace, love, and faith are less tangible, less empirical than work. Work seems essentially physical. It can be precisely observed and measured. It seems therefore to be not of much, if any, spiritual relevance. But if we de-anthropomorphize God and view him as the essence of Goodness rather than as a good person, then the notion of work—God’s work, our work for others—is also seen in a new light as something essential yet not measurable.

Michael: Are we no longer distinguishing between different types of work?

David: I understand we are talking only about Man’s work for others. Missionary work can certainly be measured in number of hours spent going door to door, but is that really God’s work? Isn’t God’s work the work that was implied by Jesus in describing judgment day—“Did you help me when I was down and out?” Even if helping others could be measured, where is the yardstick? Must we help five people a week? Two people a day? One person in a lifetime? And what constitutes “help”? To me, it all boils down to Goodness: We simply must be good to our fellow Wo/Man. To the extent we do that, we do God’s work.

Anonymous: It must be measurable to God, otherwise how could he judge us? Romans 2:6, Psalms 62:13, and Proverbs 24:12 all say that God will judge us according to our works. If God cares for our works it is because he created the work for us from the foundation of the world; and he has the right to judge because:

…righteous men, wise men, and their deeds are in the hand of God. (Ecclesiastes 9:1)

When we believe in him, good works naturally follow, and such is his will:

For such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men. (1 Peter 2:15)

Unbelievers will accept God when they see his good works effected through Man:

Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation. (1 Peter 2:12)

Jay: The Bible links works with judgment in a rather ominous way. We are left feeling we might not be good enough.

Chris: In Romans 2 the link between judgment and works focuses on the motivation behind the works:

But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to each person according to his deeds: to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation. There will be tribulation and distress for every soul of man who does evil, …. (Romans 2:5-9)

God knows the motives behind our works, and that is what he seems to judge.

Michael: It sounds as though the work handed down to Adam following the Fall was intended as punishment. It’s rather like the punishment of Sisyphus. This kind of work surely is not the work of God.

David: Perhaps judgment is ongoing self-judgment suited for life in heaven on Earth. Perhaps it is not (just) a one-time, end-time event suited for heaven itself. If it is self-judgment through the light of the spirit—the inner light in all of us—then we know whether or not we are doing God’s work.

Don: It seems that work is something to celebrate:

For I have taken all this to my heart and explain it that righteous men, wise men, and their deeds are in the hand of God. Man does not know whether it will be love or hatred; anything awaits him.  (Ecclesiastes 9:1) … Go then, eat your bread in happiness and drink your wine with a cheerful heart; for God has already approved your works. (Ecclesiastes 9:7)….Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might; for there is no activity or planning or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol [the underworld] where you are going. (Ecclesiastes 9:10)

David: The Bible tells us, then, “to do it [work] with all your might” just after telling us:

Do not be excessively righteous and do not be overly wise. Why should you ruin yourself? Do not be excessively wicked and do not be a fool. Why should you die before your time? (Ecclesiastes 7:16-17)

So which is it?

Jay: I think again the point is to tell us that we are not capable of figuring this out; that we cannot distinguish between good and evil, so all this fine intellectual analysis is only going to mislead us; that it’s not what we do that matters but why we do it—what’s the motive behind our action; that if we are in tune with our inner light—with God, with Goodness—there is a natural output but not one we are capable of predicting because it may not conform to our rules of cause-and-effect.

Don: Hence: “righteous men, wise men, and their deeds are in the hand of God.”

Anonymous: And yet:

This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that there is one fate for all men. (Ecclesiastes 9:3)

Rimon: It’s troubling and confusing. It seems to be about the struggle between good and evil. It can feel hypocritical as a human to think we are doing the work of God knowing that we are incapable and unworthy. Yet we are asked to do it. And it feels as though however good we manage to be, it’s all erased if we lapse into evil for just a moment.

Jay: This is the dilemma over quantifying good and bad work. Trying to quantify and measure it leads to the trouble, confusion, and anxiety Rimon talks about. I feel that serving God ought not to be associated with feelings of guilt and anxiety. The verses we have just been reading seem to me to tell us not to be so anxious about it, because the anxiety comes from our flawed analysis of good and evil. We don’t know why some seemingly good people have hard, short lives while some seemingly evil people have long, happy ones; but we must trust that God knows and not worry about it. God told us he has already taken care of it—that he created us for good works, so let his creation be!

Anonymous: We should not try to be saints. We should believe in God and believe, therefore, that our works will be as good as he has already ordained. We focus on the works when we ought to be focusing on the source. If we have faith in God we do not need to worry about our works. That we all do bad things, that we all sin, is just a fact, as long as we are mortal.

Robin: The knowledge—the self-judgment—that we sin is a sign that the spirit is working within us, otherwise we would never be able to acknowledge any of our own sins.

Michael: When God condemned Adam—all of us—to work after the Fall, when previously God had provided for him—his offspring developed differential abilities to work, but the potential to do good work remains for all.

Jesus said that a man was blind not because of the sin of his parents but so that the glory of God could be made manifest by curing his blindness through faith in God.

David: It’s a lot less stressful being a Daoist:

In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired.
In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.

Less and less is done
Until non-action is achieved.
When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.

The world is ruled by letting things take their course.
It cannot be ruled by interfering. (Tao Te Ching, chapter 48)

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