Proverbs 10:4
A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.
When I was a young boy, my father provided a chore for me. It was simple. I was to keep the shrubbery around the house weeded throughout the spring, summer, and fall. I remember him sitting beside me with a garden trial in hand and showing me exactly how he wanted it done. Of course, this excited me because I received my first “big boy” responsibility. Weeding the shrubs remained my responsibility through high school.
Thinking about the chore is interesting because what started as an exciting adventure as a child, one that I happily did, became a source of contention with my father during my teenage years. Did I learn to hate weeding the shrubs? No. To this day, I still love yard work. Was I being intentionally disrespectful, rebelling against his authority? No. That was not it either, although I sometimes had a gimcrack attitude. I abrogated my responsibility because I was selfish. Typical of most teenagers, I thought my time and desires were more important than the family’s need for me to weed those confounded shrub beds.
In Matthew 21:28-31, Jesus tells a parable of a father asking his two sons to do work for the family in a vineyard:
28 “What do you think? A man had two sons. And he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ 29 And he answered, ‘I will not,’ but afterward he changed his mind and went. 30 And he went to the other son and said the same. And he answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but did not go. 31 Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.”
The parable illustrates a general principle: because the Jewish religious leaders rejected Jesus as their Messiah, they are the second son who claimed obedience but did not do the father’s will. In other words, they did not do the work assigned to them. Although there is the point that believers should be working in the Kingdom, making disciples, bearing the fruit of repentance and the Spirit, etc., the object of this post is about God’s expectation of believers to work as a general aspect of their character. And as I observe social constructs today, this is something lost among covenant children because they have followed the world’s philosophy about work.
Philosophers rationalize the origin and purpose of work are not worthy of respect. It is only a means to keep the individual busy and under society’s control. Aristotle, like many contemporary people, believed work is not virtuous, writing in his Politics:
…in the most nobly constituted state, and the one that possesses men that are absolutely just, not merely just relatively to the principle that is the basis of the constitution, the citizens must not live a mechanic or a mercantile life (for such a life is ignoble and inimical to virtue), nor yet must those who are to be citizens in the best state be tillers of the soil (for leisure is needed both for the development of virtue and for active participation in politics).[1]
Then there is Friedrich Nietzsche. In the nineteenth century, he rationalized that society’s “glorification of work” was only a means to keep people enslaved to its ideals and suppresses the person’s individualism, concluding:
Thus a society in which there is continual hard work will have more security: and security is now worshipped as the supreme divinity. – And now! Horror! Precisely the ‘worker’ has become dangerous! The place is swarming with ‘dangerous individuals’! And behind them the danger of dangers – the individual![2]
What about these philosophies today? They continue in the form of distractions and detractions from work. The internet and social media are the new social construct to keep people from work. Today’s culture has morphed into more concern about what is on their cell phone than what they were created to do. Cal Newport; a writer, college professor, and critic of our age’s lack of focus on cognitively demanding tasks; writes, “Deep Work is at a severe disadvantage in a technopoly because it builds on values like quality, craftsmanship, and mastery that are decidedly old-fashioned and non-technological.”[3] In other words, what is noble for the typical American to express their individualism is to post it to social media or sit on their duff all day watching someone else express their individuality.
However, God did not create humanity for that purpose. It is one reason Nietzsche hated Christianity. God works, creates, sustains. In the beginning, God worked for six days and rested on the seventh (Gen. 1). When He created Adam imago Dei, in His image, He told Adam to take care of the Garden and name the animals (Gen. 2:18-20). After the Fall, the sons of Cain built cities (Enoch) and were musicians (Jubal) (Gen. 4:17-21). As much as the world hates work, it cannot escape it. Work is a part of humanity’s being. The Dutch-Reformer, Andrew Murray, who was a contemporary of Nietzsche, states that work is the highest form of existence for it is true of God, writing:
What is true of God is true of His creature. Life is movement, is action, and reveals itself in what it accomplishes. The bodily life, the intellectual, the moral, the spiritual life—individual, social, national life—each of these is judged of by its work. The character and quality of the work depends on the life: as the life, so the work. And, on the other hand the life depends on the work; without this there can be no full development and manifestation and perfecting of the life: as the work, so the life.[4]
It is obvious that Murray and Nietzsche were on opposite ends of the spectrum concerning work. Murray taught biblically theological truth. Nietzsche espoused worldly-humanistic philosophy.
The Apostle Paul believed the Christian is to be a good worker and productive in life. He was a tentmaker (Acts 18:1-4). He encouraged the Colossians, whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters (Col. 3:23). Then, he told the Ephesians, anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need (Eph.4:28). And he told the Galatians, for each one should carry their own load (Gal. 4:5).
The Christian is to set the example of what godly work looks like. And in so doing, God will bless the labor of their hands, May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us; establish the work of our hands for us— yes, establish the work of our hands (Ps. 90:17).
[1] Aristotle, Politics. 7.1329a. Accessed on August 24, 2022 at 8:05 AM. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0058%3Abook%3D7%3Asection%3D1329a.
[2] Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, eds. Mademarie Clark and Brian Leiter, trans. R.J Hollingdale, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
[3] Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2016), 69.
[4] Andrew Murray, Working for God, (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1901), 37. Scanning and proofing done by Claude V. King, September 2000. Accessed on August 23, 2022, at 9:33 AM. https://ccel.org/ccel/murray/working/working.i.html.
©Mark A. Horne, Andrews Presbyterian Church in America, August 24, 2022.
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