Isn't this what we think? Isn't this how we think? Before our primordial first parents blew it for the rest of us, Adam and Eve had the luxury of basking in paradise--eating grapes and every fruit but one, lounging around, being together, having shameless sex with THE best looking member of the opposite sex on the planet. What were they thinking, anyway? How in the world was one more fruit a temptation when they already had the LIFE? That's a digression... The point is that life before the fall was joy-filled paradise enjoyment, without a care or responsibility in the (newly created) world. Work? No where on the horizon. Not until the fall, that is. Work was the curse.
And deep within us, our hearts tell us this is true. We all long for rest. We long for retirement. We live for retirement--the day when we stop working and can finally rest.
Well, hold on. What is retirement, anyway? Do we spend the whole time resting and lounging, with people serving us? I don't know anyone who is doing this. More importantly, I don't know anyone who would really want this.
Now it's true that people do want to rest from the grind that has been their vocation. People long for the freedom to rest from the drudgery of work. But most people, after getting a sense of rest, soon grow restless (an interesting word to describe this phenomenon). They find that rest as not having to do anything isn't satisfying. They find that responsibility-less life is not restful. Inevitably they begin to do something that seems completely backwards and counter-intuitive: THEY WORK!
Some people actually get a new career. Others volunteer. Others take up hobbies that require significant time commitments. The choices multiply, but the reality is that retirement means more work. The major difference is that now there is freedom to work in the way you want. There is freedom in the choice of work. This makes a huge difference because people are able to choose to do things that mean more to them.
This change in thinking about the ongoing desire that we have to work—even beyond retirement—finds more support when we look back at what the Bible has to say about it. When we look at the first two chapters of the Bible, we don’t find that the picture of our first parents is one of luxurious paradise-living where there was nothing to do but get a sun tan. Can you guess one of the fundamental identifiers of the human race? WORK!
Genesis 1:28—be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.
Genesis 2:15—God put the man in the garden to tend it and to guard it
This is work! This is an incredible amount of work! Can you imagine the responsibility to take the created world and cause it to reflect more and more of God’s image? This was the responsibility given to humanity.
So why do we have so much trouble with work today? According to the Bible, it’s because of the fall. When Adam and Eve brought sin into the world, sin has corrupted everything. Sin brings with it a curse—the curse of destruction. And this affects work as much as it affects relationships, our personal identity and sense of self-worth, and our relationship with God. This, in fact, is exactly what we find when the Bible describes the impact that sin has on work itself.
Genesis 3:17-19—17 And to Adam he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; 18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return."
Here it is. The ground is cursed. You’ll continue to eat of its fruits, but it will be through pain. It’ll bring out thorns and thistles—our efforts will be frustrated and frustrating. It will be toilsome and require strong effort. Ultimately, it will claim us as its own.
There is a lot to be said of this, but here's the meat of the point: It is not that “Work is the Curse." Rather Work is Cursed. Don't conclude that because work is frustrating that work is the curse. Both Scripture and our hearts testify that there is work apart from the curse, and we should be careful how we think about work. To not do this would put us on a path of frustration in this life that will have no end in sight.
More to come...
