A biblical doctrine of work – by Howard Diehl

Calvin Seerveld tells this story:
“My father was a seller of fish. We children knew the business too having worked from our childhood helping our father in the fish market on Long Island, New York. It was a small store and smelled like fish.
He says, “I remember an afternoon long ago when my dad was trying to sell a large carp to a prosperous woman, and it was a battle to convince her.”
“Is it fresh?” It bristled with freshness, it had just come in. They had gone over the fish together: The eyes were bright, the gills were in good color, the flesh was firm, the tail was good, and the price was right.
“Finally my dad held up the fish behind the counter, ‘beautiful, beautiful! Shall I wrap it up?’
And she grudgingly assented, ruefully admiring the way that the bargain had been struck, and said,
"‘My, you certainly didn’t miss your calling.’
“She spoke the truth. My father was in full time service for the Lord in the fish business. When I watched my father’s hands –big beefy hands that were twice as big as mine, they could never play a piano –I would watch those hands delicately split the back of a mackerel, whose hands would peddle fish from a bicycle, always working with a smile and never complaining.”
“He would cut up fish before the face of the Lord, showing me that God’s grace can come down to a man’s hand in the flash of a fish knife.”

Today were going to consider the biblical doctrine of work. We need to answer questions like these:

• Why do we work?
• What is work?
• What are the goals of our work?
• How do these goals match up with God’s goals and purpose for me?
• What does it mean to have a calling or a vocation?

When we read the first chapter of the book of Genesis, we see that God himself works, and that he sees the results of his work as GOOD. His work culminates in the creation of humankind, when he sees everything as VERY GOOD.
Not only did God think work was good, when he created humankind, he thought it was a good idea to give them a job description and put them to work.

Job Description
God says man is to be made in our image, in our likeness. This means that mankind, both male and female, is God’s representative on earth. We are the visible representatives in the created world of the invisible God. (Wolff Thesis)
So, because human beings are created in God’s image they are his representatives on earth and should ‘rule … over all the earth’ (26).
Rule implies lordship but not exploitation. Man, as God’s representative, must rule his subjects, as God does, for their own good. While legitimizing human use of the world’s resources, God gives no license for our abuse of his creation.

Genesis 1v28 says that God blessed them and said to them,

• Be fruitful
• multiply
• fill the earth
• subdue it

Blessed – all that is needed for life and well-being; not a one time thing, but the continuous presence and interaction of the creator with his creation.
Be Fruitful and Multiply – Jewish understanding isn’t just about having children, but also raising them, bringing them into community, helping them to become productive and prosperous, and a blessing to others as well as their family.
Subduing has to do with caring and tending the garden, as seen in Genesis 2.

The job description for human beings can be summarized in three parts:

• the call to enjoy communion with God (belonging);
• the call to build community (being) starting with the family;
• the call to creativity (doing), through which humankind expresses stewardship of the earth and makes God’s world work.

Yet we often experience work as a curse, rather than a blessing. The bible recognizes this.
Genesis 3v17-19 depicts God warning us that our work, because of sin, will often seem hard. The ground, not work, seems cursed, so it produces weeds easily, but crops only with hard toil. But God’s job description for us remains in force. Work is an expression of what it means to be a steward of creation.
We are called to belong to God, to be in communion with him, each other, and his creation. God made us for himself; we are meant to be in personal relationship with him. This is true community.
Community is what occurs when God rules over us. But what often happens is that we end up ruling over each other, usurping God’s rule, overpowering others to put them under our control.
We are also called to be co-creators. God invites us to work with him to shape the world we live in, to bring order in the chaos that we encounter, to bring things back into a proper relationship with God, whether it is cultural, material, artistic, musical, technical, relational, political.

This is the foundation of the Biblical Doctrine of Work. It’s been around for a long time.
Let me share some thoughts from Dorothy Sayers on this. She has written several articles and books on the topic. They were written during and after world war 2, but I think her point is still valid, perhaps even more today than in the 1940’s, when they were written.
Why Work? Dorothy Sayers:
“There is, for instance, the question of profits and remuneration. We have all got it fixed in our heads that the proper end of work is to be paid for it – to produce a return in profits or payment to the worker which fully or more than compensates the effort he puts into it.”
“So long as Society provides the worker with a sufficient return in real wealth to enable him to carry on the work properly, then he has his reward. For his work is the measure of his life, and his satisfaction is found in the fulfillment of his own nature, and in contemplation of the perfection of his work.”

That, in practice, there is this satisfaction, is shown by the mere fact that a man will put loving labor into some hobby which can never bring him any economically adequate return. His satisfaction comes, in the godlike manner, from looking upon what he has made and finding it very good. He is no longer bargaining with his work, but serving it.
We can wrongly see work is what you do to make money in order that you can do what you really want to do. This was my story for much of my life.
Why do we work? Is it for money? It is for Status? Power? That can be true even for professions we traditionally admire. Doctors can just want to make a living, gain the wealth or status. Then patients are a by product. Lawyers can take cases because this is what they want to do, not necessarily to see justice done.

Work is one way to love others

• The functional reason for a job is that it helps others people. We shouldn’t work just for the money or for the status, but, rathershould be asking, “does it make us useful to other people?” First thing to look at with a job is how does it help people?
• One of main purposes of work is to help others and to serve the common good. We don’t want to be a drain on the common good, we want to be investing in the common good. (1 Thessalonians 4v12)
• Work is an expression of Love. It is one way to love others.
  The purpose of work is not to make money, not to get an identity or status. If done for money and status, work can either become too important in your life or too unimportant in your life.
  Too important – you burn out, all wrapped in it.
  Too unimportant – don’t care, cut corners, don’t do work well.
  Your work should be an expression of God the creator. “work with your hands.” This goes against the dominant culture, which saw manual labor as sordid and degrading and working with your mind, with the arts, etc., as good.
  All work is valuable to God.

Work is meant to bring order in the chaos of the world around us.
It is taking the world that God made and making it orderly. Thus, sweeping streets, painting, office work, et al. is making the world orderly, making it livable, redeeming it.

Our Job is to mirror the creator.
We are to work to please God, not our boss, our market segment, our client...
Work to please God, not to appease God. Appease means to get God’s attention, to get on his good side, etc. Appease means that I do things for God because I get things from God as a result.
To please God is to do it for the sheer joy of it, because it gives God joy. It pleases his heart. Compare the way in which kids love to draw pictures for parents, to bring them pleasure, and the way in which parents display them, whatever their artistic merits.

Dorothy Sayers expresses the positive view of work thus:
“I ask that work should be looked upon, not as a necessary drudgery to be undergone for the purpose of making money, but as a way of life in which the nature of man should find its proper exercise and delight and so fulfill itself to the glory of God.“
That it should, in fact, be thought of as a creative activity undertaken for the love of the work itself; and that man, made in God’s image, should make things, as God makes them, for the sake of doing well a thing that is well worth doing.
Until you work for God’s sake, for people’s sake, for the job’s sake, but everything you do is for wealth and power and status, work will not fulfill you. It will be too important or too unimportant to you. When we work for the right reasons there will be quiet and there will be rest.
If you work for yourself, there will be no fulfillment. If you work for God, there will be fulfillment. Contrast from the film Chariots of Fire the attitudes of the two main chracters:
Eric Lidell – I believe that God made me a missionary for China, but I believe he made me fast, and when I run I feel God’s pleasure. Cf 1 Thess 4:1, 11
Harold Abrams – I’ve never known contentment, I’m always in pursuit, I don’t know what I’m chasing, When I run, I have 10 seconds to justify my existence.
Two men, working hard, one with Joy, one without joy.

Let’s end with the bible story of Jesus, Martha and Mary (Luke 10v38-42). Martha was too busy working, running around, troubled. Jesus invites her to “Come to me first, get my rest; Mary has her priorities set.”
Jesus says to us:
“Come unto me all you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”