A theology of work: part 2 - toil

Work after the Fall

Of course, the world of Genesis 1-2 is not quite the world we live in any more, because the work that God gave mankind to do – the work of ruling the creation under him as his image bearers – this is precisely what mankind fails to do.  And so the image of God in us is now distorted by our sinful rebellion against God.  All of our relationships are affected by this - our relationship with God, our relationships with each other, and our relationship to the creation.

As a consequence of sin, and because of God’s judgment against sin, a significant element of difficulty and frustration is now introduced to the work that humanity does.  So God announces to Adam in Gen 3:17-19:

“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; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.  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.”

In the next chapter, a very specific expression of this comes in God’s judgment against Cain, for the murder of his brother (Gen 4:10-12).  In the chapter after that, the painful toil of human work is assumed in the naming of Noah (Gen 5:28-29).

There’s just no getting around it.  In a world marked by human sin and rebellion, work is one of the biggest areas of human life that is affected.  And any of us who work know what this is like.  Work can be frustrating.  Work can be tiring.  Work can be unfulfilling.  Work can be disappointing.  Work can be repetitive and boring.  Work can be difficult because of the relationships that are there.  Work can be difficult because it doesn’t produce the fruit that we want it to.  Or because it doesn’t produce the fruit that we want it to in the time that we want it to – I think of how many years we did speech therapy with one of our sons: we worked hard, but the progress was so slow!  Work can be frustrating because we don’t have the skills we need to do a particular job that is before us.  Or because the people we work with don’t have the skills they need to do a particular job.  Work can embitter us if we are working hard and it is not recognised.  Or if we are looking for work and can’t find any.

It just goes on and on.  There are so many ways that work is toilsome and frustrating for us.  But all of it stems from our rebellion and sin against God, our failure as humanity to do the work that he created us to do – the work of ruling the world under him as his image bearers.

The writer of Ecclesiastes knew about all these things, and he devoted significant time to considering these truths.  As a man of considerable means he says of himself in Eccl 2:4-11:

I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself.  I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees.  I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees …  I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

Here is a man for whom literally, in terms of his work, the sky was the limit.  And he enjoyed his work.  His heart took pleasure in it.  Yet when he pauses to take stock of what he has done, he is forced to admit to himself that work, in and of itself, or in the important words of 2:11, work that is done ‘under the sun’ - that is, without reference to God, our Creator and Judge - work done like that is a completely meaningless pursuit.  And there is nothing to be gained from it.

It is meaningless as a means of amassing wealth and possessions, because in the end when you die, whatever you have gained from your work will be left in the hands of another.  And who knows whether they will keep it or lose it.  And it’s also meaningless as a means of securing a reputation, because in the end when you die, within one or two generations you will be completely forgotten.

Admittedly, none of this is particularly positive.  Yet it’s such a great help to us to speak about things truthfully.  And this is what the Bible does for us over and over again.  It interprets life for us.  It teaches us about the world we live in.  It explains for us why things are the way that they are.  It diagnoses for us not just that there is a problem with our work – that although it was created as a good thing, work is now characterised by toil and pain and frustration.  It also diagnoses for us why there is a problem - which is that ultimately, by nature, all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and rather than ruling the world under him, we try to rule the world without him.  And life lived like that will always go astray.

One of the things these truths can help us with, however, is evangelism at work.  It’s probably something that many of us find difficult.  But actually, recognising the frustration and pain of work in this world that is so affected by the human sin and rebellion, this can actually give us a doorway to walk through as we try to speak about Jesus.

I heard recently that Billy Graham used to say that in every culture he spoke to, people had these five things in common:

·      a dissatisfaction with material possessions

·      emptiness and a quest for meaning

·      loneliness

·      guilt

·      and a fear of death

Are these things true of the people we work with?  Of course they are.  Because these are the cries-of-the-heart of God’s image-bearers, whose ability to live out their lives as God’s image-bearers is now broken and distorted by sin and rebellion.  And what this means is that even if people don’t go about considering life in the systematic way that the writer of Ecclesiastes went about considering life, if we can help them to stop and consider their lives, if we can help them to stop and consider their work, they will be forced to recognise the same sense of vanity and meaninglessness that he was forced to recognise.

Therefore, one of the things we can do is to help people understand their own experience of life.  We know that they will find work to be toilsome and frustrating.  More than that, we know why.  So when they do find work to be like this, we have an opportunity to come alongside them and say, ‘Yes, work is painful.  It is frustrating and toilsome.  And can I try and tell you why.’

And, of course, if we can get to this point with people, we really are very close to the gospel.