Work takes up a large portion of our lives. As Christians, we want to make sure we're integrating our faith into all areas of our life. That's why we want to take this year to go through the book by Timothy Keller, "Every Good Endeavor". Through this study, we will learn to connect our work to God's work. There are three main sections of this book: God's plan for work, our problems with work, and the Gospel and work. I encourage you to read the full book yourself (buy book on Amazon) as these blogs will just provide summaries from the book. Whether you see work as a punishment of the fall or your work is everything to you (or anything in between), I hope this will help you better understand God's design for work and to shift your perspective to align with God's.
From the very beginning, the Bible discusses work – God's creation of the world is referred to as work. Not only did God work, but he also found delight in it. "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good… the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array" (Genesis 1:31, 2:1). After God created the world, He then continued to work for us as our Provider. While God works for us, we are also working for Him. In Genesis 2:15, it says God placed man in the garden to "work it and keep it."
Seeing that from the beginning there was work (before the fall), we can understand that it was always apart of God's plan to have humans work – it wasn't just some punishment after the fall. Without meaningful work, we sense significant inner loss and emptiness. God designed us as workers and creators. In Genesis, we see that God worked 6 days and rested on the 7th day. Today we continue to have the same cycle of work and then rest, typically with 5 days of work and then 2 days of rest. We are created for work. If you ask people in nursing homes or hospitals how they are doing, they will often tell you that they wish they had something to do, some way of being useful to others. Work is one of the ways that we make ourselves useful to others instead of just living life for ourselves. This is how God designed us!
While work is important, it isn't all there is to life. You will not have a meaningful life without work, but you cannot say that your work is the meaning of your life. If you make work the meaning of your life, it turns into an idol, regardless of how important you feel your work is. Even though God did not need to rest from work to restore His strength, He still rested (didn't only work – see Genesis 2:1-3). Our relationship with God needs to remain the most important foundation in our lives, otherwise different factors in our life (while good) such as work, friendships, and family turn into idols.
Takeaway from chapter 1: Wrong perspectives of work
In this chapter, we see there are two different (but both wrong) perspectives of work:
- Work is a curse and other things (such as leisure, family, or "spiritual" pursuits) are the only way to find meaning in life.
- Work is the only important human activity and rest is a necessary evil (something we do strictly to "recharge our batteries") in order to continue to work.
Be honest with yourself, did you (or do you) believe one of these perspectives of work?
Both of these perspectives are debunked at the very beginning of the Bible in Genesis. In Genesis, we see how God worked and that work has been around since the very beginning of creation – it wasn't created to be a punishment or curse. We also see in Genesis 2 that God rested. God created both work AND rest. Both of these things are good (in moderation) – neither of these things were a curse after the fall.
It is important to remember however, that we live in a fallen world. There are going to be times where work is frustrating or exhausting. That doesn't mean that it is a curse and work should be avoided or simply endured. We also might be pressured to be more career-focused and discouraged to take vacations/rest. It's important to have a firm grasp on this balanced work and rest theology before we move further into this study.
Next month, we will go through chapter 2, The Dignity of Work. I encourage you to read that chapter on your own before the next blog post.
