There is an important theology of work that includes several factors in achieving the ideal of it for both the individual and society. In summary, every person has work to do unless incapacitated in some way. The matter was addressed to Adam as a means of survival, dependent upon the sweat of his brow, and to Eve on the work to the weariness of pain related to the birth of children. In the combination the family is sustained and advanced in a context of nature that works for purpose. Plants work to emerge from seed to bear fruit to harvest and then to die, leaving seed for an ever larger perpetuity to future time. The sun works in its cycles, as do the animals for life and draft for mankind including the food chain. This scenario extends as a model of God’s self-imposed purpose. God works. His work we summarize in the word: creation. Why does he bother when he receives unsatisfactory response from that creation? My presupposition is that he prefers fellowship to isolation in his holy nature. The fellowship is greatly enhanced when it is in the context of freedom and love. God is free in his person, and loving in his nature. He feels his own meaning best when he shares his attributes so multiplying his life in a divine family to his creation. Mankind may be the acme of product in his work plan for the universe. The perfect work is accomplished in preparing that product to be worthy of sustaining fellowship with him. We may presume he has other works in other universes that are beyond our imagination. He may not. When nature has been finished to his satisfaction there will be ongoing creativity in the fellowship of God with his creative persons sharing his image (likeness without conferring deity). God will have his creation in freedom, love, peace, and sharing in the context of his glory. (Work will be in it.) There is the family of God, guided and nurtured by the perfect person of omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence. God’s work will be with the family of his creation, loyal to him because they choose to be so. Any option to that pattern is unacceptable.
Back to earth and the present – God works so mankind works. To work is to carry through God’s plan in forming and developing the family of God – for sustenance, creativity, and contribution to others. As God gives, so mankind is to give. That giving requires work with all its characteristics of labor, administration, means of circulation, and a morality of life that includes equality. That equality is best illustrated when the individual is concerned to provide to the degree possible for personal needs, then for his/her family, then community, then the world. It can be interrupted by distorting the plan with arrogance, greed, evasion, preoccupation, unbelief, immorality and human restructuring of the plan for using the means and resources of the creation. One of the duties of the Church is to act in ways to fulfill the biblical injunction to care for those who have been left out, perhaps pushed out, of the divine pattern to care for all the creation. Jesus gave considerable time and words to the sick, the poor, the fringed in society – even the children. There is a morality here that many persons of excess accumulations of wealth, power and influence may have missed. Judgment (evaluation) for such persons will be severe for two basic reasons: 1) –violation of the teaching of God on the divine meaning of earth’s creation to work (creativity) so to disregard God; and, 2) – violation of the human sense of fairness and justice in the division of the natural products provided by the work of God among humanity. Our work is cut out for us. It is strengthened when we find true values.
For Christians there is a vital dimension added. It belongs to the sense of work values. The Apostle Paul was firm about his work. He loved it. His work was to broadcast by word and example the Gospel of Christ. Gradually it caused some reduction in his profession as tent-maker and the responsibility to advance the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He perceived his occupation was of God. It met the needs of persons who needed tents for businesses and families, so tent-making was noble. It filled a human need. He saw another need that was less filled, the need for spiritual life and hope. The preoccupation ultimately became his occupation which is to say, his main work. He found joy in it, fulfillment in it, legacy to others in it, and pressed on through thick and thin to do it well. He is remembered today among the ten most influential persons to have ever lived – from his work for God. (Imagine his retirement benefits.) The last words of Christ made the evangelism of the gospel the main work and worship of Christians. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020