For by grace, you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them (Ephesians 2:8-10)

One of my past meditations from Bonheoffer had to do with work. In his book, No Rusty Swords, he talks about work: “God has called each one of us to do his work in his time.” [1] In his later years, Bonhoeffer realized the importance of lay ministry and the ministry of the people of God in the world. In commenting on this passage, Charles Ringma comments:

We are not simply to be guardians of the good things that God has done in the past, nor are we only those who pray for what may happen in the future. We need to be intimately involved in the issues of our time. Different members of the Christian church will identify these issues differently. However we arrange our priorities for our world, we must include caring for God’s creation, encouraging good government, sharing the Gospel, and proclaiming justice and righteousness. [2]

This passage contains some profound and essential teachings. First, Christians cannot just worship on Sunday, study our Bibles, and pray about the problems of our world. We must work on making the world a better place as the Kingdom of God enters the world through believers’ lives. Second, we cannot wait for complete agreement among Christians before we act. Different believers will see the world differently. Finally, we must all share our faith and speak out for justice and righteousness, public and private. We must all care for God’s creation. We must all work for better government and lives for those around us.

We must all tend to the garden that God has given us, whether large or small, significant or insignificant.  The Bible begins with the human race in a garden we call “Eden.” Some Christians speak of Eden as if it was a place where there was no need to work. Genesis tells us something about this garden:

 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens, and every living thing that moves on the earth (Genesis 1:28).

Genesis 2 puts it this way, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” (Genesis 2:15). It would seem that work was not a curse—it is our resentment that is the curse of sin. Work was a part of God’s intention for the human race.

When I was a lawyer, I hardly ever worked in our yard. I was also at the office or trying to make up for it with the family. As a seminary student, I had no time. Then we moved to Brownsville, Tennessee and our first church. Surrounded by farmers and gardeners on every side (and with plenty of guidance, advice, and good counsel at hand, for which I am thankful), I planted a garden in the backyard of the manse and later on in our home. When we moved to Memphis, my training in Brownsville allowed me to do most of the landscaping. Based on all this, I can tell my readers one unavoidable truth: Gardening, even in paradise, is hard work, especially on a hot, muggy summer day in the American Southwest.

We human beings were made for work. We were made for the work of making the world a better place. We were made to till the garden of God’s good creation. We were made to expend the energy, strength, and brains that God has given us in the precise way we can best do that. We were made and remade in Christ “for the good works God prepared for us beforehand to do” (Ephesians 2:10).

Labor Day Weekend

Labor Day happens to be one of my favorite holidays. This is the weekend we celebrate the working people of America. Labor Day reminds us of all the endless generations of farmers who built a nation of plenty out of the wilderness. Labor Day reminds us of those who opened the West, built the transcontinental railways, created the most significant manufacturing nation in the world, and made our nation the “Arsenal of Democracy” at a time of great danger to freedom. Labor Day reminds us of those who, even today, work and sweat so that we might live in peace and plenty.

Those of us who have jobs we call “White Collar” need to approach Labor Day with humility. Interestingly, Jesus does not seem to have wanted to enter history either as a religious professional or as a “teacher of the law,” the two careers I have embraced. He speaks ill of them both from time to time. He was content to be born and trained as a carpenter. Jesus was a laborer, and his life, death, and resurrection sanctified all laborers and all honest labor. It is quite likely that God never intended any of us, of whatever abilities, to escape manual labor completely.

The New Monastics

For several weeks, I’ve been meditating on what Benedictine monasticism offers modern people. I’ve mentioned Leslie Newbiggin’s summary of the monastic life as a daily and weekly cycle of study, prayer, and manual work. [3] I hope to be able to write more about the importance of work. We live in a time when pendants proclaim that one day, artificial intelligence, robots, and a host of labor. Saving devices will render most people unemployed. I think that’s a terrible thing to contemplate. I like to say that the economy doesn’t exist to make a few people very rich and many idle. The economy exists to make wholesome work available to the maximum number of people.

Even if we could eliminate work as an unnecessary part of human life, it would not be a blessing. It would be a tragedy and a curse. One need not look any further than the very wealthy or privileged children to understand that work is essential for developing character, physical and emotional health, and a sense of well-being and self-worth.

The monastic division of the day into prayer, study, and work was not simply an accommodation to the necessity of providing for the community’s needs. Of course, it did provide for the needs of the community. Work provides for a person’s and their family’s needs by participating in the greater economy of the community as a whole. Work is a part of that web of relationships by which we, human beings, use our natural talents and abilities and participate in the society of which we are a part. Work is not a curse—it is a blessing.

In her excellent book, Wisdom Distilled from the Daily: Living the Rule of St. Benedict Today, Joan Chittester gives a sustained teaching about the rule, including the rule as it pertains to work. [4] She points out two misconceptions that every human being, including contemplatives, must live with. The first is exemplified by workaholics, who sacrifice everything: family, friendships, and even a relationship with God for work, money, status, and success. The second is exemplified by those who see work as a hindrance to enjoying the “higher things in life,” such as time to think, study, recreation, or whatever a person considers more important than work. In religious people, this can be regarded as “pseudo-contemplation.” Some people make work their God. When we do this, most of us don’t explain it to ourselves that way, but it’s true. We’ve decided that work is the most essential thing in our lives.

On the other hand, some people believe work hinders some greater good, even a spiritual good. These people are pseudo-contemplative or pseudo-religious. They seek pleasure and recreation to avoid work. In my life, I have known highly religious people who shortchanged their employers on the theory that it was more important to do “God’s work.” This is a great mistake. Our work, the work we do daily to make a living, is God’s work. As Chittester puts it,

Laziness and irresponsibility are forms of injustice and thievery. They take from the people of the earth. We were not put on the earth to be cared for. We were put on earth to care for it. [5]

Between the two extremes of workaholism and false spirituality, many of us devalue or overestimate work. Part of the Christian life is achieving a balance between over and undervaluing work.

In concluding her chapter, Chittester summarizes a Benedictine view of work as follows:

• Work is my gift to the world.
• Work is the way I am saved from total self-centeredness.
• Work gives me a place in God’s economy of salvation.
• Work in the Benedictine vision is to build community.
• Work leads to self-fulfillment as we use our gifts and abilities.
• Work has its own asceticism (discipline).
• Work finally is a way in which we live in poverty and solidarity with the poor. [6]

This last may seem a bit difficult to understand. If we think that part of what we earn is to be given away for the service of God and other people, then, in a sense, we achieve a kind of poverty, a kind of solidarity with the poor.

Conclusion

Perhaps it is true that the human race is reaching a point where many people will be able to live lives of constant leisure while others provide for them. Possibly, those others will be artificial intelligence or robots. Somehow, I doubt that’s going to be the case. Even if it were to be possible, however, it’s a bad idea. We were meant to worship God. We were meant to be in a relationship with God. We were meant for prayer, spiritual reading, and study. We were also meant to put what we know and feel into practice daily as we work and till the garden into which we have been placed.

Copyright 2024, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, No Rusty Swords (New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1977). This book is a collection of Bonhoeffer’s writings on various subjects.

[2] Charles Ringma, Seize the Day with Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Colorado Springs, CO: Pinion Press, 2000), reading for August 25.

[3] Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1995), 13.

[4] Joan Chittester, Wisdom Distilled from the Daily: Living the Rule of St. Benedict Today (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1990), Chapter 7.

[5] Id, at 87.

[6] Id, at 92-93.