Posted on 09/02/2012 5:42:32 PM PDT by CHRISTIAN DIARIST
On the first Monday of September, America honors working stiffs by taking a paid day off. But does Labor Day celebrate an enterprise that God intended to be a punishment?
In a recent New York Times essay on the frenetic hustle of modern life, humorist and author Tim Kreider took the Puritans and their infamous work ethic to task. They had turned toil into a virtue, he argued, whereas God had invented it to chastise the disobedient Adam and Eve.
In an interview, Kreider explained that he was referring to Genesis, in which God tells Adam “by the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread.” In the same chapter, the serpent is sentenced to an eternity of belly slithering and Eve condemned to severe childbearing pains.
“Coming as it does on the heels of the infamous Illicit Fruit Incident, the details of which there’s no need to re-hash, certainly makes it sound punitive,” said Kreider, who said he’s a veteran of 18 years of Sunday school, but no Bible scholar.
The idea that original sin ushered in a lifetime of toil is a fairly common Christian view, said Gilbert Meilaender, a professor of Christian ethics at Valparaiso University in Indiana. “Work doesn’t lose a kind of dignity it had even prior to sin, but it takes on that burdensome aspect as well,” he said.
The Creation story makes clear that Adam and Eve were expected to till and maintain the Garden of Eden, said David Jensen, author of “Responsive Labor: A Theology of Work.” The happy couple were, in a sense, co-creators with God. But after the Fall, labor turns toilsome. “It becomes something that oppresses people,” Jensen said.
Even as they acknowledged the often wracking pains of work outside Eden, some evangelicals insist that labor remains, on the whole, a good thing.
“From time to time, I hear someone characterize work as a result of the Fall of man,” Karen Swallow Prior, a professor of English at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., wrote in a school publication. “But this is a great error: for, indeed, we were created to work.”
After all, humans were made in the image of God. And the biblical God worked -- unlike those lazy Greek gods who only occasionally descended from their high-peaked home on Mount Olympus. And Jesus was a carpenter, a first-century handyman.
Nobody took work as seriously, though, as the early Protestants, especially the Puritans, who tore down distinctions between sacred and secular. All work, therefore, was on behalf of the Big Bossman in the Sky.
For Calvinists, there was another motivation: a mortal fear that God would leave them off the list of people predestined for salvation. This “salvation anxiety,” in the words of German sociologist Max Weber, led them to seek tangible signs of divine favor, such as frugality and worldly success. Weber’s influential 1905 book, “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,” might be summarized: “By working hard and seeing the effect of God’s blessings in my life, I acquire confidence that I am among God’s elect.”
Theology also sets the stage for Mormons’ renowned work ethic, said Matthew Bowman, author of “The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith.”
Unlike most Christians, Mormons don’t believe in original sin. Rather, they subscribe to the theory of the “fortunate Fall” -- that is, Adam and Eve’s mischievous meal was a good thing. It inaugurated free will and set the world’s wheels in motion.
So, when God tells Adam that he’ll have to work for his food, Mormons interpret that as sound advice for spiritual progression, not a punishment. “Mormons subscribe to the idea that work is something that will refine your soul, make you a better person and fine tune your human potential,” Bowman said.
“Work is a key to full joy in the plan of God,” reads a Mormon Sunday school lesson. “If we are righteous, we will return to live with our Heavenly Father, and we will have work to do. As we become like him, our work will become like his work.”
The Sunday school lesson also cites the New Testament's parable of the talents, in which a servant who failed to invest his master's money is cast into outer darkness.
Meilaender, whose book “Working” explores the spiritual side of labor, takes his cue from Luke's Gospel: The parable of the good Samaritan is Christian charity personified. But in the very next passage, Jesus praises Mary, who has left the housework to her sister Martha in order to simply sit beside Jesus.
“The two stories back-to-back illustrate loving your neighbor and loving God, which involves resting from your labors,” Meilaender said. “Somehow the whole Christian life involves both of these.”
Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.
http://www.dol.gov/opa/aboutdol/laborday.htm
Labor Day is the invention of the unions. They were not satisfied with government setting a minimum wage they needed a ‘day’ to honor themselves. Anyone think for one moment that what God said means squat to the fathers of the union movement?
If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be here today.
Now, now...
It’s appears that man was expelled from the Garden not merely for the sin of eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil but also for attempting to blame another (he his wife and she the serpent). It might have been, if man had simply repented, God would have forgiven them. Which is worse, brother, the sin or the cover-up? We, being human, can’t help but sin. God, being God, is anxious to forgive us.
:-0
Before Enlightenment....Chop Wood, Carry Water. After Enlightenment....Chop Wood, Carry Water.
Work!
Thank God for the might of it,
The ardor, the urge, the delight of it-
Work that springs from the heart’s desire,
Setting the brain and the soul on fire-
Oh, what is so good as the heat of it,
And what is so glad as the beat of it,
And what is so kind as the stern command,
Challenging brain and heart and hand?
Work!
Thank God for the pride of it,
For the beautiful, conquering tide of it,
Sweeping the life in its furious flood,
Thrilling the arteries, cleansing the blood,
Mastering stupor and dull despair,
Moving the dreamer to do and dare.
Oh, what is so good as the urge of it,
And what is so good as the surge of it,
And what is so strong as the summons deep,
Rousing the torpid soul from sleep?
Excerpt from “Work: A Song of Triumph”
Angela Morgan, 1930
Or something.
I'm with you - my tagline adds support.
Somewhere in Scripture it says that God originally placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden “to dress it & keep it”, not just to eat & while their time away.
When He expelled them, however, work became a matter of sheer survival. In my humble opinion, work can be a form of worship of Him Who grants us the strength through His grace to be able to do so.
well, it was work, it fed my family.
Most people who are not lazy will work much harder playing than working, lazy people will not do either one any more than they have too.
Workaholics do not work because they love work, they do it because they want to get there.
Gen 2:15
And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
I did a little of that when i was a kid and it is work.
I don,t know if god insists on people working or not, but since he tells us not to steal then maybe we should work to eat, on the other hand if some one would rather starve rather than work i have no problem with that.
That is why the usa was set up the way it was, so people could be free to work at what they wanted or what was necessary to make a living or even prosper.
And other people are free to sit on their behinds and go hungry.
That is why it should not be up to the Government to feed people, it should be up to the people to feed people because they know who can work and who can not work.
Even the most worthless cuss in the county will work if they have to but if you run over and feed them before they get hungry why would they have too.
I can not even imagine why any one would have to go through the Bible to try to determine if work is a punishment or not.
“Payday Someday” its a staple of liberation theology. But of course we will have heaven on Earth first..right? Obama is covering the food, rent, cellphone, gasoline and even making sure we all get our Social Security.
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