Work – Worth Complaining About? (Part 1)
One of the things most disrupted during COVID lockdown is work. The way we work, where we work, how we work, when the work and even the work we do has shifted and changed. No one is untouched! This makes now the perfect time to stand back and contemplate work - for if change is afoot, ought there be bigger, more fundamental changes to the way we think about our work. Rather than risk flopping back into bad habits or bad thinking when this is all over, let’s pause and consider deeper changes. That’s what I am going to help us think about for the next few weeks.
Work consumes an enormous amount of our time, thought and energy every year. If you are working full-time, you will spend about 1/3 of the year asleep, at least 1/3 of the year working, leaving perhaps 1/3 for family, rest, holidays, transport, shopping, household cleaning, life admin and waiting in queues.
The reality for most people is that from age 5 to retirement you will spend more of your time with school and work colleagues than you will with your family. The other reality is that many people complain about having to work, the type of work they are doing, their workplace and their work colleagues. So goes the saying, “Here’s to another day of outward smiles and inward screams!”
So why do we do it? Is work good? Should we work more or less? How should we think about work? Is it just a means to an end?
I want to explore with you a theology of work. The Bible has lots to say about our work and what our attitude to it should be. To begin with, the Proverbs are littered with advice...
Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! Proverbs 6:6
A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest – and poverty will come on you like a thief and scarcity like an armed man. Proverbs 6:10-11
But the story actually starts in Genesis and work is given a wonderfully high dignity because we find God at work. God is busy creating and calling into being all that is and all that will be, through Jesus Christ. He works consistently and creatively for 6 days, bringing into being everything that is required that we might live and breathe and have our being on his earth. God works generously and provides for his creation everything that it needs.
Then he rests. Genesis 2:2 says “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.”
There are several conclusions we can draw from this. First, work is not inherently bad or evil - even God does it! Second, work is not the substance of life. You don’t have to always be at work. There is a balance to work that is labeled rest. Perhaps we can say that as the story of the Bible plays out, we see in God’s pattern of 6-1 that we ought to be working more than we are resting. But more of that later.
For now though, we can see from the beginning of creation that work itself is good, has inherent dignity and yet ought not be all consuming.
We will continue our journey into work next week, but if you have specific questions you want to ask about work and how we ought to think about it, feel free to send them through using the form below.
