Hey, Cobblestone,
A strange thing happens to a man when he takes hold of a
pressure washer gun. The machine’s engine is roaring, and the work is right in
front of him: a dirty house, a moldy slab of concrete, maybe a deck that really
needs to be shown who’s boss. With the opening shot, ugliness is blasted away,
and the man gets to thinking, “Wow, I could clean the WHOLE WORLD with
this thing! If I just had a long enough hose and a steady supply of gas… Maybe
I should get a sponsor. Honey, I’ll be back home in a few weeks, and you’ll be
tickled pink with what I got done!”
And then reality sets in: the sun begins to set; his trigger
hand cramps up; the extra can of gas he was counting on actually went into the
lawnmower last week, and he forgot to refill it. Such is life. And work.
The expectation that a person can clean the whole world with
a pressure washer is, to say the least, unrealistic. And yet, there’s
satisfaction in the work. Dirty stuff gets clean almost instantly. If only that
kind of satisfaction could carry over into every other form of work.
For decades I operated under the assumption that work, in and
of itself, is a consequence of the Fall. By “the Fall,” I mean The Big One, the
Genesis 3 Fall, where sin entered the human experience, causing separation from
God – and, of course, death. I thought, because of Adam’s screwup, I should
expect work to be difficult and unsatisfying. Many’s the paycheck I drew with
resentment, realizing I had given time out of my life in exchange for the boss’
money – and while the boss’ money was replenishable, my time was not. I
couldn’t wait to get my hands around Adam’s throat.
Though I can’t say for certain when my understanding of the
nature of work was flipped on its head, I can certainly say that it has. And
over the course of our next few letters, dear Church, if your understanding of
the nature of work needs to be flipped – and I reckon it does – I hope to be
the flipper. Are ya ready?
An upside-down understanding is easy to come by. Scripture
itself requires a clear-eyed look at what led up to the Fall. Absent that
clear-eyed look, the Fall and the Curse become synonyms referring to the same
event. They are not. Below is a key piece of Bible, familiar to most of us, I’m
sure, that needs to be understood better. Here it comes, in the King James
Version, for maximum theatrical effect:
…cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat
of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth
to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face
shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou
taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return (Genesis 3:17-19).
Totally looks like a curse – I get it. Why it’s not a
curse on mankind is a topic we’ll get to in a future letter. This time
around, what I want to highlight is the order in which events took place.
Work predates the Fall. Genesis 2:15 says The Lord God
took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
Did you catch the chapter number? Early in Chapter 2 of Genesis, Adam was the
happiest (and only) human on earth. He also had a job. And with his work and
stewardship, the Garden flourished. Late in Chapter 2 of Genesis, the second
human came along, and Adam was happier still. In verse 23 we find the first
recorded words of a human being, Adam’s joy over finally having another imago
Dei around the place. And we would do no harm to Scripture if we assume Eve
began to “work” and “keep” the Garden along with her husband. Clear eyes will
see that work was well underway before the serpent did his dirty work, before
the deception of Eve, before Adam’s sin.
What does that mean for us now? Well, I could go into several
trains of thought on how God set, in the beginning of human history, a laser
line that has established the standard for marriage and family and all other
human relations. But since the topic at hand is work, I’ll stick to it.
In 1965, the Rolling Stones blew the rock charts to
smithereens with their hit song “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Yeah, I was
around for that. I remember gathering around a record player in an upstairs
bedroom of my grandma’s house with my aunt and two uncles – all of whom were
not much older than me, one of whom had bought the 45 single – and marveling at
Keith Richards hitting those now-famous riffs on his newfound fuzz guitar. Maybe
the riffs are so famous that the underlying message snuck in unnoticed.
Here's what I recommend to all humans, married/unmarried,
employed/unemployed, young/old: Live as much Genesis 2 as you possibly can,
even though Genesis 3 happened. As it pertains to work, the satisfaction we
gain won’t be like the satisfaction Adam and Eve had before the Fall, but
satisfaction can still be had.
That kernel of thought is what I want to plant at the moment.
And now I’ll shut up for a while.
Grace and Peace (and satisfaction beyond the pressure washer),
John
