Everybody's work matters

 

EVERYBODY’S WORK MATTERS

Mario D’Couto

 

           Whenever we talk about work, most people think of it as some sort of necessary evil, something that must be endured in order to put food on the table and pay the bills. Very few of us have the privilege of having that dream job where we wake up every morning with excitement and enthusiasm and because of that we may sometimes feel whether, does our work have any meaning at all? Well, that’s what this blogpost/reflection is about.

            The ancient Greeks thought that the gods made human beings for work and so work inherently had no blessing, as the Italian philosopher Adriano Tilgher once put it, “To the Greeks, work was a curse and nothing else.” In fact, Aristotle said that unemployment (by which he meant the ability to live without having to work and not as we would understand today of not having a job) was a primary qualification for a genuinely worthwhile life. Or if we take a look at Plato’s dialogue, “Phaedo”, he argues that being in the body distorts and hampers the soul in its quest for truth. In this life, the person who develops spiritual insight and purity must do so by ignoring the body as much as possible. Death was therefore seen as a form of liberation and even a friend of the soul. The Greek philosophers largely thought of the gods as perfect minds – solitary, self – sufficient, uninvolved in the stuff of the world or of human affairs. Human beings were to become like the gods by withdrawing from active life and devoting themselves to contemplation. Contemplation helped one realize that the material work is temporary and even illusory and that being overinvolved or emotionally attached to it pulls one down into a kind of animal existence of fear, anger and anxiety. Instead, the way to peace and happiness was to learn how to achieve a ‘non-attachment’ to things of this world. Epictetus taught his disciples that the good life is a life stripped of both hopes and fears. In other words, a life reconciled to what is the case, a life which accepts the world as it is. To be most human was to be the least involved and the least invested in the material world.

            This therefore implied that work was a barrier to the highest kind of life and that work made it impossible to rise above the earthbound humdrum of life into the realm of philosophy, the domain of the gods. Now on looking at such a thing, this would indeed sound preposterous since no once can just snap one’s fingers and make things happen; there is work involved. Miracles are not going to happen and the Greeks understood this well that life in the world required work but they also believed that not all work was created equal. Work that used the mind rather than the body was nobler and less beastly. The highest form of work was the most cognitive and the least manual. What is even more interesting about this is that the whole Greek social structure helped to support such an outlook wherein it was believed that slaves and craftsmen did the work, enabling the elite to devote themselves to the exercise of the mind in art, philosophy and politics. For instance, if we look at Aristotle’s Politics I.V.8, over there he states that some people are born to be slaves by which he meant that some people are not capable of a higher rational thought and therefore should do the work that frees the more talented and brilliant to pursue a life of honour and culture.

            While we may like to think of ourselves as an egalitarian society that stresses on equality and justice, perhaps, we may need to re-examine ourselves. For even though none of us may follow what Aristotle is saying, his thought process nonetheless, seems to be prevalent in modern society. How? Well, for starters, work is looked upon as a necessary evil; the only good thing about work is that it helps put food on the table and pay the bills (something which we have alluded to at the beginning of the blogpost/reflection). Secondly, we see that lower – status or lower – paying work is an assault on our dignity. Lastly, many people will chose to be unemployed rather than do the work that they feel is beneath them and most service and manual labour falls into this category. Often people who have made it into the knowledge classes show great disdain for the concierges, handymen, dry cleaners, cooks, gardeners and others who hold service jobs. This however is not the case when it comes to understanding work from the Biblical perspective.

            Much before the fall of our first parents, we see God working. The first chapter of the book of Genesis describe God at work, using the Hebrew word ‘mlkh’ which is the word for ordinary human work. In fact God takes delight in His work and worked for the sheer joy of it as we find written in Genesis 1:31, “God saw all that He had made and it was very good.” God finds all that He has done as beautiful. The harmony and perfection of the completed heavens and earth express more adequately the character of their Creator than any of the separate components can. Like all good satisfying work, the Worker sees Himself in it. Thus with that being said, work certainly should not be seen as a punishment for even if our first parents had not sinned, work would have still been there because God Himself worked.

            Keeping, that in mind, we can definitely say that work of all kinds, whether with the hands or the mind, evidences our dignity as human beings because all of them reflect the image of the Creator in us. The close connection of Genesis 1:26 with the mandate to ‘rule’ shows that this act of ruling is a defining aspect of what it means to be made in God’s image. We are called to stand in for God here in the world as stewards of His creation. We share in doing the things that God has done in creation – bringing order out of chaos, creatively building a civilization out of the material of physical and human nature, caring for all that God has made. This is a major part of what we were created to be. Thus while the Greek thinkers saw ordinary work, especially manual labour as relegating human beings to the animal level, the Bible sees all work as distinguishing human beings from animals and elevating them to a place of dignity.

            To add to this, God’s own work in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 is ‘manual’ labour, as He shapes us out of the dust of the earth, deliberately putting a spirit in a physical body and as He plants a garden (Genesis 2:8). It is hard for us today to realize how revolutionary this idea has been in the history of human thinking as often times, God is perceived as Someone who is unmoved by the suffering of His children. God values each and every form of work so much that when He became man, He worked as a carpenter. The author Phillip Jensen explains this in the following way, “If God came into the world, what would He be like? For the ancient Greeks, He might have been a philosopher-king. The ancient Romans might have looked for a just and noble statesman. But how does the God of the Hebrews come into the world? As a carpenter”.

            Today, work such as farming and caring for children do not get such a good wrap, at least in terms of pay because they are not supposedly ‘knowledge’ jobs and therefore because of it, do not pay well. But yet, when we look at the book of Genesis and the Gospels, we see God as a gardener and as a carpenter. No task is too small a vessel to hold the immense dignity of work given by God. Simple physical labour is God’s work too and it is no less than the formulation of theological truth. Think of the supposedly menial work of housecleaning. What if you do not do it or if you don’t hire someone to get it done? You would eventually fall sick and die from the germs, viruses and infections that would breed in your house. The material creation was made by God to be developed, cultivated and cared for in an endless number of ways through human labour. But even the simplest of the ways is important. Without them all, human life cannot flourish.

            The world that God has created is good. It is not a temporary theatre for individual salvation stories, after which we go to live disembodied lives in a different dimension. Indeed, the Biblical doctrine of creation harmonizes with the doctrine of the incarnation (in which God takes upon Himself a human body) and of the resurrection (in which God redeems not just the soul but the body) to show how deeply ‘pro – physical’ Christianity is. We therefore have an excellent foundation if we understand the goodness of creation and the dignity of work because we work in a wondrous world that is designed at least partly for our pleasure.

            We were built for work and the dignity it gives us as human beings, regardless of its status or pay. The practical implications of this principle are far – reaching because when we realize this truth, we then no longer have a basis for condescension or superiority nor is there any basis for envy or feelings of infidelity and so with that being said, we should be able to identify with conviction and satisfaction, the ways in which our work participates with God in His creativity and cultivation.

            While we may have gone past the occasion of labour day, if we are all working individuals, we ought to give ourselves a pat on the back because of the fact that each of us through our work, no matter how big or small it maybe, is contributing in some way to the grander scheme of life. The only thing that we need to do is to do justice to our work by showing up everyday and giving off our best in the work we do. God love you! Stay blessed!