{"id":626,"date":"2015-03-24T12:53:10","date_gmt":"2015-03-24T16:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/oikonomia\/?p=626"},"modified":"2015-03-24T12:57:29","modified_gmt":"2015-03-24T16:57:29","slug":"work-the-curse-and-common-grace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/oikonomia\/2015\/03\/work-the-curse-and-common-grace\/","title":{"rendered":"Work, the Curse, and Common Grace"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

By Jordan Ballor<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"fisherman\"<\/a>That human beings were created to be creators, to work, is undeniable. The anthropological concept of\u00a0<\/span>homo faber<\/em>, man the tool-maker, attests to this basic aspect of what it means to be human. From a Christian perspective, we confess that human beings make things in a way that imitates their Maker. While God creates \u201cout of nothing\u201d (ex nihilo<\/em>) and then orders and arranges it, we create in a creaturely way, dependent on God\u2019s primary acts of creation. All this is true about the human person, and it is good that it is so.<\/p>\n

But ever since the fall into sin, work has been bittersweet. This negative aspect of work is communicated to us in the biblical narrative in the form of a curse. As God says to Adam, \u201cCursed is the ground because of you;\u00a0through painful toil you will eat food from it\u00a0all the days of your life.\u00a0It will produce thorns and thistles for you,\u00a0and you will eat the plants of the field.\u00a0By the sweat of your brow\u00a0you will eat your food\u00a0until you return to the ground,\u00a0since from it you were taken;\u00a0for dust you are\u00a0and to dust you will return\u201d (Gen. 3:17-19 NIV). As fallen creatures we no longer relate to the world around us, whether the world of plants, animals, human beings, or spiritual truths, the way we did before.<\/p>\n

So, on the one hand, work is a basic created good that God has given us to meet our temporal needs and fashion our souls in disciplined obedience. But, on the other hand, work often becomes toil\u2014laborious, monotonous, repetitive, and unfulfilling. This dissatisfaction creates in us a deep and abiding sense that\u00a0<\/span>things are not the way they are supposed to be<\/span><\/a>. As the book of Ecclesiastes reads, God has \u201cset eternity in the human heart,\u201d such that the things of this world often pale in comparison with our attraction to spiritual things (Ecc. 3:11 NIV). We imagine, we believe, we hope that there must be a better world to come.<\/p>\n

We find this sense of brokenness in something as common as fishing. In\u00a0<\/span>a Michigan Radio story<\/span><\/a> about the challenges facing the fishing industry in the state, veteran angler Ed Patnode mused that \u201cwe\u2019d be rich if we could tap into the mind of a fish.\u201d Sometimes the fish seem to like a particular color of lure, and if we could \u201cjust get that fish to talk and tell us why do you like pink, or can you tell us what days you\u2019re going to bite pink on and what other factors are influencing your decision to bite this pink lure today,\u201d says Patnode, fishing would be a great deal easier. Patnode\u2019s notion that the challenges of fishing could be overcome if we could understand how fish \u201cthink\u201d seems to point toward the possibility that human beings once did, and perhaps will again, relate to the rest of the world in a way that perceives how things really work.<\/p>\n

And so while we live an existence marred by the curse, we still live. We still can work, even if that work is more troublesome and difficult than it would have otherwise been. The Dutch theologian and statesman Abraham Kuyper describes this dynamic between things being imperfect and yet still good in his doctrine of \u201ccommon grace,\u201d an idea enjoying renewed attention with the publication in English of portions of his magnum opus on the subject. In\u00a0<\/span>Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0 Kuyper writes that, after the fall, \u201cwe can arrive at the knowledge of things only by observation and analysis. But that is not how it was in paradise.\u201d Before the fall we read that Adam \u201cnamed\u201d the animals, by which we should understand that \u201cAdam immediately perceived the nature of each animal, and expressed his insight into the animal\u2019s nature by giving it a name corresponding to its nature.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"WisdomWonder\"<\/a>Things are far different today, however, as we see in the case of Ed Patnode and other fisherman, or any professional who deals daily with the natural world. Kuyper writes, \u201cIf we want to learn to understand a plant or an animal, then we must observe that animal and that plant carefully for a long time, and from what we observe gradually draw conclusions about their nature. This occurs apart from us ever learning to understand their essence.\u201d Indeed, says Kuyper, \u201cEven their instincts still remain a completely unsolved riddle for us,\u201d to the extent that we do not really know what causes lake trout to prefer pink lures to green or orange on any given day.<\/p>\n

In this way the daily routine of work reminds us both of what we have lost and how we are still blessed. It reminds us that amidst the brokenness and blindness of sin, God has not abandoned this world. And so we are called, in our own limited and often wayward way: \u201cWhatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might\u201d (Ecc. 9:10 NIV). This is the nature of our \u201clot in life\u201d and our \u201ctoilsome labor under the sun\u201d until such time as we \u201cshall know fully\u201d (1 Co. 13:12) the extent of God\u2019s redeeming grace.<\/p>\n

Originally published at Acton Commentary<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Photo credit: Chaval Brazil<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jordan Ballor That human beings were created to be creators, to work, is undeniable. The anthropological concept of\u00a0homo faber, man the tool-maker, attests to this basic aspect of what it means to be human. From a Christian perspective, we confess that human beings make things in a way that imitates their Maker. While God […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1787,"featured_media":629,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,20,21],"tags":[80,408,392,403,405,404,406,32,147,407,387],"class_list":["post-626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-common-grace","category-vocation","category-work-2","tag-common-grace-2","tag-curse","tag-ecclesiastes","tag-ed-patnode","tag-fish","tag-fisherman","tag-human-heart","tag-kuyper","tag-labor","tag-monotony","tag-redemption"],"yoast_head":"\nWork, the Curse, and Common Grace<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"By Jordan Ballor That human beings were created to be creators, to work, is undeniable. 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