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The idea of work as curse comes from an interpretation of God's pronouncement to the erring man in Genesis 3. The man and the woman had yielded to the trickery of the serpent and eaten the forbidden fruit. God then gave to each—serpent, woman, and man—a punishment appropriate to their respective roles.
The nature of the punishment on the serpent, the woman, and the man provides answers to questions about each of them. Why does the serpent crawl on its belly, having no legs, and why metaphorically does the deceitfulness of evil so readily attack human beings?
Why is woman's way of childbearing so difficult and her relationship with man so conflicted? Why is man's work of tilling the soil so hard and unproductive? The punishments meted out provide answers to these questions.
The curse on the ground is the specific source of the idea of work as curse or punishment. "Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life" (v. 17). Note the parallels in this punishment on the man to the punishment on the woman.
As the woman is now in a contradictory, conflicted relationship with the man from which she was created (vv. 21-23), so also the man is now in a contradictory, conflicted relationship with the very ground from which he himself was created. Alienation, estrangement, discord, and difficulty now mark these relationships that once were characterized by unity and intimacy.
But is the curse on the ground the source of work? Not at all, for we have already noted that work existed in Eden even prior to the temptation, the yielding, the discovery, and the punishment. So, the result of the curse on the ground is not that work itself becomes a curse. Rather, the result is that now work, as commentator Gerhard von Rad describes so picturesquely, makes life so wretched, that it is so threatened by failures and wastes of time and often enough comes to nothing, that its actual result usually has no relation to the effort expended.
As another biblical commentator, C. U. Wolf, summarizes more succinctly, "Sin did not make labor necessary, but it made it less rewarding and subject to frustrations and problems.'' Genesis 3 thus suggests that the wrong choice of the man and the woman changed them as well as their circumstances. Therefore, work becomes drudgery.
The prospects for finding meaning and satisfaction in daily work seem rather dismal then, don't they? In a similar light, a parishioner who had just heard the pastor speak about the terrible consequences of the Fall is supposed to have remarked, "Well, if it's as bad as all that, then God help us." Of course, that's just the point of the rest of the biblical story.
God did not leave human beings in the predicament described in Genesis 3:16-19. God's provision of redemptive grace can remove at least some of the consequences of life in a world gone astray from God. Work's frustrations and problems are among the consequences with which God's grace can assist if not remove entirely.
Then why is work so frustrating and not at all a paradise even if we are people of faith? One way of answering this question is to realize that even God's grace does not return people to the paradise that existed prior to the Fall. Rather, following the biblical image, we continue to live in a fallen world where the consequences of sin are evident. That world includes the world of work.
Even so, we need not see work as being under a curse or a curse in itself. Rather, as theologian Dorothy Soelle affirms, "When God, incarnate in Jesus, became a worker, our understanding of work was finally freed from the tradition of the curse." Jesus the carpenter demonstrated in his own life the redemption of daily work. So work itself is not a curse, however we may feel about our work on a given Monday morning.
Excerpted fromGo to Work and Take Your Faith Too!, by Ross West. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Content distributed by: WorkLife.org.
 | WorkLife Success applies biblical principles to help churches minister to their congregations in the area of work. Additionally, we help businesses increase productivity by addressing their employees' emotional and spiritual anxiety surrounding the most stressful day of the week — Monday. The end goal is to produce workers that experience the amazing joy and purpose that God intended through work. Learn More » |
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