The glory of work – 2

“My father works even till now, and I work…”

“I must work the works of Him that sent me while it is day, for the night comes, when no man can work…”

“My food is to do the will of Him that sent me and to finish his work”

“…Don’t you know I must be about my father’s business?”

The four statements quoted above were made by Jesus Christ at different times in his earthly sojourn.

A man’s work ethics is largely defined, not by the establishment that employs him but by his own perception of work arising from his motive for working. Far too many people, especially in the developing world have a world view that leaves a whole lot of things to chance and fate. For this reason, many are of the opinion that “What will be will be, so why labour so hard if it is not to merely survive?”. Even though they believe in work, the motive for working hardly goes beyond ensuring individual concerns.

Unfortunately, religion has not made things any better. Note that I use the word religion advisedly. There is a distinction between religion and true faith in deity. As a Pastor with several years of experience in counseling and teaching people the tenets of the Christian faith, I can speak with a measure of authority in this regard. Many people of faith associate spirituality only with fasting, praying and reading the Bible or Koran even if at the expense of their social obligations in respect of work. However, as good as these disciplines are, they are not a substitute for productive enterprise. As a matter of fact, the Bible teaches that anyone who does not work does not deserve to eat. Elsewhere, it says that the man who cannot earn a living to provide for his family has denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.

I have met people who believe that whether they work or not, God will provide for their needs. It is therefore not unusual to have an employee who comes to the office and believes more in reading his Bible or observing his five daily prayer times if he is a Muslim, than actually doing the work for which he is paid a salary. When the employer is harsh with or sacks him, he switches to victim mode and concludes that his employer is ungodly or that his sack is on account of his faith. When I am faced with such cases, I routinely make them understand that nothing could be farther from the truth because in reality, they earned the sack!

When I was growing up, we were taught in Sunday School that work was a consequence of the Fall. Adam, we were told, was created and placed in a garden where he simply lazed around sleeping and eating whenever he wanted. Until he sinned. And that was when God cursed him with work! When you grow up with this kind of narrative, there is no way that work can bring you pleasure. But when I started reading the Bible for myself, I found a completely different narrative. Before God even gave Adam a wife, He gave him an assignment – to tend and keep a garden! It was the pursuit of this assignment of adding value to the garden to enhance the quality of what he met on ground that God thought that Eve was necessary in the first place. Eve was primarily a consequence of Adam’s diligence at carrying out his work mandate! Procreation was a secondary consideration!

The God of the Bible frowns at laziness and idleness and copious verses of scriptures prove that. God Himself set the pace at creation. He worked for six days before resting on the seventh! The Bible is a handbook for diligence and hard work. Jesus, the Messiah, did not need to work. But He did, first in his earthly father’s carpenter’s workshop, and subsequently in the pursuit of His calling. According to Him, He had no option but to work because God His heavenly Father also works even till now! From the moment He was anointed, he went about DOING something. The Bible even records that he taught what He had first done! So if you call yourself an offspring of that God, where did you get your slothfulness DNA from?

I doubt if any nation on earth fasts and prays as much as we do. We have more religious holidays than any other nation I know. Yet this has hardly impacted on our work ethics in a positive, significant way. We know how to call on God to justify and rubber-stamp our individual and collective dysfunctionality.

However, if your forty, eighty or one hundred days of fasting and prayer don’t give you a blueprint that you can run with as soon as you are done, you simply went on hunger strike or at best a compelled weight-loss programme. Moses in the Bible was in the presence of God on Mount Sinai for forty days. But he returned with definite instructions that he had to work out in the valley of daily living and communal conduct.

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Jesus fasted and was in the wilderness for forty days, at the end of which He returned in the power of the Holy Spirit and promptly went to work. God promised Israel a land called Canaan flowing with milk and honey. He fed Israel with manna in the wilderness when they left Egypt and were not in a position to fend for themselves. But the moment they stepped foot in the land and ate of the proceeds of the land, the manna stopped falling and they had to begin cultivation. The Israelites promptly realized that there is neither River Honey or River Milk anywhere! The message was simple. To eat the honey, they had to raise the bees and to drink the milk, they would have to rear the cows! His commitment to them from that time was to prosper what they were able to produce. So while the quality and quantum of harvest might be up to God, the planting and cultivation would have to be done by them!

Work confers dignity on our calling. It is the primary platform of demonstrating responsibility. Every anointing in the Bible was to empower FUNCTION and RESPONSIBILITY, not for a goose pimple feel-good sensation that characterizes many ‘anointing’ services. The result of every true anointing is empowered function. Deception thrives when people love to reap when they have not sown.

The true gospel promotes INDUSTRY and CONTRIBUTION, not COMPLACENCY and CONSUMPTION. Great institutions and nations are built by great work. You can “confess” several scriptures on a daily basis, but until you put legs to whatever conviction such declarations produce, you will forever live in la-la land!

Prosperity without responsibility is neither faith nor miracle. It is purely magical and unsustainable. God promises to guide our path. But He can only do that when we are moving our feet! When He shows the way, it is so that we can GO!… continued!

Remember, the sky is not your limit, God is!