Once upon a time, the ancients tell us, a disciple said to the rabbi, “God took six days to create the world and it is not perfect. How is that possible?” “Could you have done better?” the rabbi asked. “Yes, I think I could have,” the disciple said. “Then what are you waiting for?” the rabbi said. “Go ahead. Start working.” The story raises three questions about the nature and place of work in life that plague humankind yet: Is work a human punishment for sin or an opportunity to grow in the spiritual life? Is work something to be avoided or something to be embraced? Is work the opposite side of the spiritual life or the ground of the spiritual life? They are important questions.
If work is meant to be a punishment, then managing to get out of it must be the ultimate sign of spiritual development and God’s blessing. If work is one of life’s unfortunate burdens, then work is to be avoided so that life can be lived well and perpetual leisure is a state of life to be strived for. If work is the enemy of the spiritual life, then people whose lives are full of children and business and the struggle to make ends meet are condemned to spiritual infancy or, at most, to the theology of good intentions: the notion that a person can be saved if they are too busy to pray. But they can never come to real holiness that way. Scripture, though, is Work is our gift to the future. It is our sign that God goes on working in the world through us. It is the very stuff of divine ambition. And it will never be over. The philosopher wrote, “Do you want a test to know if your work in life is over? If you are still alive, it isn’t.” As the rabbi and the disciple both well knew, God needs us to complete God’s work. Now very clear about the place of work in human life. Human beings were put into the Garden “to till it and to keep it.” Genesis is explicit: We work to complete the work of God in the world. Work, then, may be the most sanctifying thing we do.
But Western culture has not treated work kindly. We have lived in a capitalism that bred brutal competition and unequal distribution of goods as well as inventiveness. We are watching the poor get poorer even when they are working, and the rich get richer even when they aren’t. Work has been badly warped, badly misused in our society, because success has become more important than value, and efficiency has become a god that will accept the sacrifice of people for the sake of profits.
Indeed, the sanctity of work must be reclaimed if humanity is ever to be reclaimed in a world wounded and imperiled by sins against the co-creative dimension of work.
The implications of a spirituality of work are clear, it seems: Work is my gift to the world. It is my social fruitfulness. It ties me to my neighbor and binds me to the future. Work is the way I am saved from total self-centeredness. It gives me a reason to exist that is larger than myself. It gives me hope.
Work is meant to build community. When we work for others, we give ourselves and we can give alms as well. We never work, in other words, for our own good alone. Work, too, is our commitment not to live off others, not to sponge, not to shirk, not to cheat. Giving less than a day’s work for a day’s pay, shunting work off onto underlings, doing one coat of paint when we promised to do two, are not what was meant to “till the Garden and keep it.”
Work is our gift to the future. It is our sign that God goes on working in the world through us. It is the very stuff of divine ambition. And it will never be over. The philosopher wrote, “Do you want a test to know if your work in life is over? If you are still alive, it isn’t.” As the rabbi and the disciple both well knew, God needs us to complete God’s work. Now.
—from In the Heart of the Temple, by Joan Chittister (BlueBridge)
