God at Work, Part 2

Humans were created to be God’s image bearers and partners, and then we fell under the curse of sin. But when Jesus stepped out of the grave on Easter morning, he rose victorious over sin. The curse is broken. This means new life and a new purpose for us and our work.

This is Our God
Phil Wickham

Heaven and Earth
Hillsong Worship

Greater Still
Brandon Lake

Genesis 3:17-19
Cursed be the soil for your sake, with pangs you shall eat from it all the days of your life. Thorn and thistle shall it sprout for you and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread till you return to the soil, for from there were you taken, for dust you are and to dust you shall return.”

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Curse #1: From Delight to Disappointment

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Ecclesiastes 2:22-23
For what does a man have from all his toil and from his heart’s care that he toils under the sun? For all his days are pain, and worry is his business. At night, as well, his heart does not rest. This, too, is vanity.

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Quiet quitting
“You’re still performing your duties, but you’re no longer subscribing to the hustle-culture mentality that work has to be your life. The reality is it’s not. And your worth as a person is not defined by your labor.”

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Cal Newport
“Today’s young employees…are far from the first population to go through a period of sudden disillusionment about the role of work in their lives…so many older people are confused by quiet quitting: it’s not meant for us. It’s instead the first step of a younger generation taking their turn in developing a more nuanced understanding of the role of work in their lives. Before we heap disdain on their travails, we should remember that we were all once in this same position.”

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Curse #2: From Subduing to Surviving

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Ecclesiastes 4:4
“Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man’s envy of his neighbor. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.”

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Curse #3: From Flourishing to Floundering

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Andy Crouch, The Life We’re After
“You cannot take advantage of a superpower and remain a person…this is not an unfortunate side effect of superpowers or a flaw that could be overcome with future improvements. It is the essence of their design because superpowers are power without effort. And power without effort, it turns out, diminishes us as much as it delights us.”

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Curse #4: From Partnership to Performance

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Genesis 11:1–9
Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

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Dereck Thompson
“Things that should have felt good (leisure, not working) felt bad because I felt guilty for not working; things that should feel ‘bad’ (e.g. working all the time) felt good because I was doing what I thought I should and needed to be doing in order to succeed…To work is to feel your life justified existentially; to pause from your labor is to risk a life of failure.”

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Dorothy Sayers
“Acedia is the sin which believes in nothing, cares for nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and only remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die. We have known it far too well for many years, the only thing perhaps we have not known about it is it is a mortal sin.”

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Curse #5: From Imagers to Idolaters

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Ecclesiastes 2:22-24
“For what does a man have from all his toil and from his heart’s care that he toils under the sun? For all his days are pain, and worry is his business. At night, as well, his heart does not rest. This, too, is meaningless. There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and sate himself with good things through his toil.”

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Christopher Morgan
“The world is not the way that it’s supposed to be and the world is not the way that it will be. We lament what was, but we anticipate what will be. And that is the messy, but hopeful tension in which we must see our work.”

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