Recently I was reading a book by a pastor who I admire. He wrote something I think reflects a pervasive mindset among pastors and theologians. It is something that troubles me. The source isn't important since it restates what so many others have written, but it is a mindset that I pray will change.
The author is inviting readers to reflect on what our life purpose might be. The author writes:
I fully agree with everything listed, but do you notice anything missing?
Genesis tells us that God created humanity in God's image. God created them for community and to exercise dominion over the earth. "Exercising dominion" is not synonymous with "preservationist," though preserving beauty and creation are elements of it. Dominion is about bringing the world to its fulfillment. As human beings, we are part of that world. It means bringing humanity to the highest state possible. We transform matter, energy, and information from less useful and desirable forms into more useful and desirable forms. It is a mission marred by sin but still our mission.
When God established Israel, God did not just create a people. God created a people and placed them within a land. They were each allotted a portion of the land to work (i.e., transform matter, energy, and information into more useful forms) for their benefit and the benefit of their neighbors through exchange. So important was creative, productive labor that God established the Jubilee to ensure that no Israelite would ever be permanently alienated from his labor and land. The biblical narrative envisions that one day, all the earth is God's land, and all the people are his people exercising dominion over it.
Finally, when we look at the sweep of the biblical narrative, the story begins in a garden and ends in a garden city, the New Jerusalem. Cities were the symbol in the ancient world for the highest human achievement. Cities included art, commerce, and government. The biblical story ends with human contributions being incorporated into the eternal city.
What is missing from the list above is work. As God's co-creative stewards, one of the central reasons we were put here was to transform matter, energy, and information from less useful forms into more desirable forms. In communion, we do not take part in the grain and grape but in the bread and the wine, both of which require human labor. Work is what the great majority of us spend most of the hours of our days doing. It is a central expression of our image-bearing nature.
The mission of Jesus Christ is redemption and restoration of humanity and all creation. The work of the Church is for a season until Christ's work is complete; then the Church shall be at rest. But co-creative stewardship, whether in Eden, now, or the New Jerusalem, is our human mission that flows out of our union with God. The redemption and restoration of work humanity surely has work as part of its agenda.
Yet in lists like these, it simply is absent. One is left to question why. Is it simply because productive labor is beyond the horizon of those who make such lists? Is it because of ambivalence about the marketplace and those who work in it? Whatever the case, the message is, even to those who haven't consciously caught it, that our work is of no significance to God and his purposes other than in some instrumental role of support for other items on the list.
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