People are leaving the church by the millions. Why? Two articles in The Atlantic, “The Misunderstood Reason Millions of Americans Stopped Going to Church” and “The Religion of Workism Is Making Americans Miserable,” among others, offer a reason to consider. They connect our attitudes toward work with the decline of interest in religion. Americans are looking to their careers, to their work, to provide community, meaning, purpose, all the things the church used to offer.
Work is replacing God.
Work
God worked to create the world and then he made men and women in his image to continue his creative effort (Genesis 1:27-30). To work with God to further develop the world, culture, ourselves, and others is a tremendous privilege. Work was given to humans as a gift.
The term “work” is, and has been, understood in different ways. Merriam Webster gives many definitions, the most inclusive being activity in which one exerts strength or faculties to do or perform something. In my opinion, that something can be anything from changing a diaper to serving as President of the United States.
God is still at work, and we are at work with him. Our work would have been done perfectly if the story had remained in Genesis 1 and 2, but as we know, the narrative went on to Genesis 3, the fall, and our work became laborious.
Labor
The term labor has a somewhat negative connotation; stressful, backbreaking, dull, tiring. Women go into labor to bear a child. It’s interesting that the term “labor” can be used to describe the consequences for both Adam and Eve. God told Eve that “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children” (Genesis 3:16a). And to Adam he said, “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. (Genesis 3:17b). Labor is difficult.
Our labor done with God to accomplish his work on the Earth is important, gratifying, and we develop our skills and abilities through what we do. But it’s not most important.
Work has been and still is a compromised gift. We are meant to work with God to create the good works that he has created for us to do (Ephesians 2:10), and many of us attempt to do that. But have we overemphasized our jobs? Have we made them our religion?
Workism
Derek Thompson, in “The Religion of Workism is Making Americans Miserable,” writes, “In the past century, the American conception of work has shifted from jobs to careers to callings—from necessity to status to meaning. In an agrarian or early manufacturing economy, where tens of millions of people perform similar routinized tasks, there are no delusions about the higher purpose of, say, planting corn or screwing bolts: It’s just a job.” He goes on to describe the 21st century narrative in which we look for meaningful purpose, a passion fulfilled, a job that will change the world. It’s rare that anyone finds such dream jobs, and Thompson outlines the anxiety, burnout, and depression that can happen when these expectations are not met.
“But our desks were never meant to be our altars,” Thompson reminds us.
God’s Reminder: Sabbath
God was serious about the Sabbath law. It seems a bit extreme to stone someone for breaking the Sabbath, as the Hebrews were commanded to do in Numbers 15:32-36, but maybe God was emphasizing the importance of it.
Every week the Israelites were to stop their work, depend on and delight in God, and enjoy each other. (Exodus 20:8-11) It doesn’t sound bad, right? The Sabbath is a weekly reset of our attention away from our work and back on God. Yet it was routinely misunderstood.
Jesus was criticized for picking grain (Matt. 12:1-2), healing a man’s hand, (Matt. 12:11-12), healing a crippled woman (Luke 13:10-16), and bringing a paralyzed man to his feet (John 5:8-10) on the Sabbath. Surely, he could have done these miracles on a different day of the week, but he didn’t. I believe he wanted to teach the Pharisees, his followers, and us about the real intent of the Sabbath. God commanded the Sabbath to teach us that our faith in him is far more valuable than another day of work.
In addition to the weekly Sabbath, every seventh year they were not to sow plants in their fields or prune their vineyards, and God promised that there would be enough for everyone to eat from the fields even though they hadn’t worked (Leviticus 25:1-7). In an agrarian economy an entire year of trusting the Lord, without working, would have taken tremendous faith. After that year, can you imagine how the faith of the community would have grown?
Jubilee, the Ultimate Sabbath
The Year of Jubilee is described in Leviticus 25:
“Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each of you is to return to your family property and to your own clan. The fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; do not sow and do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the untended vines. For it is a jubilee and is to be holy for you; eat only what is taken directly from the fields” (Leviticus 25:10-12).
It was a big ask. Celebrating a year of Jubilee would have meant trusting God to provide food for two years without any seeding, plowing, or harvesting, for the 49th year would have been a seventh year Sabbath and the 50th year would have been the Year of Jubilee. It’s not surprising that there is no evidence it was ever celebrated.
It’s understandable that it was never celebrated, for the successful and wealthy, the leaders, would not have been inclined to turn over the economic benefits of their hard work, their labor, to others who had perhaps not worked as hard or had made unfortunate choices.
The year of Jubilee offered freedom to those who were on the bottom of society’s hierarchy, had experienced hard knocks, lost property, personal freedom, and/or income. Imagine a family in which the husband had become ill or had made foolish decisions, was forced to sell their property, which affected their income, and it was downhill from then on. They lived every day with the fallout, and it wasn’t pretty. The year of Jubilee would have offered this family or their descendants the freedom to begin again. It offered hope.
The Year of Jubilee would have brought liberty to everyone, no matter what their economic or social status had been, for they would have been completely set free from economic concerns and would have developed greater faith in God. His love and provision would have been tangible every day, and after a year or two of receiving his gifts of grace, not by their work, everyone’s faith would have grown exponentially.
If the weekly Sabbath had been faithfully observed, they might have had the faith to depend on God for their food every seven years, and if they had learned that God was faithful to provide for them every seven years, they might have had the faith to release everything back to the Lord in the Year of Jubilee.
The Sabbath day every week, the Sabbath year every seven years, and the Jubilee were opportunities to develop a more robust faith in God who loves us, provides for us, gives us good work to do, and wants us to love and follow him.
Sabbath and Jubilee law isn’t in force in our day as it was in Old Testament times, but the principle still applies. How many times have I resisted taking a Sabbath rest because something needed to be accomplished? How often have I worried instead of worshipped or stressed instead of surrendered? Too many times.
There is nothing wrong with wanting a career that fits one’s abilities and temperament, purposeful work, or even desiring to change the world, for it needs changing, but the Sabbath laws are a reminder that we are “…God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10). If we do not have faith in God, how will we know what he has created us to do?
And if we don’t do what God has created us to do, if we get caught up in workism, the world will never know what we could have accomplished.
Photo by Andrew Seaman on Unsplash
Still sabbath centered around the patriarchy while women were put into subservient roles to prepare meals and support the males to study Torah and rest at their leisure.
Everyone was to rest on the Sabbath, males and females, servants and masters, even the animals. It may not have worked out that way in practice, but I believe God intended that everyone rest and that there would be no difference in his eyes between males and females. God isn’t a patriarch.
I love this, Judy! Such a good reminder to trust God and His provision–even for the works He has intended for us. Too often, I take on work not intended for me and then forget to take a Sabbath, which, in itself is an act of faith. Thanks for the reminder!
Thanks Sharla! Yes, truly resting on the Sabbath is an act of faith. I’m learning!