labour of love

Adam’s orig­inal sin lead to the fallen state of humanity. Cain added a sec­ondary curse with his frat­ri­cide and sub­se­quent cover-up and hypocrisy (“I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” Gen 4:9). Cain even claimed that the pun­ish­ment was too hard for his crime (v.13) – that the ground would not yield to him according to its (pre­vious) strength, and that thus humankind would become fugi­tives and wan­derers on the earth. Noach was called to alle­viate the toil – his name is based on the root of the word “to com­fort”, and he ful­filled his pur­pose in his own way, bringing about a new state for humanity, in which it would con­sume meat for the first time (Gen 9:1-5).

The Almighty is nei­ther cruel nor cyn­ical. He is dis­pleased with most things hap­pening with His quite fully depraved humanity. Our Father in heaven does not want to stop loving us, and He made a covenant between Him and us to not again clean the slate of the earth with flood­wa­ters. In Gen 8:21, He says that He will “never again curse the ground”. It is a some­what lop­sided covenant, with nothing on the side of the fallen humanity to abide by. He would have known that any con­di­tion­ality would have been sooner or later broken, man­dating the return of flood­wa­ters. So he could only swear by Him­self that he would never again destroy all flesh, come what may. But is the former curse lifted, as the old ground was washed in the flood?

Whichever way we under­stand this, we need to realise that we are on hos­tile ground, in a hos­tile age (Eph 5:16). This applies to all occu­pa­tion. The earth in its cur­rent state is gen­er­ally not geared for pleasant labour to sat­isfy a human’s needs. Sus­tain­able cul­ti­va­tion prac­tices like per­ma­cul­ture or agro­forestry are the excep­tion, abuse and de­grading exploi­tation of the land are, regret­fully, cur­rently the norm. Spi­ralling greed leads to ever greater devas­tation without voices of reason able to turn the ship around. Exces­sive wealth is ob­tained through obedi­ence to and wor­ship of mammon. Satan is the Lord of this age (see Mt 4:8-9 or 2 Cor 4:4 or 1 John 5:19). So if we go with the default, do as we see fit in our fallen state, we will go down the broad path to destruc­tion. Top­soil ero­sion and con­se­quen­tial fer­tility loss is the most alarming sign of our times, right now still glossed over by the appli­ca­tion of large quan­ti­ties of min­eral fer­tiliser pro­duced using fossil resources and indus­trial farming prac­tices, both based mainly on non-renew­able (fossil) energy.

The ground is the base of all life. Adam is made from and of the ha’adama. During the brief energy boost caused by tap­ping into an extra energy source under the ground has brought about a mas­sive growth and devel­op­ment spurt of the human species, and along­side, a detach­ment from the soil, the ground as the pri­mary inter­face of our existence.

Yes nat­ural resources are the­o­ret­i­cally abun­dant, the earth as an open radiant energy system is what the physi­cists an “uncrit­ical”: it receives more, in fact vastly more energy from the sun than it needs to sus­tain life. Cor­nu­copians miss the point though: this abun­dance is not at our dis­posal, because any fallen human in pos­ses­sion of the means to gain mate­rial wealth will invari­ably and usu­ally success­fully be tempted to use this wealth for their own lux­u­rious lifestyles rather than the ben­efit of society.

How then can and should we gain a living who earnestly seek the Creator’s ways and paths, who yearn to be directed by the Almighty in His wisdom? As we are in this evil age, do we have to par­take in bread­win­ning through exploita­tion of nature, including ani­mals, and other humans? We are called to shine like stars among a crooked and depraved gen­er­a­tion (Phil 2:15). We are also to obey our human rulers (1 Peter 2:13) and remain in our state (1 Cor 7:20). This latter verse has var­ious interpret­ations. It may well refer to cir­cum­ci­sion, as some Gen­tile believers opted to fulfil the law by get­ting cir­cum­cised. Paul here then argues that no other step is nec­es­sary for admis­sion into the chosen saints than the calling of faith. (The word “calling”, κλήσει, some­times trans­lated “sit­u­a­tion” can mean a spir­i­tual call or sec­ular occupation.)

Others think Paul may have written this instruc­tion in expec­ta­tion of Christ’s soon return, so that he con­sid­ered upris­ings and revolts a waste of time. Or the bud­ding church may be in no posi­tion to take on large-scale social injus­tices, making the point that we are all free in Christ, and that we are all slaves to the world, what­ever state or posi­tion we are in with regard to the cur­rent age, i.e. whether we are, in a sec­ular sense, “free” or “slaves”.

If redeemed, we are not toiling as slaves for the Lord. In Romans 4:4, Paul explains that if we expect a reward for our labour, we are mis­guided. We are vol­un­tarily spreading the good news and loving people as we have been loved first, based on the reward that we already been freely given: redemp­tion from our slavery to sin and misery.

Summary

We are all sub­or­di­nated to the depravity of the fallen world, redeemed or unre­deemed. The dif­fer­ence is that the redeemed look for­ward to a renewal, while most unre­deemed either take a glum view of the planet’s future, or believe that the sal­va­tion of the same rests on their shoul­ders. But this world is fallen through rebel­lion against God’s per­fect insti­tu­tions, and it is also seeped through with Abel’s inno­cent blood. We are on cursed soil. Who­ever deems him or her­self grazing green pas­tures is lulled in a sense of igno­rant bliss.

True beauty and restora­tion of all things is yet to come. It will not happen overnight, it will take the mil­len­nium to bring the world back into shape, worthy to be handed back to its Cre­ator after it tem­porarily had to be used as a demon­stra­tion object and a bat­tle­field, in order to teach humanity exactly all the lessons it had to get into, down and through. This is how even this wicked age is part of the Almighty’s per­fect plan for humanity: it is neces­sary. For dawning needs a lot to us stub­born crea­tures, and digesting takes its time, as does the resulting transformation.

Mean­while, we plough on through unyielding, embit­tered earth that is man­gled and min­gled with the salt of drained inno­cent lifeblood and the tears it weeps, in unity with its Cre­ator, about it.

Application

So on a prac­tical level, how can we par­take without con­doning? Being a good influ­ence without being overly judgemental?

To me it means pur­suing occu­pa­tion that at least attempts to be part of the solu­tion rather than part of the problem, which would cor­re­late to the social, char­i­table or sus­tain­ability sectors.

Sec­ondly, it means focussing on the lord’s mis­sion (Mt 28:19, Acts 1:8) and use every oppor­tu­nity that opens up to evan­ge­lise, through deed (first) and word (pos­sibly later).

It also means span­ning the rift between having peace about where the Lord put me and what I am doing, and taking steps in faith to change my cir­cum­stances if I sense myself called out; both instead of judging myself as use­less or out of place. Every place I dwell in is pur­posed and pre­or­dained by the Father – so I can say in ret­ro­spect. Looking ahead, of course I will want to hear His will and go where He directs.

Abraham had to wait to the age of 100 until the rightful heir was born to him, against all odds and prac­tical con­cerns. Abraham had been impa­tient and influ­enced against his trust and faith to beget Ish­mael aged 86. It is still the Lord’s time, so rushing things even while the days are short to His second coming would be impru­dent and ulti­mately, selfish.

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