A few weeks ago I got the chance to hear a short lecture on a biblical theology of work from professor John Hammett of Southeastern Seminary. He broke an approach to work into four parts: 1) Work as created and intended by God. 2) Work as distorted by the Fall. 3) Work as transformed by redemption in Christ. 4) Work and the consummation (referring to the new heavens and the new earth).
Here is a summary of his first point: work as created and intended by God.
A. Work is something given to us before the fall (Gen. 1:28). Since it was given by God and existed in a world that God called good, work is essentially good.
B. Work is more than what we are paid to do. So a mother taking care of her kids is working in the biblical sense. A retired person still has work to do.
C. Work includes the "cultural mandate." This is the directive given by God to fill and subdue the earth. That includes making the most of the world we live in. It means investing ourselves in science, art, agriculture, etc. All of this is "culture" and God gave us a "mandate" to work with it and, in a fallen world, to improve it.
D. Work specifically includes creation care, both harnessing the resources of creation (Gen. 1:28) and caring for creation (Gen. 2:15). So part of being a steward is wisely using versus abusing the world we live in. I recently saw an interesting movie called Temple Grandin about an autistic woman who used her gift to design a more human system to prepare cows to be slaughtered. This seems to be a good example of creation care.
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