I like work. I like to work.* I realize that not everyone feels the same way and that’s okay but there are a couple of observations I’d like to make about work.
First, work is not a necessary evil because work is not evil. Some work is evil, some is foolish, some is dangerous, etc. but work per se is not evil. I go to some pains to work this out in each of the sermons below but in short, work was given to Adam before the Fall therefore work predates the introduction of sin into the world therefore work cannot be evil.
Second, one of the most pernicious bits of nonsense being pedaled to the generations younger than mind is that you should love your work, by which is meant your job. This is ridiculous. It is at best a half truth and a particularly unhelpful half truth at that. One of the outcomes of this sort of thing is that it robs labour of its dignity. It says, that while you wait for the job that you will love and never, ever refer to as work you will put up with whatever you get. This takes us back to the “necessary evil” business that is still wrong.
What I was trying to get at today is that we are all called to work but what that work is could be anything. It could be paid or volunteer. The job for which you get paid could be the primary source of funding for the work that you were created to do.
All of that to say, I hope you get something useful about work and why we should do it from one or both of today’s sermons. I will apologize for the quality, not necessarily of the recordings but rather my voice, nothing like an autumn cold to mess up how you sound 🙂
Knox Presbyterian Work is biblical?
St. Mark’s Presbyterian Work is biblical?
Blessings,
*There is a joke, proverb, something like that in the Myers-Briggs world that says for an NT work is work and play is work; I am an NT.
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