LAZINESS? Or Doing What We Were Created to Do?

As I was sitting in my favourite reading spot for the first time in my nearly 2 months of retirement yesterday, enjoying simply reading a book, I had the epiphanic (is that a word?) thought – when we struggle to do the so many ‘ought’s that we all face very day, or most of us, and just want to do what we want to do – are we simply lazy and shirking our responsibilities, or are we following a basic good instinct?

Let me explain. Lately, I have been studying a lot in the book of Genesis. Don’t let that turn you off yet – hear me out. One reason is that I began a few weeks back to teach a series in our church’s Sunday morning so-called Adult Education period entitled variously something like “How We Got Here – How The Story of the Bible Became the Story of The [Anabaptist/Mennonite] Church.” That parenthesis is in there because that is who I am, that is who our church is, and there are some significant differences between us and much of Christendom. We have a significant number of newcomers in our church who do not come from a Mennonite background and they often have questions that I hope this series can help answer. I am developing the series as we go, although I already have an outline and a number of ready resources at hand.

The other reason I have been looking at Genesis is because some of our recent Sunday morning worship service messages have been on Genesis and that material is what we base our midweek small group home Bible studies on and I lead one of those groups. As I think about it, I remember that we spent some time in Genesis last year too, as our pastor then led our church through the whole Bible in one year. Actually, I have taught on Genesis in the past, as I led some of these same students through the Bible in past Sunday morning sessions, especially at one time with an emphasis on The Covenant.

Now, as I understand it, God really only left mankind with two tasks after he had created us. The first was to tend the garden, which was expanded into "subduing and having dominion over the earth". However, the earth at that time still being considered "good," it does not seem that this work would have been particularly onerous, but that it would probably have been continuing enjoyably God's creativity. The second command was to replenish the earth, which could refer to the environment again, but also has generally been understood to refer to God's desire for having man to reproduce and populate the earth.

At that time, we understand the climate was obviously pleasant as man was naked. God also appeared to meet and commune regularly with man. Everything was provided for. Therefore, it would appear that's man would have been happy and content in that environment, wanting nothing. Basically, with everything being so good, he could do whatever he wanted and it was acceptable.

Something changed, according to the story in Genesis chapter 3. Mankind apparently made some wrong choices and the beauty and order of creation descended into chaos. One of the consequences of this choice was that work, which would appear to have been a pleasant and possibly even cooperative venture with The Creator became a challenge and no longer necessarily pleasant or enjoyable. What we may long to do, like we may have been doing at the beginning, has been replaced by all kinds of labor that is repetitious, not always easy and often simply a drudgery. This is true whether it is work for ourselves, at home, or work for others, outside the home. And for all you students, this covers homework and studying as well. Unless you are learning about something you really enjoy, which I think would have been an activity we would have engaged in at the beginning as well, and may well do so again in the New World.

We all know that underneath the issues of responsibility that come with work nowadays, we often chafe at it and wish to be doing something else. Like as not, what we wish to be doing is something that is renewing, pleasant, enjoyable and quite often creative. Does this not sound like the kind of activities I described that mankind was probably engaged in before, as we say, things went south? (Actually, according to the Bible, it seems man was first sent east.)

So, when we don't feel like working, but turning to our pastimes and our hobbies instead, simply engaging in activities together with others that we find enjoyable, perhaps we are actually responding to the good instincts that we were created with and that have been suppressed by the consequence of the nature of the work as it turned out after the wrong choices were made. Perhaps those drives are actually good, and not evidence of being lazy and shirking responsibility.

However, we also know that work gives us purpose, meaning, helps provide order and structure in our life and can give us a feeling of competence and satisfactory success. There is some good in work. This is borne out not only by our own experience in life but also the research which shows that work is one of the positive variables in a person's recovery when they are ill. In this I find evidence of the merciful providence of our Creator, that even in what was given to us as a consequence there can be a positive. The Creator is also ever the Redeemer.

Of course, until the New World promised appears, we still have to work in the old way. However, perhaps we need to look at the kind of work we have to do as something that we should ever try to lessen and lighten the load of. After all, when we talk about The Church, or The Kingdom of Heaven on earth, we are always talking about trying to re-create here what was at the beginning or will be in the new heaven and earth. Neither of those included this kind of work. Therefore, perhaps we simply should not feel guilty when we don't feel like working. It might be our basic creative goodness wanting to be expressed. It is just our inner person wanting to get back to “the garden,” which I usually picture as more of a park where we can relax and unwind, than what we sometimes think as a garden with all its images of hard work.