As proof, we were offered this tidbit from God's curse of Adam and Eve in the Garden:
"Cursed is the ground because of you. In toil you will eat of it all the days of your life" (Gen. 3:17).Well, there you have it, plain as day. "Toil" is part the curse. Work is a curse.
I find that notion completely bizarre. There is more than one reason. First, didn't God give Adam work to do before he sinned? Let's see ... oh yes:
The LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it (Gen. 2:15).So, Adam was given a one-time task of naming all the animals (Imagine the magnitude of that task.) and an ongoing job of cultivating and maintaining the Garden. Adam had work to do.
Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them (Gen. 2:19).
Second, it seems that Man is built for work. The story is told of a Nazi prison camp in which the Jewish prisoners were dying from nothing to do (among everything else they were enduring). The commandant decided to give them something to do, so he ordered them to move a large pile of sand that was on the compound. When they started into the task, the guards noticed a dramatic change in the prisoners. Poorly fed, poorly treated, and in miserable physical condition, they still displayed a sense of confidence and pride. Their morale improved. They had meaning. When the task was done, the commandant decided to prolong the work by having them move the pile back to its original position. Interestingly, when the prisoners discovered that their task had no meaning, their attitudes reverted to the depression they had before.
Man is built for work. Everyone needs a sense of meaning, of accomplishment, of significance. Males in particular are wired for this. The most common cause of the "mid-life crisis" is when a person gets past the middle point of his (or her) life and thinks that they haven't accomplished what they hoped. Accomplishment, meaning, significance ... these are essential to the well-being of the human being.
Based on the fact that Adam had a job to do before sin, and based on the intrinsic need of human beings to do work, I have to disagree with the teacher on the radio. I have no doubt that it is a popular perception. I have no doubt that many Christians think that work is part of the Curse. But that's not the case, nor is it what God said to Adam.
What did God say to Adam? He didn't say that work was the curse. He said that hard work was the curse. He said that the ground was cursed because of sin. That meant that the work, which originally would have been easy, will now become difficult. God, in essence, sentenced us to hard labor. Labor is not part of the Curse; just hard labor. Work itself is a gift from God, designed by God to meet the needs of His creation. If we disdain that gift and call it a curse, we miss out on the blessings that God intended when He originally designed us.
5 comments:
Something I am considering is that Adam and Eve themselves were never cursed by God as I have been told my entire life. The ground was cursed and the serpent was cursed, but God never once said, "Cursed" to the man or woman in their persons or roles.
Interestingly, the serpent was cursed because of what he did, but the ground was cursed because of what Adam did.
Now on the other hand we hear people who think of heaven as us lying around on clouds strumming harps with angels, basically thinking of it as a vacation.
We have others who believe this Earth is simply a preparation for our long term work in heaven. They believe we will be given "tasks" to do in heaven.
What do you think?
I think the rest of Scripture backs up the belief that humans were cursed for their sin. An obvious example is "For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them" (Gal. 3:10).
The serpent (Satan) was cursed (Gen. 3:14). The woman was cursed in that "I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception" (Gen. 3:16). The man was cursed to "hard labor" (Gen. 3:17).
One very, very important point. The biblical curse is not what we often think of today as a curse. A biblical "blessing" is when God turns His face toward you, and the biblical "curse" is when He "turns away". "The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face to shine upon you." That's the biblical idea of the blessing and the curse. The curse is to be at odds with God.
I guess I find this an interesting study and I question the interpretation as the tradition of men have taught it, as I think it comes from the influence of the Greek, as in Pandora, etc.
I do believe that women were on equal footing in the garden, as both were giving dominion over all of creation. And the word often translated "helper" is the same word used of God and armies elsewhere. So I think we have really messed up the meaning of helper when applied to the woman for the most part. We have nowhere that Adam was told to rule the woman, etc.
I won't go into all that I am questioning as I study this more intently, but I do question the way we are told about man and woman in the garden and the way the curse goes.
When I dig into words and their grammar, it does not seem to say that. But I do also see where we got this long tradition of Greek culture's influence. And this makes perfect sense as to why some men to this day perceive entitlements and rights over women and there is so much abuse to women and children through generations. They were taught incorrectly about women and children.
Anyhow, I will not go into all of that here so as not to hijack your blog...as I am known to do from time to time.
Blessing to you.
At the outset, it is quite clear that men (and women) are not what they are supposed to be. As such, men often do not fulfill the roles God gave them, and women do not fulfill the roles God gave them. Many times, I agree, people will abuse Scripture to fit their personal preference, allowing for husbands to abuse wives, etc. We're in agreement here -- it is undeniably wrong.
Having said that, it is not mere "tradition of Greek culture" or even the Church that has laid out a hierarchy, a structure. Indeed, without such a structure, things cannot function smoothly. We would agree, for instance, that Paul was not merely speaking out of Greek culture when he said, "I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ" (1 Cor. 11:3). Paul wasn't speaking from misguided "male superiority" when he instructed that wives "be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord" (Eph. 5:22). (He explains why: "For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church" (Eph. 5:23). Nor was Peter speaking from male chauvinism when he wrote, "You wives, be submissive to your own husbands" (1 Peter 3:1). God appears to have laid out an order of things, a structure. Certainly people can abuse it, but that doesn't mean 1) it's not biblical or 2) it's wrong.
I suspect a big part of the problem is the thinking we tend to retain that "submit" = "inferior". This, of course, is not merely mistaken ... it is heresy. You see, Christ submitted to the Father, but He certainly wasn't inferior.
And, of course, you're always free to come to your own conclusions about "the curse", but it seems to me to be absolutely biblical and even fundamental to the Gospel. That is, if there is no curse, then we don't need salvation. So I don't see it as trivial.
WORK IS NOT THE CURSE, RATHER, EXCESSIVE WORK REQUIRED TO PRODUCE
Adam was originally to work in the Garden but it was pleasure.
Now work is TOILSOME in order to be profitable (Job 7:1)
In a sense you are right...but the cursed is "toil" and ultimately the ability (if that´s what you´d call it) to die... until Jesus made his sacrifice giving us the GIFT of eternal lif.
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