Photo by Larry Wynn
I want you to think about paradise for a second. Where are you?
Sure, the cultural idea of paradise is a tropical beach somewhere with opalescent waves rolling up on the shore, but what is your idea of paradise?
I've always been a huge fan of the mountains. I love waking up in a mountain cabin and seeing the mist that surrounds the peaks and covers the valleys burn off with the rising sun. That is my paradise.
Your paradise could be whatever you want, I'm not going to judge. We all have a slightly different idea of what paradise is to us.
Now for the more important question. What are you doing in your vision of paradise?
If you're on a beach, you're probably just laying in the sand or maybe building a sand castle or riding the waves. Something leisurely, right?
If you're in the mountains like I am, you might be taking pictures of the scenery or relaxing with a cup of coffee on the porch.
Sounds like fun, doesn't it?
You know what you're most certainly not doing? Working.
People don't work in paradise. They just live and rest and relax and...well, they just be. I know that's not grammatically accurate, but forget grammar! We're in paradise! There's no need for that kind of hostility to hold us back.
And you know what? I can make this case Biblical, too. Check it out:
And to the man He said,
“Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you.
All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it.
It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains.
By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made.
For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.”
Genesis 3:17-19 (NLT)
Boom! See that there? Once God kicked Adam and Eve out of Paradise, that's when work began. So work is a product of sin and therefore has no place in God's perfect world. Work is evil.
Aren't you glad we got that sorted out? I know I am.
Except this obviously isn't reality.
I'm sorry to put that little nugget in front of you just to take it away, that wasn't very kind of me, but the truth is that work, in and of itself, isn't evil. We have this idea of paradise that says "No work, no worries," and that kind of paradise can be nice for a short while.
Once upon a time, I stumbled across this "revelation" of work and felt like I'd reached an epiphany that would change the world. "Everyone must know! Work is evil! God never intended for anyone to have to work!"
There’s a subtle, yet pervasive, lie about paradise that we’ve all come to believe and, quite frankly, it has made us miserable.
It would stand to reason that, if God had never intended for us to work, and if we as Christians should be trying to ease the world into a more Heaven-esque state, we shouldn't work.
I cringe to admit that I ever believed that. Seriously. In my own defense, I never really acted on it, nor did I fully believe it, but I had this train of thought that was leading me in that direction.
It's funny that I used Genesis to justify this thought process, too, because that's exactly where it also falls apart.
The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it.
Genesis 2:15
So the Lord God formed from the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and the man chose a name for each one. He gave names to all the livestock, all the birds of the sky, and all the wild animals. But still there was no helper just right for him.
Genesis 2:19-20
All of this happened before sin, and Adam still had a couple of jobs to do. First he had to "tend and watch over" the Garden of Eden. That's a job. Then he had to name all the animals in the Garden and all over the world whatever he thought they should be named. That's a job, too.
"I'm gonna name you Carl." -Adam (probably)
(Photo by Larry Wynn)
Granted, these are pretty cool jobs. Who wouldn't want to the job of naming all the animals? That sounds awesome to me. And I'm not much of a farmer, but I feel like tending to the Garden of Eden probably wouldn't have been all that bad.
Here's the main thing, though. Adam still had to work. He still had to do things. The difference between his work before sin and his work after sin is that Adam's work after sin became necessary to sustain life. His work before sin was simply work for the pleasure of working and accomplishing something.
More importantly, Adam was working for God before sin, not for himself or for some other human boss.
There's an old saying that comes to mind here: People leave managers, not jobs. And according to this article, which itself cites a Gallup study of more than a million employees, something like 75% of people who voluntarily leave a job do so because of their boss, not the position itself.
We don't like working for other people. And if you look at the world around you, especially at those who are living in poverty and working at or below minimum wage, you'll understand quickly just how stressful it is for people to work so hard at achieving the bare minimum.
That, folks, is what God never wanted for His people. God never wanted His people to trudge through dreaded labor and toiling for human measures that will pass away given a long enough timeline. God doesn't mind us working. He wants us to work. But God doesn't want that work to be so darn awful.
Now the truth is obvious. We'll never escape this system of necessary work on this side of Heaven. It isn't going to happen. If you don't work, you don't live.
In true form, paradise is lost.
But that paradise wasn't a haven from labor. That paradise was a worksite where God Himself was the foreman. And as Jesus says in the New Testament, "For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light." (Matthew 11:30, NLT)
God wants our work. God wants our effort. But He wants our efforts directed towards His purpose. If we labor for anything else, we're just putting extra strain on ourselves to try and fit into a model that was never intended for us in the first place.
The solution to our problem is staring us right in the face, and I'm going to give you one more passage of scripture to back this up.
Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people.
Colossians 3:23 (NLT)
Paul was talking to slaves when he wrote these words. Literal slaves.
Whatever task you're working at, work as if your work is just for God and not for yourself or for other people. When our labor is given over to God, He will honor it. He will take it and turn it into far more than we could ever do ourselves.
That's the real paradise. When our labor is for God, we will find ourselves (metaphorically) in a semblance of the paradise that God promised His people at creation and that He promises us in eternity.
Or...you know. You could end up here.
That paradise isn't a place. Paradise is following the Lord's command where He leads and using your labor for Him.
And, if you're lucky, that paradise might take you to a sandy tropical beach someday.