I spent some time today with a business man, an entrepreneurial type. The focus of our conversation was his concern that in education today, whether public or private, few young people really learn how to be successful at work.
Now work is an old-fashioned term and does not seem to be very popular these days. But the bible does have quite a lot to say about it. And it is the stuff that makes our world go round. Reality is that people who never learn to enjoy work will never really succeed.
Then over lunch my wife began sharing something she had read from Elizabeth Elliot. In her reflective thesis, she made the statement: “The principle cause of boredom is the hatred of work. People are trained from childhood to hate it.” She then described the typical home today where parents often feel guilty about making children do anything that might seem like work. Beds aren’t made. Dishes and other basic chores aren’t done. And the kids learn to play away their lives before, during and after school. And we wonder why so many kids almost seem to think it shameful to have to work! They’ll do almost anything to get out of it.
Elizabeth reminds us that Jesus worked. There is little doubt that he helped his father in the carpenter’s shop learning a trade. That’s how children used to learn… from their parents to mentored them and helped them learn how to work by example. Later Jesus chose almost all his disciples from those who labored with their hands. Even the apostle Paul, a great preacher and a man of brilliant intellect, made tents.
Nearby where I live in Virginia is the birthplace of Booker T. Washington, a renowned African-American who grew up in the South when members of his race were still in slavery. They did the hardest and dirtiest of work. But Booker learned his greatest lesson on work after he became free and had opportunity to go to school. The lesson came from a Christian lady, the founder of the Hampton Institute, who herself washed the windows of the school the day before school started so it would be nice and clean for the children who had been born in slavery but were coming to school for the first time. Booker never forgot that valuable lesson. Later when he founded The Tuskegee Institute, he worked with and required every student there to work. Work he believed was a gift… an opportunity worth discovering.
Wouldn’t it make a difference in our society today if people considered the opportunity to work as a gift, an opportunity from God? This is Christian worldview and should be an important part of educating our children.
Here are just a few of many references to work in the bible:
Work can be very rewarding
Proverbs 12:14 “A man will be satisfied with good by the fruit of his words, and the deeds of a man's hands will return to him.”
Diligent work leads to control of one's situation
Proverbs 12:24 “The hand of the diligent will rule, But the slack hand will be put to forced labor.”
Hard work brings profit while slack work leads to poverty
Proverbs 14:23 “In all labor there is profit, But mere talk leads only to poverty.”
Work done in a slack manner is as good as a piece of work which is later destroyed. Both are valueless
Proverbs 18:9 “He also who is slack in his work Is brother to him who destroys.”
People who are skilled at their work are sought out by people
Proverbs 22:29 “Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand before kings; He will not stand before obscure men.”
St Ignatius Loyola prayed, “Teach us, Good Lord, to labor and to ask for no reward save that of knowing that we do Thy will.”
Elizabeth Elliot reminds us that “As we make an offering of our work, we find the truth of a principle Jesus taught us: Fulfillment is not a goal to achieve, but always the bi-product of sacrifice.”
May God help us to learn and teach the gift of work.
