Babel Or Buddhist

The Bible begins with the announcement “In the beginning God created”—not “sat majestic in the heavens,” not “was filled with beauty and love.” He created. He did something. He made something. He fashioned heaven and earth. The week of creation was a week of work. The days are described not by their weather conditions and not by their horoscope readings: Genesis 1 is a journal of work.

We live in a universe and in a history where God is working. Before anything else, work is an activity of God. Before we go to the sociologists for a description of work or to the psychologists for insight into work or to the economists for an analysis of work, we must comprehend the biblical record: God works. The work of God is defined and described in the pages of Scripture. We have models of creation, acts of redemption, examples of help and compassion, paradigms of comfort and salvation. One of the reasons that Christians read Scripture repeatedly and carefully is to find out just how God works in Jesus Christ so that we can work in the name of Jesus Christ.

In every letter St. Paul wrote, he demonstrated that a Christian’s work is a natural, inevitable and faithful development out of God’s work. Each of his letters concludes with a series of directives that guide us into the kind of work that participates in God’s work. The curse of some people’s lives is not work, as such, but senseless work, vain work, futile work, work that takes place apart from God, work that ignores the if. Christian discipleship, by orienting us in God’s work and setting us in the mainstream of what God is already doing, frees us from the compulsiveness of work. Hilary of Poitiers taught that every Christian must be constantly vigilant against what he called “irreligiosa solicitudo pro Deo”—a blasphemous anxiety to do God’s work for him.1

Our work goes wrong when we lose touch with the God who works “his salvation in the midst of the earth.” It goes wrong both when we work anxiously and when we don’t work at all, when we become frantic and compulsive in our work (Babel) and when we become indolent and lethargic in our work (Thessalonica). The foundational truth is that work is good. If God does it, it must be all right. Work has dignity: there can be nothing degrading about work if God works. Work has purpose: there can be nothing futile about work if God works.

The psalm not only posts a warning, it gives an example: “Don’t you see that children are GOD’s best gift? the fruit of the womb his generous legacy? Like a warrior’s fistful of arrows are the children of a vigorous youth. Oh, how blessed are you parents, with your quivers full of children! Your enemies don’t stand a chance against you.”

In contrast to the anxious labor that builds cities and guards possessions, the psalm praises the effortless work of making children. Opposed to the strenuous efforts of persons who, in doubt of God’s providence and mistrust of human love, seek their own gain by godless struggles is the gift of children, born not through human effort but through the miraculous processes of reproduction which God has created among us. The example couldn’t have been better chosen. What do we do to get sons and daughters? Very little. The entire miracle of procreation and reproduction requires our participation, but hardly in the form of what we call our work. We did not make these marvelous creatures that walk and talk and grow among us. We participated in an act of love that was provided for us in the structure of God’s creation.

Jesus leads us to understand the psalmist’s sons in terms representative of all intimate and personal relationships. He himself did not procreate children, yet by his love he made us all sons and daughters (Mt 12:46-50). His job description was “My Father is working straight through . . . . So am I” (Jn 5:17). By joining Jesus and the psalm we learn a way of work that does not acquire things or amass possessions but responds to God and develops relationships. People are at the center of Christian work. In the way of pilgrimage we do not drive cumbersome Conestoga wagons loaded down with baggage over endless prairies. We travel light. The character of our work is shaped not by accomplishments or possessions but in the birth of relationships: “Children are GOD’s best gift.” We invest our energy in people. Among those around us we develop sons and daughters, sisters and brothers even as our Lord did with us: “Oh, how blessed are you parents with your quivers full of children!”

For it makes very little difference how much money Christians carry in their wallets or purses. It makes little difference how our culture values and rewards our work . . . if God doesn’t. For our work creates neither life nor righteousness. Relentless, compulsive work habits (“work your worried fingers to the bone”) which our society rewards and admires are seen by the psalmist as a sign of weak faith and assertive pride, as if God could not be trusted to accomplish his will, as if we could rearrange the universe by our own effort.

What does make a difference is the personal relationships that we create and develop. We learn a name; we start a friendship; we follow up on a smile—or maybe even on a grimace. Nature is profligate with its seeds, scattering them everywhere; a few of them sprout. Out of numerous handshakes and greetings, some germinate and grow into a friendship in Christ. Christian worship gathers the energy and focuses the motivation that transform us from consumers who use work to get things into people who are intimate and in whom work is a way of being in creative relationship with another. Such work can be done within the structure of any job, career or profession. As Christians do the jobs and tasks assigned to them in what the world calls work, we learn to pay attention to and practice what God is doing in love and justice, in helping and healing, in liberating and cheering.

The first people to sing this psalm had expended much effort to get to Jerusalem. Some came great distances and overcame formidable difficulties. Would there be a tendency among the pilgrims to congratulate one another on their successful journey, to swell with pride in their accomplishment, to trade stories of their experiences? Would there be comparisons on who made the longest pilgrimage, the fastest pilgrimage, who had brought the most neighbors, who had come the most times? Then, through the noise of the crowd, someone would strike up the tune: “If GOD doesn’t build . . . guard . . .” The pilgrimage is not at the center; the Lord is at the center. No matter how hard they had struggled to get there, no matter what they did in the way of heroics—fending off bandits, clubbing lions, crushing wolves—that is not what is to be sung. Psalm 127 insists on a perspective in which our effort is at the periphery and God’s work is at the center.