Create Good: Still Fruitful

I worked at a warehouse the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college. My job mainly consisted of loading and unloading trucks, along with tasks such as sweeping the floors. On more than one occasion, I remember thinking, I can’t imagine having to do this kind of work as my primary job once I graduate, as this job was not very intellectually stimulating or challenging for me.

Though it didn’t cross my mind back then, it was the kind of work where I might have been tempted to think, This is what God meant when he said the words "Through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life" and "By the sweat of you brow you will eat food." There was much sweat working in that warehouse each day.

There are countless other jobs, even those that might be intellectually stimulating and rewarding, where we can think that our jobs are only reminders of the curse.

This would be a mistake on our part because it would only be a partial reading of God’s words in Genesis 3:17-19.

We Can Still Create Good in Spite of the Fall

For certain, God addresses Adam and curses the ground and pronounces that the “new normal” will be laborious with phrases like:

• “through painful toil” (v. 17)
• “It will produce thorns and thistles” (v. 18)
• “By the sweat of your brow … until you return to the ground … ” (v. 19)

Yet, while these negative phrases are rough on us, God does not leave us without the possibility of being sustained and the possibility of fruitfulness. There are other phrases throughout this passage that lead us to a different perspective that encourages us in our work.

• “you will eat of it” (v. 17)
• “you will eat plants of the field” (v. 18)
• “you will eat your food” (v. 19)

God continues to allow us to be fruitful. This means that our labors cannot simply be reduced to endless drudgery that just provide a paycheck but leave us with a perpetual scowl on our face.

Instead, we can acknowledge that while our work may sometimes (or often) feel like we are trying to run while having an anchor attached to us, there are good and sometimes even great things that spring from the work we do.

I think that this was even the case when I was working in the warehouse. Often, I did not merely think that I had completed a mindless task but felt like I had done work that gave me a sense of satisfaction and was also a benefit to other people. There was fruitfulness if I was actually willing to look around to see it.

Perhaps there is more good that we produce from our work than we typically recognize because our attention is too narrowly focused on the metaphorical thorns and thistles rather than the dimensions of flourishing.

God’s Mercy in Common Grace

And then there is an unspoken but fundamental assumption there in Genesis 3:17-19. It is that, in spite of the Fall, the world goes on, and there is work that remains available to us. God was not obligated to say that any possibilities remained for work and fruitfulness, but indeed we are still able to be participants in God’s created order.

One way of thinking about this is what some theologians like myself call the doctrine of common grace. This is an expression of God’s mercy to His world and to his creatures where it is still possible to do work, indeed to even create good things through our work. Though the curse means that our work will be more difficult, common grace means that we can still be fruitful, though we may also have weeds and thorns that appear. Think of it this way: there is actually some good news for our work amid the curse.

The possibility of fruitfulness and the good news of common grace remind us that our lives need not be only exercises in futility. Possibilities to create good await us in our labors; are we courageous enough to see and seize our opportunity?

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Create Good

It takes work to create good. It takes time and energy and resources and, well, work. Somewhere along the way, you might feel discouraged or worn out or frustrated by the whole thing, so we've asked a few people in The High Calling network to talk to us about creating and cultivating good things. We hope this series, Create Good, inspires you to keep looking up, pressing on, and doing good. We pray you find the inspiration to "not grow weary in doing good." God sees your work. God knows your desire to do good, to create good, to celebrate and cultivate good in the world. God is for you. And so are we.

Featured image by Andy. Used with Permission. Sourced via Flickr.