Is Work A God?

Do we idolize work? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Today, we’re looking at two verses from Ecclesiastes 4:

7 Again, I saw vanity under the sun: 8 one person who has no other, either son or brother, yet there is no end to all his toil, and his eyes are never satisfied with riches, so that he never asks, “For whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure?” This also is vanity and an unhappy business.

Let’s start with talking about feminism. Many women today have been bought a lie that says that they can have everything that a man has the same way. They just have to make the sacrifice of not having children in the sake of pursuing a career. News flash. Men and women are different. A man can father children all throughout his lifetime. A woman has a certain limited timeframe and too many women are putting off children in the name of pursuing a career and then finding later on when they are alone that they regret it.

After all, you have the career and then…..what? What do you have to show after that? This does not mean that all men or women have to get married and have children to have a positive impact on the world, but if you are pursuing a career just for the sake of a career, you are selling yourself short.

Meanwhile, if you have riches and no one after you, why are you putting in all this work? Why not indeed kick back and enjoy your life? Let someone else take over the reins of your company, have enough to live on, and take time to enjoy the world that God created. In our country today, we often think we have to be working to be doing something productive.

I have a substack that I encourage you all to subscribe to called The Gaming Theologian and I recently wrote this piece. In it, I wrote about the death of George Wendt, most famous for playing Norm Peterson on Cheers. I contended that while Wendt could likely say the most important thing he did in his life was be a husband and a father, if someone thought his life was not used since he gave it to acting, they would be wrong. Wendt was part of a field that gave us stories, several small stories that turned out to be part of a larger story about a simple neighborhood tavern. Those stories united us so much that for the series finale, 93 million people tuned in.

Work, but make sure you know what you are working for. Do not work just for the sake of work. Your true identity is not to be found in your work. Your true identity is to be found in Christ. If all you do is work and then have no one to pass it on to, someone else will take what you worked all your life on and you will be forgotten in the sands of history.

Next time, we will look at one of my favorite topics, friendship.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

The Sin of Envy

What makes envy so different? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We read the following in Ecclesiastes 4:4-6:

4 Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man’s envy of his neighbor. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.

5 The fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh.

6 Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind.

Envy is a strange sin in comparison to all the others. Murder is a sin, but one can understand why someone would want to, for instance, in the case of getting revenge for a perceived wrong done to them. Such a person could delight in eliminating someone whom they do not like.

Theft is a sin, but one can understand the desire to have wealth. Adultery is a sin, but one can understand the desire to have sex. Pornography is a sin, but one can understand the desire to look at the naked human form outside of a marital covenant. I am not saying that these are right to do, but we can understand why people do them. The reason we commit sin is normally that we think that we get something out of it.

Envy is different.

I don’t know anyone who has ever enjoyed envy. Envy causes us to look at someone with animosity and wish we had what they had. To some extent, I do not think wanting what someone else has is always a bad thing. This is why we have role models and mentors. There are people we are told to emulate. I think it is fine for me to look at people with good marriages and say “I want that”, but it is not right for me to look at them and say “I hate that you have that and I don’t!”

In this passage, we deal with the case of envy. The man who works and works but does so out of envy has done something meaningless. He could reach his goal, but then what? HIs desire wasn’t so much the good of the object desired, but rather the being superior to his fellow man in having it, or at least being equal.

The Teacher contrasts this with the fool, a term that shows up in the Proverbs. This is the person who doesn’t do any work and in the end, his own body dies. Still, the Teacher says that it is better to have peace in what one does than to do work out of envy. Envy is something that will destroy a person from within.

If you want something, it is important to ask why you want it. If you want it just because the other person has it, then you do not really want it and it will bring you no joy to acquire it. If your wanting it leads you to work hard and become a better person while still delighting in what the other person has and being able to be happy for them, then you are on a better path. As a man struggling with the divorced life, this is something I have to remind myself of regularly. When other people marry, they are not hurting me intentionally or depriving me. Indeed, I try to give students who are getting married here advice to make sure they stay married and offer any help to them I can along the way.

Envy profits no one. It is the one sin that brings us no pleasure when we commit it.

Next time, we’ll look more at the question of work.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Where’s The Justice?

It’s not just a musical number.

At the start of this section, the Teacher asks a question about justice.

Again I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them. 2 And I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive. 3 But better than both is he who has not yet been and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun.

As I said about this in my own research:

Ecclesiastes 4:1 continues the problem of corrupt judges with the poor having an oppressor and no one to comfort them. The idea of a comforter and the poor being oppressed shows up twice while the tears of the oppressed show up only once. This could indicate that the standout shows what the Teacher wants the audience to focus on. Under the sun, the poor suffer and no help comes. He says he considers the dead happier than those alive, but better still those not yet been born to see what goes on under the sun. The Teacher looks and sees injustice in the courts and suffering by the poor and sees a great evil.

Justice is a powerful cry in our world. The musical Death Note actual has the main antagonist sing about it as his theme song.

In our political climate today, it is easy to just tag the word “justice” on to something and it gets traction. Social justice. Racial justice. Economic justice. Environmental justice. After all, no one is against justice. Right?

The Teacher in this case is concerned about legal justice. He sees the poor as being oppressed by those in power and considers them so bad off that those who are dead are better off than they. He goes even further then and says that while the dead are better off, those who have not been born are still better off because they have not seen what goes on under the sun.

Again, as I will expound on later, when we see under the sun in the text, we should see the Teacher as speaking about this mortal realm. He is also speaking about it I contend apart from divine revelation. That does not mean that he is an atheist, but it means that this is as far as you can go without any special revelation. The Teacher is a realist. He does not sugarcoat anything. He sees a dark world and if my analysis of Ecclesiastes 2 is any indication, he longs for a world where somehow, we can get back to Eden. He sees how far we have fallen. It could be that we need to see how utterly hopeless our situation is before we see what the hope we have really is.

Next time, we will look at what the text has to say about envy.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Death Awaits You!

What happens when it comes? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Part of my idea of Ecclesiastes is that the writer is showing what can be known from reason alone and without the idea of revelation. If so, what happens when we get to the end of chapter 3? First, the Teacher says:

16 Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness, and in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness. 17 I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work. 18 I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but beasts. 19 For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. 20 All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return. 21 Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth? 22 So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot. Who can bring him to see what will be after him?

In my writing on this, I looked throughout the book at the phrase “under the sun”, which shows up here. As I said there:

In this reference, the Teacher speaks about seeing wickedness in the place of judgment which Ryken says refers to a courthouse. The problem consists not just in that injustice exists where justice should take place, but also that no remedy exists for the problem.[1] Even if corrupt judges get replaced by good judges, those can also get replaced by more corrupt judges or become corrupt themselves. As said by Lord Acton, “Power corrupts.” Psalm 82 gives an example of these kinds of people who consider themselves gods of judgment, but they will die like mere men.

[1] Philip Graham Ryken, Ecclesiastes (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2010), 100-101.

Death comes to the wicked and the powerful, but it comes to everyone else. It also comes to the beast. The Teacher asls who knows which way the spirit goes when a person dies. The same applies to animals. It is for reasons like this that I think the Teacher is taking a viewpoint that what if all you have is the wisdom of the world. What will that get you? If anything, it could be a reductio ad absurdum for the meaningfulness of God in a Christian’s life.

The Teacher is a realist. Death changes everything. An atheist today could say “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!” The Teacher could agree, but would not be able to let go of that last part. “Tomorrow, we die.” If we die tomorrow, what was the meaning of today?

The Teacher is raising hard questions, questions everyone needs to think about and questions we will think about as our study continues.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

What Is Our Task?

What should we do? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Here is the next part from Ecclesiastes 3:

9 What gain has the worker from his toil? 10 I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. 12 I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; 13 also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.

14 I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. 15 That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.

A socialist today could think this is a critique, possibly, of capitalism. What has the worker gained from his toil? The Teacher does not have economic concerns in mind. He has concerns of meaning. What will it benefit a man to work? What does he gain? He dies in the end.

I do appreciate the emphasis on beauty. God makes things beautiful when such is proper. Christians need to reclaim a Christian view of beauty. No Christian should say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

The Teacher also says God has put eternity into the hearts of man. Man has a concept of the past, present, and future, and he can glimpse an idea of eternity. It is still incomprehensible. We cannot fathom God existing for eternity and for many of us, there has been at least one point in our lives where the idea of Heaven being forever has been frightening.

And in all of this, what does the Teacher say is God’s gift to man? It is to enjoy his life. This is also done with the toil that a man does. A man should work, and when he is done working, he can enjoy his life. This is the gift of God to mankind.

What God does will in some way endure forever. Many Christians have this idea of the Earth being destroyed in their eschatology. Not at all. That would have been unthinkable to the Jewish mind. This is God’s world. No. God is going to redeem the world instead. We will look at this more later on as we go through the book.

All of this should leave us in awe of God. The Teacher, whatever his other views are, does have a great awe of God. He struggles to make sense of the world around him and that can lead him to both despair and awe.

The Son of Man came to seek and save that which is lost. The Father does the same. One thing the Teacher tells us God seeks is what has been driven away. This could be a rare hint of evangelism of a sort in the Old Testament.

Tomorrow, we’ll start discussing death.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Turn, Turn, Turn

Did you just start singing the Byrds? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Something amazing about the Teacher is that he has a way with words. The Teacher says things that even read in English have a beautiful poetry to them. More than 2,000 years after in 1962, a song was released called Turn, Turn, Turn and was aside from those three words and a call for peace instead of referring to a time for war, every word came straight from this passage.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

2 a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
3 a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

We could analyze every bit of this easily, but I do not think it would be that edifying since I think the Teacher here is simply speaking of a rhythm of life. This was something that was pointed to in the first chapter talking about the sun rising and the sun setting and that there is nothing new. This does not mean anything such as new inventions or ideas, but actually a rather scientific idea that the natural order runs and it doesn’t deviate.

There are some aspects of the above that could be worth commenting on. Some people might be surprised to hear there is a time to hate, but this is definitely so. Our culture speaks of hate in such a way that it is always bad and it speaks of love in such a way as if it is always good. This is not so. You should love that which is good and you should hate that which is evil. If you tell me you don’t hate anything, I will point to realities like murder, cancer, and starving children and ask if you hate those or not.

I also do think there is a time for war, but the end goal of a war should be peace. War should be used to deal with those damaging the peace just like police do the same on a local level. War is a sad reality in our world and it should be a last resort, but when the time comes, I do think it is appropriate for a nation to defend itself and/or its own allies.

Next time, we will talk about work and joy more.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Carpe Diem

Should we seize the day? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

At times in Ecclesiastes, passages show up called Carpe Diem passages by scholars. These are where the Teacher speaks of something in a more positive light. It is a way of saying “Jump on this! Take it! It’s good! Run with it!” Here, we see the first of those passages.

Something strange takes place in the end of the chapter. God returns for the second mention in the book after 1:13. The Teacher recommends that a man eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. (2:24) How should one see the reference to God here? Enns does not read anything favorable in the text. For Enns, rather than a sort of “Carpe Diem” approach, the Teacher instead means that God does whatever He wants and that can also be absurd. God gives wisdom to who He wants, and He gives folly to who He wants. Perhaps the Teacher has the approach then of “Might as well make the most with what you’ve got.” God does what God does, and no one can do anything about it.[1]

Bartholomew does offer a contrast in that the Teacher still describes enjoying life as a gift of God. Bartholomew says that the Reformers saw a celebration of human life as God gave it to man. He contends that the Teacher remains in the Israelite tradition which includes the goodness of God. Eating and drinking are a reference to the shalom that God intended for His people to have.[2] Perry has something in between in mind with his idea from verse 25 that the idea of who eats and enjoys, but the “I” means that man has the responsibility to make the most of his life under the sun. In the Israelite tradition, all depends on God and thus if any joy comes in this life, somehow that joy must come from God. One can also find despair in life, but in this way of thinking, the Teacher might say, “If you have to go with joy or despair, might as well have some joy.”[3]

Rindge takes an approach akin to seeing both sides and says “Death relativizes the use of goods in two apparently disparate ways. On the one hand, death renders the relentless pursuit of (and attempt to control) pleasure meaningless. On the other hand, another uncontrollable aspect of death (inheritance) provides an impetus to derive enjoyment from the use of goods (food, drink, toil).”[4] If the claims above concerning Ecclesiastes 2 mirroring the Garden of Eden hold up, it could mean then that the great divide comes in the form of death. Pleasure has meaning if death plays no threat, but death changes the way one approaches life. Atkinson implies the same in saying that no matter how much one works, death still comes.[5]

Miller opens his section on these verses with the heading of “Enjoy life!” He argues that verse 26 has God give desirable things to good people and the task of gathering and working for those that God considers good.[6] There could exist an element of both. The resignation of Enns could mean that to face reality on the nature of life, but the other side could still say that a man might as well make the most of life still.

Ecclesiastes sums up the matter in 12:13 with a Compiler giving the whole duty of man as fearing God and keeping His commandments. To this end, we must examine what it means to fear God. About this, Garrett says that “This ‘fear’ must be distinguished from any idea of terror. It is a phrase used constantly throughout Scripture to describe the appropriate response of human beings to the self-revelation of the God who has created and redeemed his people[7].”

Longman says that:

After all, if wisdom depends on understanding the world correctly, how can that be achieved if one does not acknowledge that God himself is a fundamental part of the cosmos? Everything must be understood in relationship to Yahweh himself. This is what leads to humility, which comes, after all, from knowing that there is a greater power in the universe.[8]

 

My problem with this statement comes in describing God as a fundamental part of the cosmos. For the Abrahamic faiths, all of the cosmos depends on God. He does not just have a role in the system. He grounds the system in entirety. Knowing everything depends on God should increase our reverence for Him. Elihu certainly spoke truly in Job 34:14-15 when he said that if God withdrew His breath, all life would perish.

When Scripture tells people to fear God, it does not mean to live in terror, but to live in awe remembering your place in the universe. The Teacher even warns in Ecclesiastes 5:1-2 to:

“Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil. Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few.”

Next time, things will take a turn as we go to Ecclesiastes 3.

I suspect only certain people will understand that reference.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

[1] Enns, 49-51.

[2] Bartholomew,151-152.

[3] Perry, 84.

[4] Matthew S. Rindge, Mortality and Enjoyment: The Interplay of Death and Possessions
in Qoheleth, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 73 no 2 Apr 2011, p 265-280, https://research.ebsco.com/c/trvdli/viewer/pdf/bwdhi53ysn

[5] Tyler Atkinson, “Overcoming Competition through Kairological Enjoyment: The Implications of Qoheleth’s Theology of Time for the Ethics of Work,” Studies in Christian Ethics, 26 no 4 Nov 2013, p 395-409, https://research.ebsco.com/c/trvdli/viewer/pdf/32hv2f7gjz

[6] Miller, Ecclesiastes, 60.

[7] Graeme Goldsworthy, Proverbs: The Tree of Life (ed. Paul Barnett; Reading the Bible Today Series; Sydney, South NSW: Aquila Press, 2011), 35.

[8] Tremper Longman III, How to Read Proverbs (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2002), 55.

Time To Get To Work

Is work worth it? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We move on now to Ecclesiastes 2:18-23. I have written previously here about my issues with making work everything in our lives. This is a danger I think Christians are sadly especially prone to. For now, my thoughts that I wrote on this passage:

What if someone says “Forget pleasure and go with hard work.” The Teacher works hard and then he asks the question, “What good came of it?” Even granting Solomonic authorship, Solomon did not know the future and there lies a great irony in that in the biblical narrative, all that Solomon did to build the nation of Israel came undone in the lifetime of his son Rehoboam when the kingdom split in two. The Teacher says that a fool might come after him. In the case of Solomon, that did happen.

Modern readers must remember that in the world of the Old Testament, great hope came in having a descendant. Abraham in Genesis feared that all his immense wealth would go to someone not related to him. Once a son came to a family, then the family could see itself as living on. The son could go on and have more heirs and a person would not disappear into the sands of history.

The Teacher can look at this situation and says “So what? You had a son. That son could grow up and turn into someone worthwhile who will honor you. He could also grow up to ruin your legacy.” A man can work himself to the bone and in the end when he passes away, everything that the man did gets wasted by a foolish ancestor of his and the man has no control over it. Consider perhaps all the changes in the nation of Judah when a good king comes only followed by a wicked king who undoes all the good that took place before him. A reader sees this as grim, and the Teacher agrees using the word despair. This word shows up in Isaiah (57:10) and Jeremiah (2:25 and 18:12) and refers to a situation with no hope. The teacher has tried it all and, in the end, has said, “hopeless.”  Even if someone comes with the rejoinder of “Yes, but the son turned out good”, then the Teacher could just say, “For now. What about the next one? And the next one? And the next one?” Eventually, one comes across an ancestor who ruins everything for the legacy.

All this toil then gives a man nothing overall. The saying comes to mind of “You can’t take it with you.” The prince and the pauper both die in the end. Under the sun, they have identical fates. Not only this, but also a man possibly makes himself unhealthy by all the work that he does. Sleeplessness comes to the man who wants to work and thinks he has not accomplished all that he needs to do. He goes to bed wondering “How will I ever get everything done tomorrow that I need to do?” and sometimes as a result he does not sleep at all. When the time for work comes, if he shows up at all, he shows up unrested and unprepared and falls even further behind starting a vicious cycle. Under the sun, even work becomes meaningless.

So the Teacher has destroyed another path to meaning. You will not find it in work. Fortunately, tomorrow we will discuss a possible glimmer of hope the Teacher sees.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

What Is Play?

Is it just a waste of time?

Just like work, people have a hard time defining play. James Evans defines play as “Work without anxiety.”[1] Unfortunately, without him defining work, how can the reader know what constitutes work without anxiety? Not only that, but many a player can speak of anxiety. Consider athletes working up for the big game. Video game players know of many times getting up to the final boss battle and feeling the tension build in themselves in the hopes that they will succeed. Both of these people experience anxiety in their play and both with a victorious outcome will consider the anxiety worth it.

Robert Johnston well recognizes the problem. He writes, quoting George Sheehan, that “Perhaps even more difficult than discovering play is defining it.”[2] In Johnston’s own words, he says that like definitions of words such as art, life, and love, play remains elusive.[3] In the end, he defines play as an activity freely and spontaneously entered into.[4] My problem with this definition lies in the spontaneous part. If I plan to write a research paper and then decide to set aside a specific time for video games to relax after that, does the fact that the time came planned instead of spontaneously mean that play has not been achieved?

Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play, has studied play for decades. Despite this, he hesitates to give a definition comparing such to explaining a joke.[5] Instead, he chooses to list the priorities of play such as apparently purposeless (Or done for its own sake), voluntary, inherent attraction, freedom from time, diminished consciousness of self, improvisational potential, and continuation desire.[6] We cannot go into these here, but certain aspects we can recognize. When one gets engaged in something considered authentic play, time passes away so that one looks at the clock and realizes how much time has passed. We do not play normally in order to reach another end. While an athlete, be it physical or Esport, can play for a living, they also do so because they simply enjoy it. If they ceased to enjoy the work, they would likely quit and do something else.

Kevin Gushiken defines play as “The God-given ability and permission to fully enjoy moments of life as God intended, with freedom and pleasure.”[7] A benefit of this definition from a Christian perspective lies in that it places itself easily in a theistic framework. Still, it comes across as a vague definition. Imagine a man driving down the road in the country during the summer and has the windows rolled down and fully enjoys feeling the wind blowing in his face. Does this count as play? Play seems to have an active aspect to it while the man doing this enjoys life from a passive perspective. If someone sits down to enjoy an ice cream cone or a steak dinner, does that constitute play? One can take pleasure in something without it being play. Watching a movie, TV show, or listening to music could count. Video and board games count as play due to requiring active participation.

In the Politics, Aristotle said that “nature requires that we should not only be properly employed, but to be able to enjoy leisure honourably: for this (to repeat what I have already said) is of all things the principal.”[8] After saying this, he gives no major defense. By this, we can get the indication that Aristotle does not present a controversial idea here, but one his audience readily grants.

Aquinas speaks of pleasure with the statement that “two things are requisite for pleasure: namely, the attainment of the suitable good, and knowledge of this attainment.”[9] He then goes on to speak of leisure and play (Note both of them show up) as pleasant insofar as they banish sadness that results from labor[10]. Readers should consider that Aquinas sees work as that which brings sadness and play as that which relieves it.

Ben Witherington goes even further writing that “Play can be seen as an eschatological activity as well as a childlike one.”[11] This means that play has a benefit for man in a temporal sense, but it can also point beyond itself to something greater. Earlier, one definition of work considered was that of co-creation. If in work mankind takes part in the building of the Kingdom of God, could play indicate that mankind is taking part in the joy of the reality of the Kingdom of God?

Consider that when people work, they do their part to bring about something and realize that in some sense, no matter the object of the work, something depends on them. If the employee washing dishes at the restaurant does not wash, the restaurant will have no clean dishes. If the groundskeeper does not work, then weeds will overtake the outdoors area. If the concession worker does not sell the movie ticket, then people will not get in to see the movie. One could say that someone else can do these things, true enough, but for the time being, that activity relies on that one person.

Yet when it comes to play, unless one speaks in a professional sense, a part of society will not break down. If I do not play that video game, society will still function. If children on the playground cease to play jump rope, the playground will still function. If guys do not get together for a poker night, no great loss to the world will take place.

While that might mean some see those activities as useless, in reality, those activities mean that for a time, the world is trusted to the hands of others, including the hands of God. When a person has done his part and then plays, his actions say that God dwells in Heaven and the world can manage under His care. The person lays down his responsibility. In an ironic sense to use a video game as an analogy, when a player sets out to save a video game world, he does so knowing that for the time, he does not have to save the real one. God does that.

In his argument from desire[12], Peter Kreeft speaks of desires that people have naturally and those they have from external conditions. Children in the biblical world did not grow up dreaming of fighting crime like Batman since Batman did not exist for them. They did grow up to have natural desires for food, water, beauty, sex, knowledge, and friendship. Part of having a human nature means having these desires.

What if we turned these to something else besides natural desires and looked at behaviors that people naturally participate in that often can serve an end in themselves? In this, three come to mind. The first being sex, in which people often desire sex regardless of if they desire a child or not and if movies like Blue Lagoon could give any indication, people do not need to have much education to know about participating in sex. While people can have sex to have children, many want to have sex simply for the joy of sex itself.

Next comes worship. While to some extent, worship often took place in ancient societies for the good of the harvest, worship also took place for the sake of worship. Worship declares that something has a nature worthy of honor. For Christians, YHWH revealed in Christ meets this criteria. While ancient man apart from divine revelation did not worship YHWH knowingly at least, he still worshipped a being greater than himself.

No surprise should come upon learning to find play the last activity done for its own sake. If people see sex as the highest activity done on the horizontal level between human beings, and worship as the highest activity done by man to God, then perhaps we should see play as the one that has elements of both. Sex often gets referred to as “having some fun” with your spouse and worship has the element of taking joy in God as God. Could play become the unifier in the trinity of three such activities?

Play has an air of privilege to it. Not only do we consider play a blessing, people actually pay to play. Charles Coonradt says that “People really will pay for the privilege of working harder than they will work when they are paid.[13] People hate working in a hot office, but have no problem with a day at the beach. People complain about getting up for work, but they will get up early in the morning if they plan on going fishing.

Play also benefits by getting people to invest in it. In this way, when people play, they do something enjoyable and they can learn. Consider the game ICivics, meant to teach students civics. No less an authority who worked on the game than Sandra Day O’Connor said, “I have often said that iCivics is the most important thing I have ever done.” O’Connor continued, “More so even than serving 25 years on the highest court in this nation.”[14] About this, Johnston says that if play becomes a teacher, play becomes valuable. He even refers to the Teacher saying that we should work and play, playfully.[15]

Looking at all said about play, we can conclude that play requires a free activity entered into for the sake of the activity itself. Play represents freedom and joy in anticipation of a coming eschaton. Play shows a time when people give up control of the world for a moment and try to enjoy the world God made, realizing that He gives us everything richly for our enjoyment. (1 Tim. 6:17) To describe play as a childish pursuit not only speaks of arrogance but goes against the hope of Christianity itself.

After all of this, the Teacher still awaits. He has spoken his thoughts on work and play. We will now see how the book ends and what the Compiler said about the lessons of the Teacher in Ecclesiastes 12:9-14.

[1] James H. Evans Jr., Playing (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010), xiv.

[2] Robert Johnston, The Christian At Play (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1983), 31.

 

[3] Ibid., 32.

 

[4] Ibid., 34.

 

[5] Stuart Brown, Play (New York: Penguin Group, 2010) 16.

 

[6] Ibid., 17

 

[7] Kevin Gushiken, A Theology of Play (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel, 2024), 20.

 

[8] Aristotle Politics: A Treatise on Government, 232.

[9] Thomas Aquinas. The Complete Works of Thomas Aquinas, 2304.

[10] Ibid., 2305.

 

[11] Witherington III, Ben. The Rest of Life: Rest, Play, Eating, Studying, Sex from a Kingdom Perspective (p. 42). Eerdmans. Kindle Edition.

 

[12] Peter Kreeft, “The Argument From Desire”, Peter Kreeft, https://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/desire.htm, Accessed 3/31/2025.

[13] Charles A. Coonradt, The Game of Work: How to Enjoy Work as Much as Play, (Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith Press, 2001), 15.

 

[14] Asi Burak and Laura Parker. Power Play: How Video Games Can Save the World (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017), 61.

 

[15] Robert Johnston, 101.

 

Let’s Talk About Work

What is work? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

My first form of my paper was looking at what Ecclesiastes had to say about work and play. I have since changed that trajectory, but I have the old paper and what it said about work.

Many readers can resonate with what the Teacher says in his writings on work. They go and they work all day and, in the end, what for? They provide for their families, certainly a good, but why? Does anyone really care about the work that they do? If they quit or their boss fires them, the boss can just find someone else to replace them.

To start at the beginning of work, terms need definitions. Unfortunately, the difficulty here is that many writers do not define work. In a volume edited by Meilaender, work gets first defined as co-creation.[1] He also has in the book a writing from Dorothy Sayers who says that in the Christian view of work that “Work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do.”[2] She also calls the secular vocation sacred.[3] Probably the fullest definition of work I came across comes from a more popular work from Lester Dekoster who work as “The form to which we make ourselves useful to others.”[4]

These definitions are unfortunately too broad or too vague. For Sayers, how many people live to do what they consider work? If so, then what happens when a person takes a vacation from it? What happens when the time comes for a person to retire?

Regarding co-creation, if a small child gets out fingerpaints and starts painting on paper, does this get included under co-creation? If he paints all over the wall and Mommy must clean it up, has he still done work? The child can consider it creative still and perhaps rightly so, but the work still gets wiped away and takes away from the clean walls of the residence.

Lastly, while DeKoster has a fuller definition, the problem comes when on the same page he says that this gives meaning to life. Does this imply that a newborn infant who does no work gives no meaning to life? What does this say about someone who retired, or someone severely disabled through whatever means that cannot do work? Does the person who works an exhaustive schedule and works overtime have a life with greater meaning? Do we not hear countless stories of people who worked relentlessly while their children grew up? Do we not hear of people described as “Married to their jobs?” We relate to these questions since some people are workaholics or their work keeps them from really getting to live their lives. DeKoster has a definition that leads to people only being meaningful in work.

One could define work as that which aims towards an end beyond itself. The problem that comes to mind immediately for this one is to consider that of a married couple wanting to have a child and thus engage in sex, but they would not likely count that as work. While they could say that they are going to work in jest, one hardly suspects that they will say that work takes place in the act, even with a hope for something beyond the act. One could argue that the act can differ in that the good of the couple uniting in love counts as a good regardless of if the desired child comes or not. Other activities like having a meal or something light like going for a drive to enjoy autumn leaves could qualify as well, but that does not make them work.

I do not want the perfect to be the enemy of the good, so I intend to use the previous definition for the time being. The benefit of such a definition lies in that it says nothing about meaning. Not being able to work does not mean that one does not have meaning in life or give any meaning in life. The other benefit comes in the fact that work traditionally takes place to reach an end. The man who works every day can work to provide for his family. The women from the church getting together to make a quilt for a new mother are engaging in work even without pay. Another aspect of why I consider this definition beneficial will come when I get to play. I ask the reader to keep that in mind as we move forward.

In our world today, a problem comes when we find our identity in work. When two people meet for the first time at a social gathering, one normally asks the other at one point, “What do you do?” and the other answers by saying “I am a” and then giving their profession. No one asks this with the expected response of “I watch Netflix videos” or “I visit art museums” or “I enjoy Assassin’s Creed games.” The assumption is that what someone does comes in relation to work instead of their hobbies. Work takes precedence.

Picture a world where someone says that they are a house painter. Then along comes an event like COVID-19 and the government decides to shut down the economy. They cannot find work. Not only that, but their job also gets defined as “non-essential.” What does this say about them? Does this mean that society can function without their job and does not need them?

In The End of Burnout, Jonathan Malesic says that “A waitress who lost her job due to the pandemic had no less dignity than she did before stay-at-home orders forced her restaurant to close.”[5] If work gives dignity to a person, then the waitress having to stay home has no dignity. We can agree with the condemnation of sloth, but not all lack of work comes from laziness. The government forced people to take respites from work in the shutdown, and their dignity and humanity remained intact.

Malesic argues that our society puts too much emphasis on work. He considers work burnout not to lie in a problem with the body, but of something wrong in the soul. If work becomes the path that we take to flourishing and fulfillment, what if it does not deliver? If we do all the work and still find emptiness inside of us, then we have made work an idol and that likely drives us to despair.[6]

From a Christian perspective, one could argue that God Himself made sure man did not think this way by instituting the Law of the Sabbath. Even animals had to take a Sabbath rest. (Exodus 20:10) Not only that, but Sabbath Years occurred as well. (Exodus 23:11) In these years, God forbade the working of the ground. God commands this for the good of the land, the people, and the animals.  We also need to consider that this comes in a society populated of people who lived day by day and could not go to a supermarket and get food easily nor had refrigeration to preserve food. This society consisted of day-wager laborers who received a command to stop for one day and that God would provide for them.

Despite that, God still sees work as a good. In the beginning, God plants a garden and calls man to work. Witherington writes that somewhere along the line, work got seen as a negative and considered a result of the fall.[7] The account in Genesis 1:28 telling man to “be fruitful, increase, fill and subdue the Earth, and rule over other living creatures.” These verbs show commands that God gave man to do prior to the Fall. Genesis 2:15 says that man was put in the Garden to work and take care of it. Also, one could argue that in the first part of this command, God gave man the labor of having to have sex with his wife and produce children. Many men if asked to do a job that involved working a garden and eating from any tree except one and having sex with his wife would sign up immediately.

What changed in the fall was not the existence of work, but the nature of work. From that point on, work would be a toil.[8] Genesis contains several alienations. Man gets alienated from himself in that he loses the purpose he originally received in the garden so that now the identity of man at birth comes not in YHWH, but in Adam. Second, alienation from his spouse with these two sometimes having opposing desires. (Gen. 3:16) Most importantly the third, in alienation from God due to sin. I save work for last not because of importance but relevance. Work no longer comes naturally to the man and consists of a joy, but now the ground itself works against man, and man must toil for what he has.

The problem for us comes then in knowing that we should value and celebrate work as a good. We should encourage people to work and we should discourage sloth. We should also have a way of providing for those in need, but that goes beyond the reach of this paper.[9] At the same time, we should not have it so that people who cannot work get treated like lesser citizens and that people do not find their whole identity in work.

An interesting cause of finding identity in work could come in the materialism that our culture has accepted. Weber wrote The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism at the start of the 20th century. In it, he says that in the time earning money became akin to a religious calling. It no longer needed a religious system to back it and considered religion an interference just as much as state intervention.[10] Could this show that if man lives in a universe where people deny God’s reality that his identity must find a foundation in something earthly? In the past, man could say he had identity in the image of God. If man has no sure identity, a logical place to build an identity then comes in work.

If correct, then perhaps work has become an idol for some people. Could this mean that the stigmatization of play that we see comes not from the notion of play itself, but from the view of work? If work has a quasi-religious status and play detracts from work, then ipso facto, play becomes a problem and could even take on the identity of a sin in such a culture. At best, one could treat play as something fine for children, but the adults know better.

Malesic also sees from Maslach, the originator of the original burnout measurement index, that work becomes a way to find value in the world. Maslach recognizes the importance of having psychological needs met at work, writing, “The person who lacks close relationships with friends or family will be far more dependent on clients and colleagues for signs of appreciation.”[11] Malesic then says that when a person does not feel appreciated on the job or lacks community with coworkers, their ability to do the job deteriorates as a result.[12] Apathy sets in for workers which leads to a vicious cycle of less appreciation.

Malesic writes about working with a community of monks in New Mexico at a monastery called Christ in the Desert. These monks set specific work times and when the bell rings, work for the day stops. He writes about this saying “I asked Fr. Simeon, a monk who spoke with a confidence cultivated through the years he spent as a defense attorney, what you do when the 12:40 bell rings but you feel that your work is undone.

‘You get over it,’ he replied.”[13]

These monks do not doubt the importance of their work, but they have no franticness saying that everything must get completed entirely. If one thinks everything has to be done completely, it can lead to exhaustion. The workers who know that they have a reprieve can then get more productive when it comes to their other monk duties, like prayer, and then do more when they return to work the next day. They are also able to practice leniency on themselves and not demand of themselves more than they can do.

Next time, we will cover something hopefully more fun, play.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

[1] Gilbert C. Meilander ed., Working: Its Meaning and Limits (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), 2.

[2] Ibid., 43.

[3] Ibid., 45.

[4] Lester Dekoster, Work: The Meaning of Your Life (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Christian’s Library Press, 1982), 1.

[5] Malesic, Jonathan. The End of Burnout: Why Work Drains Us and How to Build Better Lives. University of California Press. Kindle Edition, 14.

[6] Ibid., 14

[7] Ben Witherington, Work: A Kingdom Perspective on Labor, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2011), 2.

[8] Ibid., 3.

[9] For those interested in such an approach, I recommend The Conservative Heart by Arthur Brooks and When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. Good books on economic principles to better help include Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt and anything by Thomas Sowell.

[10] Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952), 72.

[11] Malesic, 30.

[12] Ibid., 65.

[13] Malesic, 176.