Loving our labor
As I’ve been re-reading Tolkien and reading about him (namely, Tom Shippey’s work), I’ve been struck with how his body of work grew out of nothing other than his pure delight and enjoyment as he engaged in his labors. Sure, there were unsavory elements and lots of “sweat” that characterized much of bringing his writing into publishable form, but no matter how distasteful some of the process, it began and continued in joy.
I think Tolkien lived and practiced a version of Christ-humanity that many of us never even think about, but that Shcaeffer and Kuyper would have delighted in and our pre-Enlightenment fathers would have taken for granted. He never separated his life into strata. He never thought of his myth-making as “work.” But of all his publications, it is certainly this particular body of literature that has born the most fruit and had the broadest and deepest influence upon both literature and society. Whatever can be said of his more “scholarly” publications or of his labors in teaching, it was his myth-making that most comprehensively exercised and employed and exercised his gifts. And it was a pleasure to him. God is gracious this way.
I think Tolkien demonstrates in his own life what mankind in Christ, i.e., the redeemed Adamic humanity, is meant to be. We are the restored image-bearers. And when we look at pre-lapsarian Man, we see that he was a pro-creator, i.e., he was to create “alongside of” God. It was Adam’s cultivating and keeping of the Garden in which he most “looked like” God. He was to take God’s creation and beautifying it, and even gloryfying it. This is part of what it means to be human, to be God’s image-bearer. It is an excercise in spreading God’s dominion insofar as it is the spreading of His glory via His image. Tolkien knew this about Man’s sub-creative urge, and he also knew that fulfilling this urge, i.e., simply being a human as God intended, is a pleasure. Re: John Piper.
This shows two things, among others: First, work is part of what it means to be human, properly speaking, and is therefore not part of the curse. Second, even though sin and its ramifications have entered into the story of man so that his work is not as fruitful and satisfying as it might have been, joy is the foundation of all reality, not sorrow and destruction. Perhaps Tolkien, who loved his work and who mourned the evil marring of man’s holy attempts at cultivation, was shaky in this latter point – at least emotionally speaking.
Work is part of what it means to be human. God put man in the garden and said, “Cultivate and keep,” before sin came into the picture. When sin came, God cursed the ground, which would more readily bear thorns than fruit. Thus Man’s work (and life) would become arduous and painful and less productive (and therefore less satisfying) than it might have been. But Christ wore a crown of thorns, thus bearing on his own brow the sweat, blood, pain, and woody spikes that were the curse of Adam. Thus, Christ saved not only man’s soul, but man’s work and labor, too, on the cross. It’s why Paul is able to conclude at the very end of 1 Corinthians 15, after a discussion about the resurrection of the true Man, “therefore, work…” That is, the resurrection assures us that our labors will not be in vain no matter how ephemeral and short-lived they may seem, but that Christ will save us in the totality of our humanity so that everything that we put our hands to will be dragged through death into His resurrection. Our whole beings, including everything we “put our back into” is redeemed.
And Christ’s resurrection also means joy, not pain, is the underlying reality of all we see and of all our labors. Even though sin is with us, and death and sorrow and sweat, it does not have the first or final word. In fact, life begins in pleasure and can be lived in thanksgiving in the very face of sin’s destruction precisely because it ends in joy. God means for our work to be pleasurable to us. He means for us to delight in it as redeemed human beings. He gives us commandments and He makes our fulfilling them a joy. He commands Adam to multiply and He makes the means of multiplying a pleasure. He commands us to cultivate our lives (the corollary of the sixth commandment) and He has made the most forthright means to this, i.e., eating, pleasurable. The beginning of every work, every fulfillment of God’s commands, is a pleasure to us. And though it involve arduous and even unsatisfying toil, its beginning and end teach us the nature of reality. There is an elvish sort of light underneath all the shade.
October 1st, 2008 at 9:23 am
Hoye,
I think you’re bang on target from JRRT’s perspective; if you haven’t yet, then read “Leaf by Niggle,” buried (nowadays) in the Tolkien Reader along with his longish essay “On Fairy Stories.” It’s his attempt at allegorizing his “work”, and what he saw it (eventually) becoming.
And somewhat significant, isn’t it, that Christ transformed our curse into his glory? The image of man’s toil, labor, and sweat, becomes Christ’s crown. Something redemptive in our own labor? our own work? Methinks so….
October 2nd, 2008 at 8:26 am
I appreciate the point you make that “humans are created for work.” There is a popular book in Christian circles called something like Men: Created for Work, and this book is indicative of an overall emphasis in Reformed circles on the dominion mandate for MEN. But we do a disservice to Women when we fail to recognize that they too are created for work–albeit different work than that of men.
I suspect that one of the great appeals of feminism is that it ostensibly offers useful work for women. And women want to work and they desire the joy that comes from satisfying labor. Of course the great lie of feminism ultimately is that women are robbed of the greatest joy that comes from the most satisfying labors–those they are created to do–rather than those labors that they usurp from men.
For so many modern “stay at home” moms, there is simply no joy in their labors because we have lost the concept of Female Work. They have a vague notion of “staying at home,” but the kids are at school, the clothes are from the Mall, the dinner is take-out. No wonder women are dissatisfied.