A Labor Day Thought - Be the Human Being at the Office

Happy Labor Day one and and all and a special thanks to the members of Glen Burnie Evangelical Presbyterian Church, whose labor provides them the resources to give to our church and generously provide for the needs of me and my family.

I thought I would share a few thoughts with you that came from my Sunday sermon, titled "Your Work Matters to God."

When God created Adam the first thing He did was give him a job, a task, a calling.  When He created Eve, she was not only Adam's wife, but his helper in his work, his first business partner.  The creation of Eve brought about the first family and the first corporation.  Before the fall Adam and Eve engaged in work as created beings, in joyful obedience to God as servants of God and one another.

After the fall they no longer worshiped the God who created them.  As Paul says in Romans 1:25, "they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator" (NIV).  I suggest that they began to worship themselves. 

One reason I believe this is that in the original creation mandate God told them to rule over the plants and animals and the earth (Genesis 1:26ff).  God didn't tell them to rule over one another.  Man would rule over the rest of the created order, but not over his fellow man, only God would rule over man.

After the fall though, among the other consequences, we see in Genesis 3:16 that Eve would desire her husband but he would rule over her. This desire of Eve's was no innocent desire, it is the same desire that sin had for Cain in Genesis 4:7 - a desire to master him.  But Adam would have none of this, he would seek to rule over Eve.  In other words, Adam and Eve would now depersonalize each other and seek to rule one another as they had originally been commissioned to rule over the animals and inanimate objects of the earth.

Or, in still other words, Adam and Eve would now be playing God in each other's lives.

I submit for your consideration that the problems we all face at work are a direct result of the fall, and more specifically a result of our god-playing.  God-playing explains the tyrants and egomanicacs who inhabit all rungs of the corporate ladder.   God-playing also explains the chronic underachievers in an organization.  After all, if you are God you aren't there to put yourself out and produce for the benefit of another, you exist to be worshiped.  What doesn't bring you glory isn't worth your time.  God-playing explains the broken relationships at work, after all, a god can buck no resistance to his will. With such a mindset we don't go to work to love and serve, but to further our own plans and agendas.

The solution to all of this is repentance.  I abdicate the throne of my own life and trust and worship the one true God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  I cease to be God and go back to being a human being among human beings.  I can love and serve and work for the good of another because I no longer have the expectation that others are to love and serve and work for my good.  I become the human being in the office.

Thoughts?