I Work, You Work, He/She works. We Work and They Work [Draft version]

Animals don’t work, but until recently some people were less free in work than a seal or a lion in living. What does God do for work? And I thought that he had retired on the seventh day

Photo by Daria Sheveleva on Unsplash

We were always told that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. No one knows how long each of those days lasted or how long the time out lasted. Since that was billions of years ago, I believed that God had retired. But his son Jesus said a little over two thousand years ago: “My Father is at work until now, so I am at work.”

OK, understood, but what do they do? And why and what did he say that for?

Hyper-synthetic Wiki description of the evolution of work

An old thing: subject to subject

• Slavery or slave societies: taking advantage of the labor of the dominated (defeated in wars), the weak (children abandoned by their parents) or debtors (by inheritance or circumstance) was the common form that physical work took. A master owned a person who had no rights or value and was considered inferior. The free man did not work, but enjoyed recreational leisure, being his own master, full of rights, valuable to society and superior. The first human civilization (and its economy) was built on slave labor, a phenomenon that some authors defined as natural (Aristotle). This crime against humanity lasted for more than twenty centuries (and there are still vestiges of this labor institution).
• Servitude: a form of social and legal contract by which one person (the serf, usually a peasant) remained in the service and subject to the lordship of another (a feudal lord). The serfs were free men subject to the land.
• Vassalage: it was the relationship of fidelity and loyalty that existed between a nobleman and his feudal lord. In return the vassal received control of a piece of land and its population.

A modern renovation: subject to object

• Wage relations (post-slavery): reason and economics noted that development was less convenient with slavery than with paid work. Industrialization ‘enslaved’ machines to physical labor.

Postmodern variations: object to object or object to subject

• Technology seems to ‘supplant man’, taking away all personal satisfaction and the stimulation of creativity and responsibility. Now the man is a “slave” of the machines, or even the machines are prisoners of other machines.

Some diverse theses about work

• Sociological: work is the activity of the body or intelligence to generate the material and immaterial wealth that sustains society. It is the time spent for profit, remuneration or nothing (‘unproductive’) in pursuit of success.
• Capitalist (utilitarianism): instrument of production for the generation of profits.
• Socialist: is a commodity that the worker sells to the owner of the goods in exchange for money.
• Spiritual: all kinds of action carried out by man regardless of his characteristics or circumstances. It is a sign of human nature that determines the inner characteristic of him.
• Mystical: God plays rejoicing in the art of creating. He creates by playing, without a frame. He sows dancing and sings in the harvest. His work has no time or effort or surplus value, not even profit. It is fruitful, but not lucrative. It is a complete dedication, willingly, for the love of loving what is done.

Job characteristics

• Inscribed in human and divine nature (essence): creativity
• Necessary vital subsistence activity (provisional): responsibility
• Fixed element of social life (process)
• In permanent evolution (science and technology): a set of instruments that man uses in his work.
• Mechanized and automated (industrialized)
• Man does it as a preconceived imitation of God

My understanding of the work equation for God (vocation and happiness)

• It’s a Mission. To do everything according to the will of God, to do his work and not ours. Put everything in his hands. Listen carefully to the Boss’s mandate and respond accordingly.
• Do everything with love, grateful. This means thinking about the happiness of the recipient more than the personal benefit of doing something.
• That is the humility of helpfulness, of diligence that must be the essence of work.
• Time grows exponentially to infinity. Every second spent in this way is multiplied by a hundred. 100% results guaranteed. Fully 100% guarantee!