What is Work, Anyway? 

     And what has God to do with it...anyway? When this blogger entered the workforce, it was for money. "No work, no eat," people said. God mattered only on Sundays. 

     Today, about 7 million men of prime working age don't work and don't seek work, up from 5 million in the 1990s. How do they eat? What's the purpose of work? Wealth manager David Bahnsen says it's not a shortage of jobs; it's a collapse of will." 

     Bahnsen makes the case that "every human being is created to be a worker - a producer, co-creator. God made every person to build, to serve, to make something of the world. It began in Eden. Before there was sweat or scarcity, there was a command: Rule and subdue." 

     He said, "God left the world for humans to finish, turn raw material into beauty and order, to draw out the potential of creation." Bahnsen refuses to treat "ministry" as holier than managing a balance sheet. He argues that in "making things and meeting needs we participate in God's creative purpose."

     Behnsen's point is that "creative labor expresses what it means to be human. Work is not a curse...it is a gift to be ordered. When men lose the habit of work, they lose something that no amount of leisure can replace." 

                                  Continued Saturday