Stewardship and the Creation Mandate – Classic

So, we are trying something today, and the topic is "Faith and Work." We're going to try and do some academic stuff and some practical stuff all in one fell swoop. And we may need some prayer in the midst of this, but we'll see how it goes.

Now, let me start off by introducing kind of the premise of what we're dealing with. We have talked a lot, in many of these podcasts, about how Christians shouldn't divide up their lives, that there isn't the righteous and sacred and secular, but that our faith and work belong together; they belong connected.

And Bill's been a part of the faith and work movement for a long time. And Gordon, today, is just along for the ride. Okay? We've got him in here to talk about some Old Testament passages that feed into thinking this way.

And so, we're asking him for his expertise, and we're also going to be asking him for his impressions about what we're talking about as someone who works with Scripture. And in some cases, we're going to be informing him about what we're asking him about as we're doing it. So, we're kind of doing a little experiment here and see how this –

So, we thought, "Well, let's see how this works in a podcast context. So, I'm not promising anything, okay? But we'll see how this goes.

So, let's start off this way. Bill, why don't you talk a little bit about the history of your involvement with the faith and work movement? Where did this start?

And so, I grew up with that view, and it always made a lot of sense to me. That, coupled with the Colossians passage that talks about Christ as being Lord of all – if Christ is Lord of all, that means all. And that, from the get-go, to me meant not just sort of church activities and spiritual categories, but the everyday things that people connect with in their life, including their work.

And after I finished seminary, I was doing some consulting in communication projects and met Doug Sherman, who's a Dallas Seminary grad, and we began to join forces in a little organization called Career Impact Ministries. And then, in 1988, Doug and I coauthored a book called Your Work Matters to God. And that was the thesis of the book, that everyday work is something that God is very interested in and all the implications of that.

And that book became, to some extent, standard reading for a lot of people who were interested in, "How does my faith relate to my work," and actually stayed in print until about a year ago.

And that means that when we talk about integrating our faith into our day-to-day lives, that's a discipleship issue. But because so much of our lives are dominated by work, it ends up in a faith and work conversation to a large extent.

And so, what knowledge workers, who happen to be believers, want to know is how does this faith thing apply to my work? The meaning of that work, the value of it, how I do it, where I do it, how I relate to my co-workers, so forth.

And the idea here is we're supposed to make the world fruitful. You know, the world, on its own, is not very fruitful. Like you're never going to stand next to a mountain of ore – iron ore – and suddenly see a Mercedes Benz pop out.

I'm really appreciative of people that are out working on the highways and digging ditches and putting down concrete and things like that.

Now, it's interesting, this is going to be our second go at this, because not very recently – or fairly recently, rather, had a conversation with Michael Thigpen, who teaches Old Testament at Talbot Biola, about this very passage. So, it'll be interesting to see what insights you give to us vs. what he gave to us earlier.

So, I'm going to ask you, help us with the creation mandate in Genesis 1. What's going on? What's God saying about the task that he gives human beings to reflect on and to be, as a result of his having created them?

So, he vegetates the land first. He puts the trees there so they're ready to go for man. He's got the animals there. Everything's ready for man when he gets on the scene. But it's there, as Bill made the point before, it's there in its potential. And he gives this command to be fruitful and multiply, fill the Earth, subdue the Earth.

The way I read it, I don't read those commands – and this might surprise you; I'd be interested to see how you respond – I don't read those commands so much as imperatives that we pass on to our children as if there's a command. I view them more as imperatives of endowment, that this is the kind of people that he's made us in creation. He said, "Let there be light," and there was light.

In the ancient Near East, kings of the ancient Near East would often have a pleasure garden. They would import trees and import plants and import all sorts of exotic animals. And only kings could afford this, and they would do it just for the sheer delight. And they would bring the most expensive, the most exotic. And so, it was – it's more than a zoo. Okay? But it was for a king.

And the text is presenting itself that this is what God is making for himself, because he's going to stroll, in the cool of the day, and enjoy this place. And what God did is he gave it to Adam. He's not a zookeeper, and he's not just a gardener, but he's the one that's in charge of this and, if you will, to enjoy this with God.

So, the picture – and all of man's needs are going to be taken care of in the garden. He doesn't have to work in order to eat. The food is there for him. Rather, the task is there to enjoy this, to delight in this. It's something that – it's a pleasurable thing.

It's not unlike – some people like to garden in their backyard, and they turn their garden in their backyard into something that they can really enjoy.

Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image," [reading from the NET] "after our likeness, so they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, the cattle, over all the earth, over all the creatures that move on the earth.

God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.

And it says:

God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply! Fill the earth and subdue it! Rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air and every creature that moves on the ground."

And then it goes on to talk about, you know, what he's offering them in the garden. But that's really the – what's called the mandate. That's really the description of the task.

So, ye Old Testament scholar, what's going on here? What are we being – what are we being told the task of humanity is before God?

I think the first way that this ended up getting fulfilled was by domestication of the crops – or domestication of the flocks and cultivation of the crops. You get that in Genesis Chapter 2. One of the first things God does is to have man till the ground and name the animals.

And then, in Genesis 4, the first two folks we run into, one's a shepherd and one's a farmer.

And granted, a non-Christian scientist is not going to see God's fingerprint in what he's looking at, but I think we, as Christians, we would say, "Well, he's seeing God's footprints whether or not he knows God's the one that did that."

And so, part of ruling and subduing – and the reformed tradition often talks about the culture mandate coming out of Genesis 1, the idea that we – God is calling us to bring everything, within our own personal domain, into subjection to God and into the glory of God by our influence, by pointing to Christ. In everything that we do: in terms of social justice, in terms of moral righteousness, how we live, how we impact society, how we're a neighbor, how we raise our family.

So, we've got this gender thing that's happening. And the genders were created to together do this subduing, that this was a mutually shared responsibility in which they were to uphold one another in the pursuit of what it is that God has asked them to do.

Bill, what I see in this passage, in relationship to work and image, etcetera, is the idea, then, that where God has us and places us, wherever that might be, and whatever we might be doing, has a purpose and a direction as we help to manage – we're called upon, actually, to manage where God has us.

And she started thinking about, "Well, we're going to have kids, so maybe it would be a good idea to be a mom."

Well, after all these years now, and the kids are going off to college, and she's thinking, "Well, what about that now?" And so, she's going back.

And I – 'cause she was saying, "Should I do this?"

And I said, "Well, you know –"

So, all that to say, "Yes."

And so, you build the tabernacle, and we're talking about all these craftsmen, all these people of different kinds of skills all working together to build this house that will honor God.

And it's really, in some ways, a wonderful metaphor of what the creation is supposed to be. That we – that it takes all these people, working on their gifts, in order to do this.

So – and I inevitably think about this passage when this topic comes up.

And then the New Testament picks up on that temple imagery and now applies it to the Church: those that are near and those that are far, they're doing the work now of building this new temple.

Unfortunately, the Bible doesn't go from Genesis 1 to the end of Revelation. There's stuff that happens in between that's pretty messy and gums up the works. So, in association with the idea of toiling. So, what's going on there? What happened to this design?

And then he talks about every tree that was a delight to the eye, and we pass over that, 'cause we're so interested in trying to mine out the theology of original sin, that we sometimes miss the picture that was being presented there.

And so, the natural death and decay and mortality takes over, and man is cast out. Now you're going to have – you're going to be on your own, and it's not going to be easy out there. And man is cast away, and now man's going to have to fight.

And so, rather than naturally subduing, now it's going to be a fight for survival, and we're going to have to eke out a living, and it's not going to cooperate.

People go camping sometimes and they die. And there's a reason why we don't live in the woods anymore. We're in villages and towns and it's –

And yet, God still works through it. So, there are other passages that talk about how we're supposed to view this, even in the midst of the struggle. What do those passages do for us, and which kinds of passages are we talking –

Isaiah 65 – we jump back to the end, and Isaiah 65, when he talks about the new Jerusalem, he does talk about the fact that there's still going to be work in the end, but they're going to work, and they're going to build houses, but people aren't going to take 'em away. They're going to plant vineyards, but people won't loot them. And he talks about there'll be enjoyment. You'll work, and you'll enjoy the work, because you're not going to be working in futility.

And so, there's still labor from the very beginning. Even in our temple image at the end, it's – there's going to be labor there. We're not just going to be sitting around, being bored like, "What are we going to do?"

Go, eat your food with joy, and drink your wine with a happy heart, because God has already approved your work. Let your clothes be white, and don't spare precious ointment on your head. Enjoy life with your beloved wife all the days of your fleeting life that God has given you on earth; for that is your reward in life and in your burdensome toil on the earth. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, because there is neither work nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom in Sheol, the place that you're eventually going to go.

Now, Kohelet doesn't have the hope of the resurrection yet. But he –

And so, you're absolutely correct, that this work that we do makes a contribution to the world. And people can say, "Yeah, but it's just a temporary or temporal contribution."

And I'm like, "So, what's wrong with that?"

Sure, the farmer's work has temporal value. I'm sure glad he does it, because I sure need to eat. Yeah, some people work with things that we would say have more sort of eternal significance or whatever, but God is interested in significance and value regardless of whether it's time bound or eternity bound.

In the service – I'm sitting here, as we were talking, and I think – we're in a room has lights, has all kinds of technical equipment in it that allows us to do what we're doing. There's been all kinds of creativity that's gone into the making of the computer so that you can look up your text. All the wiring that goes into being able to broadcast this. We're in a room that's been designed by architects and have been built up by builders. We can sit here – we even don't have to worry about the temperature in here –

In all – and then there's all the logistical support people that make those business happen. You know, someone's got to keep the books.

Some of it has to do with this immaterial, spiritual soul part. Both are necessary because we are both a soul-body unity. And sometimes I think in church circles, I guess you'd call it, we lean away from the material side as if there's something wrong or not as important or somehow we shouldn't pay much attention to that.

And I actually do think that we have some, if I can say it this way, Neo-Platonism that sneaks into the Church. And so, we don't honor the physical nature of what it is that God has created. It's the passage in 1 Corinthians 6, where Paul says to the Corinthians, "Look, your body matters. It's going to be preserved along with your spirit and your soul."

And so, what you do with your body really matters. The way in which you handle the physical items of the world and the physical gifts that God has given you, the physicality that he's given you, it all matters.

And so, there is this – I think you're right. There's this tendency to denigrate certain things, because they're viewed as more mundane. But they're actually – I say to people, the Scripture, in one sense is about figuring out a way – how do we combine the cultural mandate or the cultural commission that we have in Genesis 1 with the Great Commission that we have in Matthew 28? How do you bring those two things together?

I mean if you don't see the spiritual value and the spiritual merit of what living the way God has designed you to live is. If you don't get that part, then there's a disconnect. And so – and I don't think we talk about it – this near enough. I mean we talk about a whole lot of other things.

In Ecclesiastes 2, Kohelet, the author – he calls himself Kohelet – he makes the point – he says, "Ultimately it's true." He talks about building houses, planting vineyards, making royal gardens, planting all sorts of trees and pools of water and irrigating and all of this –

So, it was – during the course of his life, it was good. It was enjoyable. It was beneficial. This was God's gift and his reward in this life. And he recognizes, "At death, I'm going to lose it all. So, ultimately, it was futile in terms of eternity, but it was still something – it was good for me to do; it was the task that God gave me to do. It gave me joy. It gave me opportunity to worship God and to thank God."

This is what he – and we make this dichotomy. We often think that if something's eternally futile, then it's got no value. And he says, "No, the same thing can be beneficial in the here and now. It might not be eternally significant in the long run, but it is good now to be enjoyed."

But the only way we can do that is if we fear God and keep his commandments.

But actually, what – Genesis is very down-to-earth. It's very dusty, if I can say it that way, on purpose. And it's dusty in the sense that you – we've been designed, because we reflect the creativity and the energy and the relational dimensions of God to inject that in a healthy way in the creation. That's what we're called to do and to be. That's how we're supposed to live.

And even people who don't know God are still given these capabilities of being able to help people get there to some degree, because that's the image of God at work in us.

Okay, Gordon, now this is kind of – you know, we said we were kind of baptizing you in this conversation, if I can use another image. What's the drenching been like?

It's like, "No."

It's like, "What?"

"Well, if they want to learn Greek and Hebrew, that's fine; I'm not pushing that on 'em." My daughter wants to be a clinical psychologist to help people, to –

And I – at one point, when he was all done with this, I turned to him, and I said, "What a wonderful use of the legal skills you've learned." I was proud as could be of him, because he had taken something that people use in a wide variety of ways, and he had actually thought about, "How do I make this work in a way that really is of terrific benefit to people?"

And I think there's – that's a little cameo of what's possible when we think about our work in a healthy way, and we wed it to service, and we wed it to being made in the image of God, and we think about the way I do my work, no matter what it is, does matter, because it does make life better for some people in some ways.

Gordon, I thank you for coming in and helping us kind of take a look at the Old Testament, what it has to offer, and, Bill, your coming in and being a part of this. We're glad you're a part of The Table podcast today, and we hope you'll be back again with us really soon.