Passionate Productivity

And YHWH Elohim took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to work it and to keep it. Genesis 2:15

Work – What kind of work do you do?  I’m not asking about your occupation.  I mean what is the relationship between what you do and who you are.  What category of work do you fall into?  Let me explain.

There are three categories of work.  The first is work driven by compulsion.  This is work that you are forced to do.  Israel in Egypt worked under the compulsion of the Egyptian slave masters.  Forced labor divides us from our tasks.  We become human machines – replaceable, expendable, useful only for economic value.  Not many of us work under compulsion, but we certainly know what it means.

The second category of work is driven by obligation.  This is work that we voluntarily do in order to meet other needs.  It is work we would rather not do, but which has to be done.  If we didn’t need the reward of our effort, we would forego the labor.  This category encompasses most occupational engagements today.  If we won the lottery, we would walk away from the job.  Surveys report that nearly 70 % of Americans “hate” their work.  They are laboring in obligation.  They need the money.  It’s what they do to survive, but it isn’t who they are.  Oh yes, and if you spend your days in the work of obligation, you are on the path to burnout.  Even your body was not designed to work this way.

The last category of work is passion.  This is work that springs from the center of who we really are.  This is work we were “born” to do.  Amazingly, passion seems to be at the center of work that really drives change and really makes a difference in civilization.  Without passion, work is merely a means to an end.  But with passion, work is the end in itself.  When we work passionately, we express something deep within us.  We are energized by working rather than being exhausted by laboring.  The effort is its own reward.

What category describes the work God gave Adam?  Well, if God put Adam in the garden of God’s delight, we can be pretty sure that the work Adam was supposed to do was not done out of compulsion or obligation.  God gave Adam passionate employment.  What Adam did to work and care for God’s garden actually energized, fulfilled and satisfied Adam.  He was “born” to the task.  We can think of this as a slight variation on John Piper’s famous quotation, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.”  When it comes to passionate employment in the garden of God’s delight, we are most satisfied when God is most glorified in the exercise of what we were made to do.

The Hebrew word here is avad.  It is a familiar term, meaning work and serve, connected directly to the idea of worship.  When we do what God has designed us uniquely to do – what is at the heart of our passion – our work becomes His service and an act of worship.  The pictograph reveals “the path to the tent of the father.”  Passionate work brings me closer to God, back to the garden, to His tent of delight.

How tragic (and how subtle) for the enemy to convert what God intended as an expression of delightful energy into labor or compulsion.  Do you remember what God told Adam after the Fall?  “From this point on, your work will become labor.   Your passion, what I made you for, will be laced with obligation.”  And so it is today.

Think about your work life.  Are you laboring under obligation, caught in the rat-race of return?  Are you moving toward passion-driven delight?  Are you honoring God in all you do?

Topical Index:  work, avad, Genesis 2:15