Created for Work

By Kyle C. Harshbarger

ALL GOOD WORK GLORIFIES GOD.

Work is often considered a punishment, a means to get what people really want, or an inferior activity to sacred deeds. However, truth, beauty, and goodness flow from God's gift of work to humanity. Created for Work shows how you are made to glorify God and enjoy Him through your work and the fruit of

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: May 14, 2024
• ISBN: 9798890418982

Kyle C. Harshbarger

Kyle C. Harshbarger is a supply chain engineer at a Fortune 100 manufacturer, where he leads innovation activities. He holds master's degrees in business from Purdue University and the University of Illinois. Residing in Midland, Michigan, Kyle serves at Christian Celebration Center as a musician and in the young adult group. Created for Work is a culmination of cross-discipline research in biblical work, management, economics, engineering, and philosophy. Find out more about work at kylecharshbarger.com.

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Created for Work

Kyle C. Harshbarger

Trilogy Christian Publishers

Tustin, CA

Trilogy Christian Publishers

A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Trinity Broadcasting Network

2442 Michelle Drive

Tustin, CA 92780

Living in the Spiritual World

Copyright © 2024 by Kyle C. Harshbarger

Unless otherwise noted, all quotations are taken from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Scripture quotations marked

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are taken from the King James Version of the Bible. Public domain.

Scripture quotations marked

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are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked

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are taken from The Living Bible copyright © 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a Division of Tyndale House Ministries, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

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Trilogy Disclaimer: The views and content expressed in this book are those of the author and may not necessarily reflect the views and doctrine of Trilogy Christian Publishing or the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 979-8-89041-897-5

ISBN 979-8-89041-898-2 (ebook)

For Christine, my helper.

Contents

PREFACE xi

COVID-19 to First Principles

xi

Frist Principles to Work

xiii

What is Truth?

xv

Evangelical Christianity

xvi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xix

INTRODUCTION xx

I. PURPOSE OF WORK 1

First Principles

1

Be Fruitful 3

Multiply 4

Fill the Earth 4

Subdue the Earth 4

Have Dominion Over Every Living Thing 5

Glorifying God Through Work

8

Enjoying God Through Work

11

Work for the Kingdom of God

15

II. FRUIT AND REST 25

Fruit

25

Sabbath

31

Work-Fruit/Rest Cycles

34

Septennial and Jubilee 34

Annual 36

Weekly 37

Daily 39

Fruit and Rest Today

41

III. FORMS OF WORK 49

Sacred or Secular

50

Destruction

&

Creation

54

Institutions

59

Households 61

Companies 64

Organizations 67

Governments 70

Between Institutions 73

Functions

75

Operations 76

Marketing 77

Finance 78

Leadership 81

IV. EXPLORATION 86

Geographic Exploration

88

Observation, Experimentation,

&

Knowledge

91

Institutional Exploration

94

Households 94

Companies 96

Organizations 97

Governments 100

Individual Exploration

101

Learning 102

Household Formation 106

Time Tradeoffs 110

V. STEWARDSHIP 117

Resources

118

Materials 118

Time 122

Skills 127

Relationships 130

By Ability 133

Ownership as Stewardship 136

VI. INCORPORATION 143

Association

146

Molding

150

Within Households 150

Within Other Institutions 152

Alignment

155

Workmanship

159

VII. TOIL 163

Entropy

165

Obstacles

169

Maintenance

174

Maintenance of Institutions 174

Maintenance of Self 178

Body 179

Mind 180

Soul 183

Maintenance of Materials 185

VIII. CORRUPTION 188

Wrong Things

189

Forbidden Activites 189

Avoiding Responsibility 190

Laziness 192

Wrong Way

194

Poor Leadership 194

Deceptive Trade 196

Shoddy Workmanship 197

Immoderation 199

Wrong Reasons

203

Pride 204

Covetousness 207

Power 209

Good Intentions 211

Finish Line

217

IX. BARRIERS TO WORK 220

Infirm

222

Disabled

223

Sojourner

225

Lacking Resources

227

Incarceration

229

Post-Incarceration 231

Employer Discrimination

232

Young

235

Old

237

X. FUTURE GENERATIONS 242

Vocational Discipleship

244

Inheritance

247

Eternity

250

BIBLIOGRPHY 255

Preface

COVID-19 to First Principles

In March of 2020, I was required to work from home because of the US response to COVID-19. The messaging from government authorities and media was for non-essential workers to stay home (COVID-19: Essential Workers in the States 2021). I thought, I’m staying home for work. Am I a non-essential worker? Does that mean my work is not essential?

This felt wrong. I had intuition that I was doing good work, but I lacked the bearings to explain why my work was essential. I knew that my work was valuable to my employer, or else I would not be employed. However, I needed a more solid anchoring in something from God.

Another issue was being separated from my co-workers. This was difficult since the quality of communication suffered by being virtual instead of in-person. The government authorities decided that the risk of death was too great to allow us to meet in person.

Implicit in this policy is that there are tradeoffs between working and death. Regulations make these kinds of tradeoffs all the time, implicitly or intentionally. Traffic deaths should be non-existent if the speed limit was 4 mph (ReasonTV 2017), but then what would be the point of driving?

The fear of death dominated this period. Minimizing deaths was the singular objective that drove governmental policy. Whether those policies were actually effective at accomplishing that objective is debatable, but those policies certainly kept billions of people around the globe from working at their most effective capacity.

Why was the fear of death so strong? C. S. Lewis noted humanity’s propensity towards this thought in The Screwtape Letters. The demon Screwtape tells Wormwood, They, of course, do tend to regard death as the prime evil and survival as the greatest good. But that is because we have taught them to do so (2001 [1942]). Plato likewise is purported to have said, Death is not the worst that can happen to men. Even Captain B. McCrea is fed up with his circumstances in WALL-E, I don’t want to survive! I want to live! (Stanton 2008) Is it possible that pursuing good work is the essential counterpoint to mere survival?

With this intuition, I began searching for a foundation. I stumbled upon one while reading Desiring God and being exposed to the concept of the chief end of man for the first time (Piper 2011 [1986]). This was the kind of connection I needed to begin tying my intuition to a godly foundation.

First Principles to Work

I thought the direct connection between God and work would be easy to find. I had heard of the Protestant work ethic, so there should be some kind of thread connecting work to first principles. So, I began searching for work-related content from various sources.

The origin of the Protestant work ethic comes from Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1958 [1904]). Weber noticed a strong connection between economic prosperity arising from the Calvinists and the Reformation. However, Gene Edward Veith noted that Weber inaccurately thought Protestants were motivated to work as evidence of their salvation (2006). Veith instead shows a more universal God-glorifying approach to work through vocation.

However, after Veith’s article, I struggled to find the topic covered in sufficient detail. Books on work written for Christians generally covered the theology well, but they lacked a full perspective on the kinds of work done. It is hard to write from experience in, say, accounting or manufacturing when working for a church full-time. Other books on work leave out first principles aside from being in business to make money. These other books on work also tend to devolve into platitudes such as:

Your job is your purpose

Work for yourself

Climb to the top of the corporate ladder.

While there are good elements in all these books, there was no methodological approach presented to think through the swaths of good work that has occurred since Adam. So, I turned to the Bible with a work-focused lens and found work everywhere. Creation: working and resting. Joseph: ran Ancient Egypt. Jesus: used work-inspired parables. Ecclesiastes has so much wisdom about work it could be considered the work book!

The final missing element was how to reconcile my knowledge of various work-related subjects—business, economics, and engineering—with this theological underpinning. This time, instead of just intuition, I had experience, research, and evidence to support the relevance of these fields. But how was this knowledge relevant for Christians?

First, if work is important, then developing knowledge of work itself must be important, too. Discovery and understanding of God’s creation is what inspired the work of early scientists like Isaac Newton (McLaughlin 2019). However, not all good work in these fields comes from explicitly Christian sources.

What Is Truth?

Pilate told Jesus this rhetorical question during interrogation before the crucifixion (John 18:38). Truth must be connected to God, and I wrestled with ideas that came from non-Christian sources. I had drawn some kind of line in my mind between the natural world and spiritual things, but I began to realize that the divide between natural and spiritual is more of a convenience to study. Natural things can be tested; spiritual things cannot.

There were a few sources that led me through this thought process. First, I stumbled upon The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis. Lewis is taking on rising idea of truth being relative. He shows instead how consistent truth is not just from a Christian origin but from all successful societies. My ah-ha moment came from reading a Confucius quote, Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you (Lewis 2001 [1943], 85), the Silver Rule. Confucius pre-dated Jesus, saying, Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you (Matthew 7:12, NLT), the Golden Rule.

Confucius had received this kind of spiritual truth independent of the Jews. It came to him through Chinese tradition, which eventually traces back to Babel, Noah, and Adam. In C. S. Lewis’s allegorical The Pilgrim’s Regress, he describes Jews receiving the written Law (through Moses) and other people having images of paradise (2014 [1933], 174). Every people group is descendent of Adam and bears the image of God, but languages were confused at Babel. Afterwards, Jews received the written Law, and others had to rely on oral tradition. The cultures that survived maintained the natural law.

To me, this meant that truth should be tested regardless of the source. Eliminating something from consideration just because of its origin is not right. Christians need to anchor these things to the Bible, but truth can exist from outside sources since everyone comes from God. This freed me to investigate philosophical sources, especially ancient Greeks. While pursuing truth, universalism must be guarded against. However, to paraphrase a conversation with Pastor Rob Schrumpf, truth is truth, beauty is beauty, good work is good work.

Evangelical Christianity

Finally, while working through these ideas, I wondered why I had not absorbed work as this essential element of my faith. It seemed a bit separate, that work is an outside activity and the church was an inside activity. Ideas like be the church didn’t resonate with me because sermon topics were rarely work-relevant. Instead, work felt like just another thing we do among these other parts of life, not the backbone of God’s creation.

As a young believer, I struggled with some of the advice I heard from other Christians. The message was that ministry work is the most important kind of work. It is best to be a pastor or missionary. If not, then do something where you help people, like nursing or law. Since I am not doing one of these high value activities, then I should just do a good job so that I can evangelize to non-believing co-workers.

While I don’t think these messages are entirely intended, it is the impression that was left on me. Evangelism, how to interact with people, and how awesome God is are excellent subjects. When ministry is one’s work, it is easier to be passionate about it and lead others into that work. However, I did not have a complete view about why my work matters or is relevant.

I wonder how much, For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast (Ephesians 2:8–9) has led Christians to focus on the faith for salvation at the expense of discussion of works. If salvation is the only thing, then works don’t matter. This would be mere survival. The very next verse says, For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works (Ephesians 2:10).

Since we are created for good works, then there needs to be discussion about what good works look like. This is not a one-time sermon series but a re-emphasis on how we talk about being Christians. Doing good engineering work is the kind of work God created me to do. Establishing and maintaining excellent systems that serve other people is pleasing to God. It is my hope that work reclaims its rightful emphasis for Evangelical Christians, reviving the passion that gave rise to the phrase Protestant work ethic.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the many people who provided helpful insight and conversations to help make this book a reality. Jake Singer, Young Adults Pastor at Christian Celebration Center, Midland, MI, provided valuable feedback on drafts and connected me to the young adults who greatly inspired the need for this text. Tim Trombley, Associate Professor of Finance at Illinois State University, Normal, IL, also provided feedback on drafts. Rob Schrumpf, Lead Pastor at Purdue Christian Campus House, West Lafayette, IN, gave me early alignment to work and existing resources on the topic. Finally, the Young Adults group and other members of Christian Celebration Center for the encouragement and motivation.

Introduction

Created for Work is organized to first emphasize what good work looks like and later describe how it has been corrupted by the Fall. While there are momentary comments about shortcomings, the overall goal is to orient the reader toward the aspirational true, beautiful, and good design of work.

The couplet of Purpose of Work and Fruit and Rest provides the foundation of work in the current earth by describing why and introducing the rest. The successive chapters further break down work by describing the who, what, where, when, and how of good work.

It is not until Toil that the consequences of the Fall are primarily explored. Toil shows the need for maintenance, Corruption documents the ways that work can be errant, and Barriers to Work frames the limitations on work.

Finally, Future Generations emphasizes the need to look to the future with work. This ultimately means working towards the new heavens and new earth.

I. Purpose of Work

Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

Genesis 1:28

First Principles

There is a longing within each of us for purpose, meaning, reasons for existence. It is the pursuit of philosophers and theologians busy for all time. Some have developed arguments from first principles to explore the purpose of humanity. The nature and purpose of work is a kind of first principle upon which civilization is built. The Christian view of work presented throughout this book will show a harmonious ordering of life, a holistic meaning of activity, and a reason for Christ dying to save people.

It is a bit unfair to refer to work as a first principle for Christians. First principles begin from the end: the goal of the subject. God is the goal of the universe, and people are created by Him for a purpose. Thomas Aquinas argued that man’s last end is pursuing happiness in God (2021). If happiness in God can be found through work, this makes work a second principle to the end of man.

Ends are further described in the Shorter Westminster Catechism, glorify God and enjoy Him forever (Hopkins n.d.). Through this principle, the calling to work can be shown by asking, How? How shall people glorify God? Through work: Your people shall all be righteous; they shall possess the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I might be glorified (Isaiah 60:21). How do people enjoy Him forever? By enjoying the fruits of labor, provided by Him: that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man (Ecclesiastes 3:13). God gave humanity this direction from the beginning as the cultural mandate.

Genesis 1:28 is the first command in the Bible. God had just completed creation, and He needed to provide Adam with the purpose of his