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PRODUCTIVITY

Producing goods and services is fundamentally good and provides many opportunities for glorifying God, but also many temptations to sin

WE KNOW THAT producing goods from the earth is fundamentally good in itself because it is part of the purpose for which God put us on the earth. Before there was sin in the world, God put Adam in the garden of Eden “to work it and keep it” (Gen. 2:15), and God told both Adam and Eve, before there was sin,

“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” (Gen. 1:28).

The word translated “subdue” (Hebrew kåbash) implies that Adam and Eve should make the resources of the earth useful for their own benefit, and this implies that God intended them to develop the earth so that they could come to own agricultural products and animals, then housing and works of craftsmanship and beauty, and eventually buildings, means of transportation, cities, and inventions of all sorts.

Manufactured products give us opportunity to praise God for anything we look at in the world around us. Imagine what would happen if we were able somehow to transport Adam and Eve, before they had sinned, into a twenty-first-century American home. After we gave them appropriate clothing, we would turn on the faucet to offer them a glass of water, and they would ask, “What’s that?” When we explained that the pipes enabled us to have water whenever we wanted it, they would exclaim, “Do you mean to say that God has put in the earth materials that would enable you to make that water system?”

“Yes,” we would reply.

“Then praise God for giving us such a great earth! And praise him for giving us the knowledge and skill to be able to make that water system!” They would have hearts sensitive to God’s desire that he be honored in all things.

The refrigerator would elicit even more praise to God from their lips. And so would the electric lights and the newspaper and the oven and the telephone, and so forth. Their hearts would brim over with thankfulness to the Creator who had hidden such wonderful materials in the earth and had also given to human beings such skill in

Grudem, W. (2003). Business for the glory of god : The bible's teaching on the moral goodness of business. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open('http://ebookcentral.proquest.com','_blank') href='http://ebookcentral.proquest.com' target='_blank' style='cursor: pointer;'>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from liberty on 2021-04-27 12:40:44.

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working with them. And as Adam and Eve’s hearts were filled with overflowing thanksgiving to God, God would see it and be pleased. He would look with delight as the man and woman made in his image gave glory to their Creator and fulfilled the purpose for which they were made.

As we look at any manufactured item, no matter how common, can we not also discover hundreds of wonders of God’s creation in the things that we have been able to make from the earth? Such richness and variety has not been found on any of the other planets known to us.

. . . the whole earth is full of his glory (Isa. 6:3).

God did not have to create us with a need for material things or a need for the services of other people (think of the angels, who apparently do not have such needs), but in his wisdom he chose to do so. It may be that God created us with such needs because he knew that in the process of productive work we would have many opportunities to glorify him. When we work to produce (for example) pairs of shoes from the earth’s resources, God sees us imitating his attributes of wisdom, knowledge, skill, strength, creativity, appreciation of beauty, sovereignty, planning for the future, and the use of language to communicate. In addition, when we produce pairs of shoes to be used by others, we demonstrate love for others, wisdom in understanding their needs, and interdependence and interpersonal cooperation (which are reflections of God’s Trinitarian existence). If we do this, as Paul says, while working heartily, “as for the Lord and not for men” (Col. 3:23), and if our hearts have joy and thanksgiving to God as we make this pair of shoes, then God delights to see his excellent character reflected in our lives, and others will see something of God’s character in us as well. And so it is with any manufactured good, and any service we perform for wages for the benefit of others. As Jesus said, our light will

“shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven”(Matt. 5:16).

That is why God made us with a desire to be productive, to make or do something useful for other people. Therefore human desires to increase the production of goods and services are not in themselves greedy or materialistic or evil. Rather, such desires to be more productive represent God-given desires to accomplish and achieve and solve problems. They represent God-given desires to exercise dominion over the earth and exercise faithful stewardship so that we and others may enjoy the resources of the earth that God made for our use and for our enjoyment.

This is consistent with God’s command to Adam and Eve in Genesis 1:28:

And God said to them, “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

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earth.”

God’s command to “subdue” the earth implies doing productive work to make the resources of the earth useful for themselves and others. That is what he wanted Adam and Eve to do, and that is one of the things he wants us to do as well.

Therefore, in contrast to some people’s attitude toward life today, productive work is not evil or undesirable in itself, or something to be avoided. Productive work should not be seen as “bad,” but as something “good.” In fact, the Bible does not view positively the idea of retiring early and not working at anything again. Rather, work in itself is also something that is fundamentally good and God-given, for it was something that God commanded Adam and Eve to do before there was sin in the world. Although work since the Fall has aspects of pain and futility (see Gen. 3:17- 19), it is still not morally neutral but fundamentally good and pleasing to God.

Hindering and decreasing the earth’s productivity (as when wars destroy factories and farms, or when governments prevent them from operating) is not good, however, because it simply allows the curse that God imposed in Genesis 3 to gain more and more influence in the world, and this is what Satan’s goal is, not God’s. After God imposed the curse that was required by his justice, the story of the Bible is one of God working progressively to overcome the curse, and increasing the world’s productivity is something we should do as one aspect of that task.

But significant temptations accompany all productions of goods and services. There is the temptation for our hearts to be turned from God so that we focus on material things for their own sake. There are also temptations to pride, and to turning our hearts away from love for our neighbor and toward selfishness, greed, and hard- heartedness. There are temptations to produce goods that bring monetary reward but that are harmful and destructive and evil (such as pornography and addictive drugs).

But the distortions of something good must not cause us to think that the thing itself is evil. Increasing the production of goods and services is not morally neutral but is fundamentally good and pleasing to God.

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