That Which We Work For We Worship

I don't remember how many church classroom and pulpit lessons I have had in my life about work and the virtues of being a hard worker. The lessons were always the same--teaching that hard work was a virtue. I remember many class members sharing how they had taught their children to be hard workers and as a result they were all successful. Successful at what I wondered? Not once in these lessons did the teacher/speaker ask or talk about what work we as members of His church should be doing. (I can tell you right now that it is not ecclesiastical.) The lessons never took into account what work we should be doing, but only that we be hard workers. I remember Hugh Nibley saying once that even successful criminals work hard. Is hard work in that case a virtue? I often quoted Nephi during these lessons (2 Nephi 26:30-31) where he records that "the laborer in Zion shall labor for Zion; for if they labor for money they shall perish," only to be met with silence.

I always wondered during these lessons what we were doing to each other in the church, where we would reinforce in one another the assumption that tangible and visible rewards and success are promised to those who work the hardest. This assumption is certainly not taught by the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel promises rewards, but "not as the world giveth, give I unto you" (John 14:27 emphasis added). Rather "He who doeth the works of righteousness shall receive his rewards, even peace in this world, and eternal life in the world to come" (D&C 59:23). By contrast, those whose vision is influenced by the world measure their success by being "seen of men." Of such the Savior said, "They have their reward" (Matthew 6:5).

Despite the scripture narrative of not laboring for money, only doing His works or the works of righteousnes, and not laboring for that which gives no life, the assumptions of contemporary America's success ethic are deeply rooted and powerfully ingrained among the membership of the church. But during the first sixty or seventy years after the organization of the church, there were profound distinctions between the culture of the Latter-day Saints and the culture of America. The Saints had their own ideas, not only of theology but about the total cultural environment, including economic, social and political systems. During the nineteenth-century heyday of Yankee individualism, "survival of the fittest" was in all its brutality a cherished way of American life. But in the mountains of the west, the Great Basin Kingdom of that era was as isolated culturally as it was geographically. Indeed, the church and its people had been rejected by the melting pot called America in large measure because they would not melt into the pattern of Yankee values. 

Economically, the Saints sought a deliberate isolation, stressing cooperation among themselves while rejecting the nation's every-man-for-himself brand of free enterprise. At least their leaders did. Both the City of Joseph (Nauvoo) and the Great Basin of Brigham Young sought a harmony between religious and political life that was never understood by outsiders, and is still not understood by the members of the church. Joseph and Brigham spent their entire lives trying to ward off the inevitable. It was not until just before the turn of the century (after Brigham's death) that church leadership gave in to the saints desire to participate in America's  capitalism. 

FIve years after the death of Brigham Young, in 1882, President Taylor hesitantly permitted "some of our brethren to branch out into business on their own." That the idea was not his own, and that he had serious reservations, is clear from the official letter issued by the church at that time, which said among other things that "a feeling had been manifested by some of our brethren [it was their idea] to branch out into the mercantile business on their own account."

The saints ultimately rejected the Lord's way, which Joseph and Brigham taught persistently until their deaths, and embraced their fellow Americans and worked very hard to dispel former impressions of their excessive peculiarity. During the twentiweth century, the church and its members became increasingly accepted as a legitimate part of "Main Street U.S.A." In fact today, American members of the church are often considered among the most ardent defenders of success-oriented, entrepreneurial values. 

In a very real sense, the assimilation of many church members into the materialistic society of twentieth-century America parallels the assimilation of ancient Israel following its captivity into Babylonian culture. At first the Jewish captives longed to return home to the land and ways of their fathers. But after a time, they had become sufficiently integrated into the Babylonian culture that when the opportunity finally came to return home, most preferred to stay. As observed by the Jewish historian, Ernest Renan:

"Many of the Israelites...found themselves very comfortable in Babylonia. Thanks to their practical dexterity, they were able to find a thousand ways of amassing a fortune (sound familiar?) in a city devoted to luxury and pleasure.... They were not at all tempted...to return to a narrow strip of land condemned...to remain eternally poor."

Leave it to the Jews, however, to really zero in on the idea that what we work for reflects our true values and our God.

Avodah is the transliteration of the Hebrew word for worship and work. 

 

The root word means to work or to serve. The cluster of words derived from the root give us insight into the nature and sameness of both worship and work.

 

An oved is a worker. An evid is a slave.

 

Avdut is slavery. Work involves the idea of serving someone or something.

 

Avodat Elohim is the service or worship of the true God.

 

Avodah zara is literally strange worship (it is also the title of one of the tractates of the Talmud, which discusses the subject of idolatry and corrupt and false worship).

 

Avodat Elillim is idolatry, the worship of false gods. Indeed, false worship or idolatry is in essence serving the devil and leads to avdut-bondage, slavery to Satan.

 

Worship of the true God through faith, the Spirit and in truth, is hard work. It demands the expenditure of energy. Worship is not mere campfire singing. It requires focus and concentration of all our faculties. "Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalm  46:10*).

 

Worship of the true God requires an inner humbling, a surrender of self-will, repentance, and faith in Jesus Christ, which Joseph Smith says is the hardest of work, pure mental exertion. "What are we to understand by a man’s working by faith? We answer–we understand that when a man works by faith he works by mental exertion instead of physical force. It is by words, instead of exerting his physical powers, with which every being works when he works by faith."

"The greatest temporal and spiritual blessings which always come from faithfulness and concerted effort," said the Prophet Joseph, "never attended individual exertion or enterprise." This statement is powerful in that it totally negates working for money.

It ascribes to Him the supreme value of who He is and acknowledges His worthiness (worth-ship) in words, deeds, and faith.  

 

Worship is hard work. What or who we worship, however, is the question.

 

Work (labor, enterprise, exertion) is always serving. For the worshiper of God, the believer in Jesus, it is serving God. "And  whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus" (Colossians  3:17). 

 

One of the results of the Protestant  Reformation was an affirmation of the dignity of all honest occupations and manual labor as vocations (literally, callings), i.e., the Protestant Work Ethic.  

 

Historically, the Jewish father was considered derelict if he didn’t teach his son a trade. Most rabbis also plied a trade (for example, Rabbi Moshe, the shoemaker or Rabbi Shaul, the tent-maker).

 

While work is an essential part and expression of our humanness, it is not, as some mistakenly assume, a result of the Fall. Work was part of Adam and Eve’s activity in the Garden of Eden before they partook of the fruit. They were to "work" the Garden "and take care of it" (Genesis  2:15). Work is an expression of the creativity inherent in human nature made in the "image of God." After all, God is continually working, as Jesus pointed out: "My Father worketh hitherto and I work" (John  5:17).

 

Could it be that only work that is drudgery is a consequence of the Fall? In Christ we can experience a substantial redemption from drudgery to meaningful, enjoyable work and achievement by doing His works, growing in light and truth, using our faculties for what they were intended, those faculties which have been washed and annointed, the most important of which is the brain (the intellect).

 

In modern Hebrew, av-dah means fact. A fact works in or with reality because it is true to reality. Likewise, in modern Hebrew, u-vad means adapted—something worked over to fit reality--making our way God's way.

So the question remains--what kind of work?

 

One more point is necessary: "Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind  [worship].’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your  neighbor as yourself’" (Matthew  22:37–39). These commands are always in that order. If you get them turned around, it will destroy you. That’s a fact. It won’t work; it is not true to reality. If you give yourself first to neighbor-love, you will find out it cannot be sustained. You will burnout. Only neighbor-love growing out of primary love for God has staying power. Neighbor-love works when it flows out of a life of worship.

 

Worship has priority over work, yet true worship is hard work. Work can be a form of worship, and the work of worship has priority over all other work.

 

"Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain" (1  Corinthians  15:58). Let’s remember, "Night is coming, when no one can work" (John  9:4).

Hugh Nibley wrote that "we get the idea that the only virtues are business virtues. Consider the qualities you need to be a successful businessman. You should have persistence, reliability, a measure of courage, hard work, and all the rest of it, but those qualities are the same required in any other profession; to be an athlete or musician, a scientist, or an international jewel thief, you need those same qualities in far higher degrees than you do to succeed in business. Does it take a genius to become rich? How many first-class artists are there? You can count them. How many Nobel Laureates and so forth? You can count them on the fingers of your hand. Yet the country swarms with millionaires. The virtue is the virtue of getting ahead. Of course that's the virtue in any field. We make it seem as if that fact obliges a person to go into business—because this is where it counts, because then you possess these qualities. Anyone knows that cheating pays off very well in this country. But the solid businessman will of course protest that the law of consecration is impractical. After all, men are not really created equal. But why did God give some superior advantages? Answer: to put their time, talents, and so on at the disposal of their less fortunate brethren, as God himself does when he makes it his work and his glory to exalt us lowly creatures (Moses 1:38-39)."

For a brief history of the Saints leaving the fulness of the gospel for the things of Babylon see We Still Weep for Zion by Hugh Nibley.

If we ask what improvement has been made up to the present, there is no better standard to judge by than that given by President Spencer W. Kimball in a solemn and inspired message to the church on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the nation, titled The False Gods We Worship. The address gives us a picture of the church, the nation, and indeed the world that is a miracle of clarity and condemnation, placing the physician's finger with unerring accuracy on the really important issues. 

First, by way of introduction, a general observation: "When I review the performance of this people in comparison with what is expected, I am appalled and frightened." Not a particularly cheerful or even optimistic message. What is it that so frightens and appalls the prophet? Three things in particular: 

1. The abuse of the environment: "When I . . . fly over the vast and beautiful expanses of our globe, . . . I have the feeling that the good earth can hardly bear our presence upon it. . . . The Brethren constantly cry out against . . . pollution of mind, body, and our surroundings. . . . That such a cry should be necessary among a people so blessed is amazing to me." 

2. The pursuit of personal affluence: "Carnal man has tended to transfer his trust in God to material things. . . . When men have fallen under the power of Satan and lost the faith, they have put in its place a hope in the 'arm of flesh' and in 'gods of silver, and gold, of brass,' . . . that is, in idols. . . . Many people spend most of their time working in the service of a self-image that includes sufficient money, stocks, bonds, investment portfolios, property, credit cards, furnishing, automobiles and the like to guarantee carnal security throughout, it is hoped, a long and happy life." 

3. Trust in military security: "We commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel—ships, planes, missiles, fortifications—and depend on them for protection and deliverance. When threatened, we become anti-enemy instead of pro-kingdom of God; we train a man in the art of war and call him a patriot, thus, in the manner of Satan's counterfeit of true patriotism, perverting the Savior's teaching. . . . What are we to fear when the Lord is with us? Can we not take the Lord at his word and exercise a particle of faith in him? . . . We must leave off the worship of modern-day idols and a reliance on the 'arm of flesh,' for the Lord has said to all the world in our day, 'I will not spare any that remain in Babylon' [D&C 64:24]." 

And how did the Saints, who never tire of saying, "The Prophet! The Prophet! We have a Prophet!" receive his words? As might be expected, reaction has ranged from careful indifference to embarrassed silence, instant deep freeze to total ignorance. As to the three things against which they were warned, it can be shown with cruel documentation that the majority of the American Saints support and vote for representatives that demonstrate outspoken contempt for the environment, unabashed reverence for wealth, and ardent advocacy of military expansion, and who believe that capitalism is ordained of God and that Socialism is evil.