The Labors of Man

An exploration of pride, work, and God's goodness.

Introductory Note: This is a work of fiction I wrote a while ago and have worked to refine for publication over the years. It has changed from its original form in no small part because my own answers to the questions it poses have evolved over time (hopefully in conjunction with some growth in wisdom or sanctification). Nonetheless, despite this story’s theological bent, it is not theology and should not be taken as such.

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The Labors of Man

We stopped near the top of a hill overlooking two small but adequate farmsteads to rest and take a bite of breakfast. My father took a seat on a fallen tree, took a deliberate sip from his canteen, and surveyed the farms below as he handed me a biscuit from his pack and took one for himself. He contemplated the two farms silently for a few minutes, observing the farmers at work, evaluating the handiwork of their homes, gauging the straightness of their furrows, and so on. He was testing them. Weighing them against each other and against some idyllic farm that could only exist in a man’s mind.

My father was not a particularly hard man—he showed grace more easily than most men I’ve known—but he excelled at objectivity. He would not condemn any man for his flaws, but he recognized them and would identify them without reservation.  That’s the thing about grace: it does not ignore brokenness, but embraces broken people despite their brokenness. As he so often said, “there’s no need for grace without sin.”

After a few minutes of critical observation, he pointed to the farm to our right and spoke: “See that one o’er there? He’s got a good home. Sturdy. His fence is mended, his plow mule’s strong and well fed, he’s got a foundation set for a barn—he can prolly get it up ‘fore the snow comes if he gets a bit of help. Ain’t luck, though. Look hard ‘nuff, and you can see the sweat drippin’ from his chin all the way up here. He’s careful with his plow, but he’s workin’. Must only be about ten or so this mornin’ and he’s got two-fifths of that field plowed already—straight and true. He’s workin’ quick ‘nuff to get the work done and slow ‘nuff that it gets done right.

“Not so much with the other one.” He turned his gaze to the farm on the left. “His home’s alright, but it looks like it went up in a hurry. The walls are a little uneven, the roof ain’t perfectly straight (might leak a little, too), and it’s got weeds that need pullin’ and brush that needs clearin’ all around it. I dunno where he’s keepin’ that mule of his. Not that the animal looks abused—seems healthy ‘nuff, just a bit ragged. A good brushin’ and a night under a decent roof would pro’lly cheer him right up. His field ain’t all cleared either. You see there’s still some brush he ain’t dealt with toward the south end. And that big rock? If he ain’t get that biggun, he ain’t clear out the little ones too good neither. Not that it’d make a lot of difference. Looks like the plow’s too dull to plow real straight lines anyway.

“You can see it in the man, too. He’s been sittin’ off to the side restin’ at least since we got here—ten, maybe twenty minutes now. It’s not that he won’t or can’t work—he got that house up and plowed the field as far its plowed—he just figures he can get to it later and he’d rather be sittin’ over there right now. But later it’ll be hotter, he’ll have less time to get it done in, and that plow won’t be any easier to push. He’ll be tired, his mule’ll be tired, and under the heat of the sun he’ll rush to get it done as quick as he can. His furrows are already startin’ to weave like an Irishman on a Saturday night, but they’ll get worse. He won’t get the most of his land that way. He’ll miss out on an eighth, maybe even a quarter of the crop he coulda grown just by wastin’ space.”

He reclined on his elbow and sighed. “You can learn somethin’ about life from them two. Put your back into your work and you’ll be better off.”

He continued to observe the farmers, and I sat contemplating this terrestrial parable. After a few minutes, I raised a question: “The one on the right. He works hard, and you can see it, sure, and the one on the left don’t work so hard. But what’s wrong with that? Sure, his farm might not be so nice, but it’s passable—far from the worst I’ve seen. Even just earlier this morning we passed one that’d make his look pristine by comparison. It could be nicer—I can’t disagree with that—but he’s plowing his field, and he has a nice enough house. Why shouldn’t he want to spend as little time working as he can? Isn’t work a curse from God anyway?”

“Just so! Just so.” My father nodded knowingly and furrowed his brow. “God cursed man to toil away in the fields. Ain’t no other way to live. And you’re right, both men down there are livin’. But you can live better, or you can live worse. You can’t see it just observin’ from afar, but I’d wager an ample sum that the man on the left ain’t quite so content as the one on the right. See, you’ve learned your Bible pretty good, and you know that God cursed man to work. That’s knowledge. Without it, you ain’t even got a place to start. But it ain’t quite wisdom yet. Knowin’ somethin’ just takes learnin’ it. But understandin’ somethin’ takes thinkin’ on it.

“You ask me why shouldn’t the man on the left spend as little time workin’ as he can if work’s a curse? It’s a good question. The answer’s in who’s doin’ the cursin’. God made it so that man had to work, and work hard, just to live. Can’t get ‘round it. But that don’t mean we should try to avoid it. See sometimes, when you do somethin’ wrong, I curse you, too. Make you do somethin’ you’d rather not do. But I don’t do it outta spite. I do it to teach you somethin’. Most times, you try to get outta it or do it as quick as you can (like all boys do). But sometimes—hopefully ‘nuff times—you embrace it. You go at the thing as if you understand the lesson, or want to at least. You don’t view it like a punishment but like an opportunity to get better and be better.

“Same thing goes for God and man. God cursed us to work. Most times, we try to get outta it or do it as quick as we can. We view it as a punishment. Somethin’ we wanna avoid if at all possible. But God’s like I am to you, just better. See, my curses don’t always teach you what I wanna teach you, and you don’t always need to learn what I think you need to learn. So sometimes my punishments miss the mark and really are just punishments. Things you oughta avoid if you can.

“But God’s curses are perfect. They always got lessons we need to learn, and the curses he gives us always teach ‘em perfect. See the man on the left, he’s avoidin’ the curse. Tryna outrun it if he can. But the man on the right—he’s embraced it. He’s goin’ after it like he almost understands it. He wants to learn and grow into a better man, and he sees the work as a way of gettin’ there. He don’t see a punishment in the curse, but a lesson just waitin’ to be learnt.”

I waited a minute, hoping he would continue, but he just took another swig from his canteen and watched the farmers work. I was unsatisfied: “Well, what’s the lesson?”

He smiled a little, as much as he ever did, “you’re just full of good questions today, ain’t ya? Unfortunately, that’s not one I’m qualified to answer for ya. You’ll have to hold on to it ‘til you reach the Pearly Gates.”

I twisted up my face in mild annoyance and sighed. My father had a habit of keeping his own answers to divine questions to himself and there was little use trying to change his mind. After a few moments of quiet contemplation, though, he went on: “But I do have an idea. See, it seems to me that our first sin—maybe our only sin—is pride. That’s the sin that earned us our curse. We believe in ourselves and our own power. We don’t think we need God—and sometimes, at our lowest points—we even think we can be God. That’s where we go wrong.

“Now take a look back down at those two men. See the one on the left? You can see the pride in him. I won’t speak on no man’s soul—Lord knows I’m proud ‘nuff for a hundred men—but everything about him is proud. He’s been restin’ there a while now, confident that he can do what he needs to do later. Certain that nothin’ll come up that’ll keep him from gettin’ that field plowed. He ain’t worried ‘bout rain comin’, ‘bout somethin’ breakin’, ‘bout havin’ anything else to do. No, that man is sure of his own ability to control his own future. That’s a sorta pride. And it ain’t a momentary thing, either. You see it in his house and the way he’s prepared his land. He trusts himself.

“The man on the right, though, now he’s workin’ like everything could go wrong at any moment. As if he’s been given an opportunity right here this mornin’ to plow that field, and if he don’t get it done, he might not ever get another chance. He works like he’s grateful to God for every ray of sunshine. He works like he only gets to work by the grace of God. Just watchin’ him you can see that he don’t take a single second for granted. He operates under the assumption that he won’t have time later, that somethin’ will break, that there will be somethin’ else that just absolutely has to get done. He don’t believe for a single second that he’s in control of his own fate. He’s humble before the Lord, and it’s his work that keeps him there.”

This was a good enough answer for me, but after a brief pause, he furrowed his brow a little deeper and kept going: “It’s interestin’, though. See the one on the left has a haphazard house, a half-plowed field, and a ragged-lookin’ mule. There ain’t nothin’ wrong with ‘em as such, but they ain’t too impressive, neither. He’s so proud, so sure of his own abilities, that he don’t have much to be proud of. But the man on the right, by humblin’ himself and dedicatin’ himself to his work—to learnin’ the lesson of the curse—he has a farm and a home and soon a barn that he can be proud of.

“Every sin is just the distortion of somethin’ good, right? So there’s sinful pride, but there’s righteous pride, too. You think the man on the left is happy? Content? Satisfied? He might be, but I’d wager he carries a touch of misery deep down. Feels like a failure, even if he ain’t. Thinks he shoulda done better ‘cause he knows he coulda done better. And so his pride, the confidence that he can take care of everything and anything in the future and has the luxury of relaxin’ now, it just eats away at him. Tryna take the things that make him a man and leave him a shell of one.

“But the man on the right, havin’ humbled himself and worked as if he wasn’t sure he’d ever get anything done, he gets to feel accomplished. Satisfied. Proud of the things he has done instead of sure of the things he might do. He gets to step into his solid house and appreciate his own handiwork.

“The man on the left makes the curse a punishment by fightin’ against it, but the man on the right makes it a blessin’ by embracin’ it. Somethin’ worth thinkin’ on.”

He watched a little while longer as the two men went about their business, both plowing now. They were hot, and it was clearly hard, but they both seemed happy enough, lost in their work.

My father rose.

“Well, that’s enough philosophizin’ for one day. We’d best be on our way. Come on, now.”