The ways in which liberals will trample all over actual literary analysis in order to make the Bible serve their leftist purposes never ceases to amaze me. I mean, I’ll reach the point where I think that leftist underhandedness regarding the Bible has reached its limit, but then they’ll manage to pull another dishonest rabbit out of their anti-Christian hat. This time, my disgusted eye-rolling is prompted by Fred Block and Frances Fox Piven writing for The Nation in defense of the guaranteed basic income. In their article, the two claim that the reason why Americans resist a guaranteed basic wage for all is because they believe the “myth of the Garden of Eden.”
They explain
Simply put, wage work has become one of the most elemental pillars of our civic religion. It is not just an American religion, although Americans tend to be especially fierce devotees, but virtually a world religion. Remember the myth of the Garden of Eden, shared by all the Abrahamic creeds, Christian and Muslim and Jewish traditions alike. Once upon a time, the story goes, God was generous. He created Adam and Eve and gave them a garden of plenty in which to live. But although there were many trees with many fruits, they were tempted by the serpent and disobeyed God’s warning not to bite into the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. For this sin they were cast out of the garden and made to struggle for their subsistence. They had sinned, and so ever after they were made to work for their livelihood. Work is our punishment, the story goes, and our redemption.
The writers go on to explain that throughout history the dominant social groups used the “myth of the Garden of Eden” to justify their exploitation of the workers and to shame the workers into obeisance. Because, according to those who owned property, “the drudgery and the abuses of wage work now became the fate to which humankind was consigned for the sin in the Garden of Eden.”
According to Block and Piven, Americans believe that the reason people should work for their wages is because they are being punished for their sins. Possibly worse, the pair also claim that redemption is found in work. I don’t know what kind of theological background Block and Piven have, if any, but whatever that background is, it did a very poor job of preparing the two to write about Christianity.
According to the Bible, work is most decidedly not a punishment. In Genesis 2:15, God reveals to us that He “took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”
Right there, as plain as day, it’s clearly stated that work was instituted by God well before sin ever entered the world. Adam and Eve were created, in part, to care for God’s garden-temple. That was part of the condition for them being there.
Many people wrongfully believe that God gave the first man and first woman only one rule – to not eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. And those who believe that are incorrect. Adam and Eve were also required by God to care for/tend to the garden-temple as well as populating the earth by having children. They had responsibilities within the Garden of Eden, and those responsibilities were also part of God’s blessings.
Sadly, after humans joined the Serpent-Satan in rebellion against God, sin was introduced into the world. Part of the punishment was that sin would negatively affect work. Man would still be required to work, but now it would be by the sweat of his brow and sin would make his work hard. Weeds would choke out the fruits of his labor. Fences that he built would rot and fall apart. Men would swindle and cheat each other.
Regardless of how terrible sin’s impact on work is, that doesn’t make the actual work the punishment for sin. Block and Piven are flat out wrong in their assessment of work’s purpose within Christianity. Likewise, they’re also flat out wrong about redemption being found in work.
The Bible also clearly teaches that humans cannot work themselves into God’s good graces; sin makes that impossible. That’s exactly why Jesus had to take on human flesh and come to earth. Sinful humans needed a redeemer who could perfectly fulfill God’s law and then take on the punishment for the sins of his people on his blameless shoulders. If redemption could be found in work, Jesus wasted his time.
Block and Piven obviously have an agenda. The fact that they so brazenly misrepresented the Bible and Christianity calls the integrity of that agenda into question. To be honest, their lies about God remind me of someone who is in the Genesis creation narrative: the Serpent-Satan.
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