Is it controversial to say that horses don't work, dogs don't work, and AI computers don't work -- and that only human beings work? Perhaps. But that is because too many people confuse doing things with work. Doesn’t every living creature do things? Even those AI systems that are being developed -- one of which managers claim will be able to do the work of five employees -- merely do things. They have no self-awareness and no intentionality. They are just a cascade of binary clicks rolling along the circuits until the electric plug gets pulled.
Work is a human endeavor. It does not exist to just improve some faceless economy. Workers are not widgets living in some ironic hell as portrayed on TV. Work exists to advance the worker and, in that way, change the world. Yes, it involves suffering, but life doesn’t just begin Friday afternoon after the five o’clock whistle blows.
Work requires self-mastery, which is a positive good. Why? Because if you don’t possess yourself, you cannot make a gift of yourself to others in your work or any aspect of your life. You are too wrapped up in yourself -- wrapped in cellophane and packed in bubble wrap. How can you make a personal gift of yourself to others like that?
Is it too blasphemous to the current gospel of loafing and fishing to point out that the perfect model for man, Jesus Christ, worked at a job for 20 years? Was his job not as hard or harder than yours? Did he not give his all to the people he worked for? Were all the customers cheery and nice to him? Did they not haggle and complain?
Too many children are raised with the goal of taking care of themselves. This is wrong. A young person needs to be taught how to take care of others if he or she is ever going to learn how to work for others and take care of their future family.
Essentially, everyone works. Even retirees, who are often among the busiest people, work at helping family members, friends, their churches, and their communities. Whether you are young or old, the questions about work are the same. First, do you offer your work to God as a way to sanctify yourself, your family, your country, your church, and/or the world? What a panorama this opens, even for the most tedious of tasks.
When you start a task, is there any intention attached to it, the kind of intention you would offer if you were praying for something or lighting a candle at church? Prayer is like incense rising up to heaven. Cannot your work be the same? When St. Paul, who earned his daily bread as a tent maker, says “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), there is nothing that says "except for the majority of your life you spend at work."
Lifted up as a prayer to God, work is elevated to a supernatural level. It reaches the point that it sanctifies the person doing the work and helps to sanctify others. There is no need to throw holy water on it or read the bible while working. The intention, along with honest work well done, will lift it up in life-changing and world-changing ways. Like children working on a small job in the yard, we can focus on what we are doing while we know our father is nearby in the garage or the house. We are aware that he is near at hand as we hammer away. We know we are never alone, and when we are done, we will be happy to show him the work.
Labor Day began in New York City and, along with Thanksgiving, is a quintessentially American holiday. We are a nation known around the world as one full of hard-working people. The undisciplined welfare state, the legalization of the drug culture, and the gutting of education and industry have taken their shot at undermining this. However, one person sanctifying their work at a time can change this.
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That is why work is the most important issue facing the country. How many tragic headlines can be traced back to the issue of work or the lack of it? Is work the drudgery of doing, doing, doing, and doing and being alive only when you are not doing things? Is our job in life just to dig a grave and then run around it until we tire and fall in? Or is work a God-given opportunity? Is it something we can offer up to God? Is it how we learn to master ourselves so we can give ourselves to others?
That is why the battle between capital and labor is such a depressing concept and why the specter of despair haunts so many. All economic value comes from labor, whether intellectual or manual, whether in the corporate suites or on the factory floor. If all sides saw work as an opportunity to bring themselves, their family, friends, and customers closer to God by offering up their work, what would happen? On a personal level, would things in your life change? Would you feel closer to God throughout the day? The opportunity to try it out is literally at your fingertips at work.
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