ChnMind 1.14 The Work-Rest Pattern

Work and Rest: An Institution of Blessing and Dominion

The structures that framed the creation before the Fall―or sin's entrance into the world―continue until today to shape everything. Just as one cannot escape the pervasive influence of gravity whilst upon earth, man cannot escape the creation structures in this life.

This is true for both Jerusalem and Athens. Despite the fact that Athens' whole raison d'etre is to get away from the Living God, it cannot. Even Athens, despite its most militant and hostile endeavours, finds itself being conformed incessantly to the divine structures that inevitably frame existence.

God breathed into man the breath of life. Try as it might, Athenians cannot live without breath. Before the Fall, God instituted marriage. Try as it might―and the actual historical Athens did try mightily―the City of Death cannot escape being bound by the concepts and structures intrinsic to marriage. To be sure, Athens seeks to rebel and escape; it tries to attack the insitution of marriage at every point. But it cannot help reverted back, albeit in its own enervated manner. Modern culture, for example, in an attempt to substitute the biblical institution of marriage has created an idolatry out of “romantic love”, seeking to make it the foundation of human fulfillment and happiness. Witness the almost totally pervasive preoccupation with romantic love in contemporary music lyrics. Yet the underlying principle to this worship of romantic love is that there is one special person what will complete the individual and make him/her whole.

The hunger to love and be loved in a profound and exclusive relationship is universal. It keeps bubbling again to the surface, wven when depraved and degenerate cultures seek to suppress it. “It is not good that man should be alone,” is a divine declaration that shapes humanity, everwhere, in every age, in every land. Athenians may hate the God Who decreed and declared it, bet they remain bound by it nonetheless. Pity the Athenian who prefers his misshapen, caricatured, parodied alternatives of marriage to the wholeness and peace of Jerusalem.

The bearing of children is another creation ordinance which binds all mankind, all cultures, all ages. A culture cannot shut this off without committing suicide of itself. Athens is bound into a fundamental conformity to God's commands, and hates Him all the more for it. Of course, individuals within cultures take rebellion to greater lengths. Criminals obviously exist. Libertines appear to flourish―for a time. Yet in the end, Athenian society turns its back upon criminal and degenerate elements. It has to, in order to survive.

I was recently both sardonically amused, and at the same time thankful, to read one self-proclaimed liberal defending, on the one hand, the rectitude of libertinistic promiscuity as a chosen lifestyle, while, on the other, insisting that lines be drawn when one was “in a relationship” or was married. Sardonic amusement because the confused irrationality of the position is as obvious as a suppurating boil. Thankful because God's goodness and restraining grace have prevented this individual from being as wicked as he could be. In this way, God preserves the world. Athens is not allowed to integrate into the void yet, so that Jerusalem might continue its work for, and serice to, the King.

The irony is that within the world-view of Athens, the criminal and the libertine, the murderer and the rapist, is being the more consistent, the more rational, and the more coherent with the basic assumptions and presuppositions of Unbelief. Since God does not exist, I am a god unto myself. This is the fundamental animus of Athens. If Athens were able to be consistently true to itself, it would celebrate and isolise the most nibilistic and destructive amongst us. Our liberal friend above, except perforce God reaches out His hand of mercy to save him, will eventually find that to be the case in Hell, which will regard his pale principles of fidelity to be treason against the very essence of eternal Athens, and will malignantly rape him, body and soul, for all eternity. May our Lord have mercy upon him, while there is yet time, before it is too late. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear,” declares the Lord and Saviour of mankind. “He who comes to me, I will not cast out.” (Matthew 11:15; John 6:37)

The Duty and Joy of Work

Another frame that constitutes and shapes life in a universal way is the duty and joy of work. God has commanded that men must labour and work for six days every week. Try as it might, Athens cannot escape this divine decree. But the culture that stops working is the culture that dies. People who are not gainfully employed tend to deep self-doubt and beliefs of uselessness and unworthiness.

However, Athens in its modern garb has tried manfully to escape the duty to labour. It has introduced all sorts of revolutionary concepts such as '”social welfare”, or “redistribution of wealth”, only to create successive generations of non-workers. These people are both lazy and self-indulgent. They are the modern manifestation of slavery―welfare slaves, deeply imbued with a prfound sense of victimhood, which is the only self-justification that can be conjoured up to lessen the sense of failure, self-doubt and uselessness that comes from not working. The chains of these slaves are ones of heart and mind.

Athens, of course, true to itself, has both tried to escape the divine command to labour in the creation found in Genesis 1 & 2, and then irrationally despises the non-working slaves it has created. The upshot of this attempt to escape the command of God to work and labour in the world is that others have to work all the harder to support the egregious redistribution of wealth. The cynical bumper sticker, “Work harder, millions on welfare depend upon you,” is right on the mark―but either way Athens cannot succeed with its attempted non-conformity to God's command to work diligently at subduing the creation in order to get food to live. Put bluntly, without food―man dies. The only way food comes is through hard work and labour.

The Seven Day Week

Another creation ordinance is the seven day week cycle. The seven day week cycle is characterised by six days of labour and one day of rest. This ordinance, being a creation ordinance, also binds both Athens as well as Jerusalem; Athens cannot long survive without observing the seven day week cycle.

It is a startling phenomenon that all nations, all cultures―even those deeply hostile to the Christian faith―observe a seven day week cycle. There is no astronomical reason for this. The twenty-four our day is set by the revolution of the earth; the measurement of time itself can be calibrated from the movement of the heavenly bodies. Months and years can be calculated or derived from the lunar cycle and the orbit of the earth around the sun. But there is no comparable terrestrial reason for a seven day week.

As one commentator put it:

“The amazing thing is that today the 7-day week, which is widely viewed as being Judeo-Christian, even Bible-based, holds sway for civil purposes over the entire world, including countries where Judaism and Christianity are anathema. Chines, Arabs, Indians, Africans, Japanese, and a hundred others sit down at the UN to the tune of a 7-day week, in perfect peace (at least calendrically!). So dear is this succession of 7 days that when the calendar changed from Julian to Gregorian the week was preserved, though not as the days of the month: in 1752, in England, September 14 followed September 2―but Thursday followed Wednesday, as always. Eleven days disappeared from the calendar―but not from the week!” (http://www.ac.www.edu/~stephan/Astronomy/7day.html)

There was at least one attempt in the Early Modern Period to abolish the seven day week. During the Reign of Terror in France, the Revolutionary Council abolished the seven day week in 1793, and substituted a ten-day-week cycle. This was done in part to efface the Christian faith from society. The attempt lasted thirteen years and was then abolished due to widespread antipathy amongst the people at large.

In the Modern Period, under the aegis of scientific materialism (aka Communism), another attempt was made to abolish the seven day week.

“The Soviet Union certainly did tinker with the calendar. On October 1, 1929, a calendar was adopted with 12 months of 30 days each, with five extra days (and the leap year) distributed at different times in the year as national holidays. The seven day week was abolished with the elimination of the 'bourgeois' rest days of Saturday and Sunday. This was supposed to help increase industrial production, though each worker was allowed a day off on one of the remaining five days of the week. The five or six extra days did not count in the week. This all was unpopular and didn't work very well, so on December 1, 1931, the traditional months were restored, but not the seven day week. Instead a six day week was adopted, with a rest day, but without a Christian Sunday. Days were still kept outside the week so that each day of the month was always on a particualr day of the week. The problem with this was that people still kept track of the traditional week and still took Sundays off. So the whole business was abandoned on 26 June 1940. (http://www.thepeoplescube.com/red/ See also Wikipedia, qv “Soviet Revolutionary Calendar”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_revolutionary_calendar See also Wikipedia, qv “Soviet Revolutionary Calendar”, ) See also Wickipedia, qv “Soviet Revolutionary Calendar”,

Man cannot avoid the seven day week. Man can establish conventions with respect to coinage and measurement, and can successfully change from cubits to yards to metres. But a change to the seven day week cannot be sustained, and all attempts to do so―attempts that were not half hearted but religiously motivated―have failed.