It’s wisdom from the Bible so why don't we know it? God says we are to find enjoyment in our toil. In Ecclesiastes Chapter 2, the wisest man to ever live, King Solomon, says there is nothing better for a person than finding happiness and enjoyment and contentment, not constant strife and toil, sometimes we have to just sit back in the “joy” of knowing God does indeed have things under control:
24 There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, 25 for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? 26 For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.
Also, Jesus worked with his hands, in daily contact with the matter created by God, to which he gave form by his craftsmanship. It is striking that most of his life was dedicated to this task in a simple life which awakened no admiration at all: “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?” (Mark 6:3)
Moreover, the Church (Catechism of the Catholic Church (2402, 2427, 2428, 2429, 2434) teaches that work is a human right and also a duty. It’s good for individuals and good for society—that is, it serves the common good. Three conditions are imperative for the dignity of labor: that what is produced is not more important than the person producing it; that work contributes to the unity of society and doesn’t tear it down; and that workers have a say in what they’re doing and the conditions under which they do it.
Since the time of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical letter Rerum Novarum, Catholic social doctrine has emphasized that economies ruled strictly by supply-and-demand, exalting product-derived wealth over every other consideration, are not compatible with Christian principles. People have obligations to each other: to work hard and honestly and to make their best contribution to their employer, coworkers, and community.
In Pope John Paul II’s 1981 encyclical On Human Work, written on the 90th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, he examines not only the dilemmas of the modern corporate world of work but also explores the spirituality of work as it enhances shared human life.
As in so many instances Friedrich Nietzsche identifies the limitation of modern existence. In Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, Zarathustra is asked about his happiness. He replies, "Do I then strive after happiness? I strive after my work" (Part 4 #61). In this phrase, Nietzsche correctly identified one of the extremes in which modernity conceives the nature of man: Man is his work.
The unfortunate result of this conception of man is that work does not furnish happiness. Happiness is the result of reposing in the possession of an end or purpose, which here is always being striven for, but never achieved. Since God alone is that which gives life purpose, absent God purposefulness vanishes. Modernity has exiled God from its world. Work is performed for its own sake and carries no gratification.
Where Nietzsche posits all work and no happiness, the other extreme theory of work proposes no work and no happiness. This Statist vision generates a underclass permanently bound to indigence. It is the enlightened Twentieth First Century liberal and progressive counterpart of slavery. Certain men are deemed irredeemably inferior by never being called to exercise either the same responsibilities or achievements, which constitute the dignity of man. Consequently, with purposefulness wrenched from their lives, this underclass lives with neither work nor happiness.
Tribal enclaves are created for this new set of inferiors, as their cruel fate is perpetuated, sometimes for generation upon generation. They are tethered not to cotton mills but worse, to the heavy chains of Statist folly called the welfare system; or, alternatively in cahoots with their tribe. Their progressive overseers surround them with a drone of propaganda, particularly in academe, convincing them that their victimhood wins them perpetual entitlement as fulfillment. Their only occupation becomes idleness, and their sole diversion becomes violence. This Statist and tribal obfuscation is the slow strangulation of the common good.
Man's faculty of will propels him toward striving for the good. Possession of the good is the root of human action. It is in action that man cultivates his nature. Man is by nature designed to work for the fulfillment of his faculties.
Man's dignity, however, is not in work. It resides in his very being, his nature. Work manifests the dignity inherent in his nature, as well as elevating him to the heights of excellence that are his destiny.
Man realizes his dignity through his work, just as the student does. Substituting sentimentality in education with achievement does not create self-esteem but self-absorption. Man does not achieve self-esteem through repeating emotional mantras.
Man achieves self-esteem through his action, his work.
Adam and Eve, in their prelapsarian state, are summoned to work. Genesis reveals that they are to increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it (Genesis 1:28). This confirms the intrinsic value of work as the natural condition of man.
Once Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, their work was penalized by struggle (Genesis 3:17). Here, work is not described as the punishment for sin, but working by the sweat of our brow is.
1973