Saving Labor Devices
by Robert Barnes, a friend, and the technical support arm of the Highlands Study Center

As much as ETC proclaims that they are participating in Christ's work to take every thought captive, if this magazine isn't talking "kingdom, kingdom, kingdom" then it's "technology is sucking us into the black pit of satan." Will this issue be the final word on the latter topic? I doubt it. Some thoughts are harder to take captive than others.

The promises of technology are worded very carefully. In the ebb and flow of advances in science and its practical applications, one thing that is certain: calculators do not actually make counting easier. Washing machines do not actually give homemakers more time. Nothing in the shiny, flickering world of plastic and electronics (or the industrial revolution, or the Iron Age) can make work easier--work will never be easy, by definition. That's why we call it "work."

Work is despised by the world. It was in 1968 that work was placed on the same demonic level as alcohol with the coinage of the term "workaholic." I suppose the Proverbs 31 woman could find time to add "Attend Support Group" to her to-do list.

The Preacher said: "Then I hated all my labor in which I had toiled under the sun, because I must leave it to the man who will come after me. And who knows whether he will be wise or a fool?" (Eccl. 2:18-19a). With such a bitter hatred, such fist-shaking anger at the curse God placed on the fruit of our labors, it is no surprise that in the last 100 years, technology has become a way for man to seek to eradicate work. Either by redefinition (climbing mountains is relaxing?) or by apparent elimination (self-propelled lawn mowers), many work 80-hour weeks to enable us to classify much of what we do as something other than work. Others work to remove the evidence of work, giving us rosy armpits, soft hands, and fake tans. It's all the same curious problem.

Here's another curiosity: How many of us now spend 35-80 hours a week sitting in a chair, in front of a computer, actually doing very little mentally or physically, and yet we come home exhausted, saying we have "worked" all day? This is the oddity: that we attempt to do away with labor and the evidences thereof, yet that which would have been called "resting" at best by previous generations is now exalted as true labor. I do not have the wisdom to parse this observation, yet it is another bit of evidence that completes this case I have against our culture's crime against the God who blessed true labor.

Ecclesiastes 3:9-11a says, "What profit has the worker from that which he labors? I have seen the God-given task with which the sons of men are to be occupied. He has made everything beautiful in its time." That is, along with birth, death, healing, weeping, and the other things that are called into being by God for His glory, work shines forth. There is a time to work, and a time to rest. And while some well-meaning geek with a supercomputer, or some well-meaning Luddite with an ax may trash the product of our work, it is not the product that is "beautiful in its time." It is the work itself. It is not the nifty apple-corer that glorifies God so much as the character and work and determination to develop such a device, and the work of the husband or wife who spins those apples (or potatoes, we've discovered) into shiny pearls destined for consumption.

With this in mind, we can understand vs. 12-13 better and see the challenges it makes to the contemporary use and attitudes towards technology. "I know that nothing is better than to rejoice, and to do good in their lives, and also that every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labor -- it is the gift of God." First, notice that it is not production of more stuff that is exalted, it is a God-honoring response to that stuff: joy, eating, drinking. It's not the computer, for all its apparent value, that makes the angels sing. It is the article, the love-poetry, the music that flows from it, and even more the hearts that rejoice upon receiving such gifts.

The joyful, appropriate use of the fruit of our labor is rare in our culture. But it is there that we see God most glorified. In God's upside-down economy, it seems to be better to rejoice over a new car than to drive it. The actual possession and the use, while honoring God, seems to be overshadowed by our gladness, our reaction, to God's gift.

Second, notice that labor is still a gift. It is not to be despised, dismissed, or obscured. Even in a fallen world, with cursed efforts and silly people walking behind us, messing up even our best work, work is sacramental. God gives it to us, and we gratefully offer it back to Him, an obedient sacrifice.

Technology is a tool. As I was finishing this article, I sent it to R.C. Jr. by email. He read it and sent it back, even though he was bumped offline three times, that's what he gets for living on a mountain. But we did it--two men encouraged each other across the space of 695.2 miles, and I was able to finish this article in confidence, sending it up to him by the deadline. That is progress in the print world. We both rejoice in it.

But all technology does not bring progress. One way to judge true societal progress is to see if the society in question is using technology to accomplish its goals, which are driven by its values, which are driven by its beliefs; or is the society being driven by that technology into a world suspended from plastic and chrome, not ideas.

Whether you find your labor rewarding or in vain is not necessarily connected to the tools you use. It is a function of whether your tools use you to create a world where they would be happy, or you use them to create one where God would be.