The Christian tradition has often shown an ambivalent attitude towards human work. For centuries the necessity of working was viewed primarily as a punishment, one result of the fall from grace experienced by our first parents. ‘Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life’, Adam is told by God (Genesis 3:17). It is only after death that we will truly be able to ‘rest in peace’. More recently, however, it is the positive aspects of work that have been highlighted. Even before the Fall, it is suggested, humans were invited to tend the garden in which they live, and care for the animals with which they share it and that they have named. And, more generally, some kinds of work, at least, may now be seen as partaking in God’s own creative enterprise.
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