Work is the first redemptive task that will be explored. Adam was given a job before he was given a wife. What was his work like? We get some indication of it by looking at the millennium kingdom where the trees of the healing of nations bloom every 30 days. (Revelations 22:2) It was without thorns, without the sweat of the brow, and it would be done in corporation with his wife. It was fruitful satisfying and free. It was Christ like, Jesus said, “I have come to do the will of the Father, He is always working and so I must work too.” John 5:17 As long as Adam was working as the Father instructed him he was working out the will of God in his time, place, and with his people. When we work in our time and place and with the people God has assigned to our lives we are doing the same thing. We are in the will of God and we are free. John 8:36 says, “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
Agricultural Mindset to Work
The below quote from Sociologyguide.com touches upon agrarian cultures ability to enter into redemptive task and complete the dominion mandate in the areas of food production, political, economic and religious development as well as the arts, crafts and trades some of which were present in the first generations of man on Earth.
“Cultivation of land through the plough as this invention enabled the people to make a great leap forward in food production. It increased the productivity of land through the use of animals and bringing to the surface the nutrients of the soil. Combining irrigation techniques with the use of the plough increased the productivity and the crop yield. It also brought fallow land under cultivation. The size of the agricultural societies increased as it lessened the burden of large number of people who engaged themselves in other activities. Agricultural societies lead to the establishment of more elaborate political institutions like formalized government bureaucracy assisted by the legal system. It also leads to the evolution of distinct social classes -those who own the land and those who work on the other's land. Land is the major source of wealth and is individually owned.
This creates major difference between the social strata. Agricultural societies provide the basis for the establishment of economic institutions. Trade becomes more elaborate and money is medium of exchange. It also demands the maintenance of records of transaction, crop harvest, taxation, governmental rules and regulations. Religion becomes separate institution with elaborate rituals and traditions. The agricultural societies support the emergence of arts and cultural artifacts due to surplus food production people tend to divert their attention to other recreational activities. There is far more complex social structure. According to Ian Robertson the number of statuses multiplies, population size increases, cities appear, new institutions emerge, social classes arise, political and economic inequality becomes inbuilt into the social structure and culture becomes much more diversified and heterogeneous.”
The quote has implications for the entire pre flood era in regards to the development of thought life of humans. Psychologically agriculturalists have time to contemplate as they work. They form and shape the land as God shaped and molded man with his hands from the Earth. Ray Bakke in his work A Theology as Big as the City extends this rural analogy to urban environments when describing a “God whose hands are in the mud.” He does this in the context of describing God’s work to bring social order to urban environments. He stresses that Christians should be involved in the community. He cites William Temple,’s Christianity and the Social Order when describing a God who is involved in the daily lives of individuals. He compares that with god’s that would be developed later in human history such as those in Greek Mythology who do not want to be contaminated through involvement with man kind.
This work contends that the skill sets we see within the early generations
of mankind were taught to Adam by God and then taught by Adam to his progeny. The use of tools may have been one of these, the creation of cloths another, sacrifice would have been a very important task that God taught Adam.
Pre Industrial America the Hope of a Redemptive Nation
There is an interesting parallel analysis that can be made between the family farm of the pre-industrialized United States of American and the generations that lived between the expulsion from the Garden until the flood. There are several conditions that make this comparison legitimate. Power in the pre flood generation was paternalistic and local . The family farm would have been the same. Taxes would have been minimal in the United States, there was no government system in place prior the flood, land was fertile and had not previously been cultivated in both cases.
“Land policy made ownership of a relatively large amount of land possible for the common person in the United States. This was due to several factors. First, there was a relative abundance of agricultural resources in the United States. Some of the best soil and climate on the globe for agriculture had not been cultivated by the native Americans and thus virgin land was there in abundance, unlike soil in Europe which had been cultivated for a thousand years. Unowned land in the public domain expanded greatly over time: …Second, and more important, this abundant land was distributed in a relatively equal manner. Due to its political solidarity, the family farm community was able to win the struggle in Congress to continually liberalize land policy. … family farmers had a potential surplus beyond the needs of the family to sell on the market. The farmers had an incentive to work hard and produce a surplus because they received the full product of that effort. There was no absolutist state demanding heavy taxes, as there was in Europe. There was no aristocratic land-owning class demanding heavy rent, as there was in Europe. This policy of a wide distribution of ample land produced many farmers with sufficient surplus and incentive to purchase capital goods and produce for the market.”
The above quote is and extraordinary example of the kingdom mandate being fulfilled. Even in that generation it was called manifest destiny. Part of what made the colonization of the United States was that Christianity set the context for work, and worship in the land. However it was Darwinism and the sin of greed that drove Native People’s policies and African American policies. In these sins Americans may have much in common with the pre-flood generations; however you can hear the motivation to build a Godly community in the following 1839 essay by John L Sullivan on manifest destiny. It is lengthy but so full of redemptive hope and language that I believe its full inclusion is warranted.
"The American people having derived their origin from many other nations, and the Declaration of National Independence being entirely based on the great principle of human equality, these facts demonstrate at once our disconnected position as regards any other nation; that we have, in reality, but little connection with the past history of any of them, and still less with all antiquity, its glories, or its crimes. On the contrary, our national birth was the beginning of a new history, the formation and progress of an untried political system, which separates us from the past and connects us with the future only; and so far as regards the entire development of the natural rights of man, in moral, political, and national life, we may confidently assume that our country is destined to be the great nation of futurity.
It is so destined, because the principle upon which a nation is organized fixes its destiny, and that of equality is perfect, is universal. It presides in all the operations of the physical world, and it is also the conscious law of the soul -- the self-evident dictates of morality, which accurately defines the duty of man to man, and consequently man's rights as man. Besides, the truthful annals of any nation furnish abundant evidence, that its happiness, its greatness, its duration, were always proportionate to the democratic equality in its system of government. . . .
What friend of human liberty, civilization, and refinement, can cast his view over the past history of the monarchies and aristocracies of antiquity, and not deplore that they ever existed? What philanthropist can contemplate the oppressions, the cruelties, and injustice inflicted by them on the masses of mankind, and not turn with moral horror from the retrospect?
America is destined for better deeds. It is our unparalleled glory that we have no reminiscences of battle fields, but in defense of humanity, of the oppressed of all nations, of the rights of conscience, the rights of personal enfranchisement. Our annals describe no scenes of horrid carnage, where men were led on by hundreds of thousands to slay one another, dupes and victims to emperors, kings, nobles, demons in the human form called heroes. We have had patriots to defend our homes, our liberties, but no aspirants to crowns or thrones; nor have the American people ever suffered themselves to be led on by wicked ambition to depopulate the land, to spread desolation far and wide, that a human being might be placed on a seat of supremacy.
We have no interest in the scenes of antiquity, only as lessons of avoidance of nearly all their examples. The expansive future is our arena, and for our history. We are entering on its untrodden space, with the truths of God in our minds, beneficent objects in our hearts, and with a clear conscience unsullied by the past. We are the nation of human progress, and who will, what can, set limits to our onward march? Providence is with us, and no earthly power can. We point to the everlasting truth on the first page of our national declaration, and we proclaim to the millions of other lands, that "the gates of hell" -- the powers of aristocracy and monarchy -- "shall not prevail against it."
The far-reaching, the boundless future will be the era of American greatness. In its magnificent domain of space and time, the nation of many nations is destined to manifest to mankind the excellence of divine principles; to establish on earth the noblest temple ever dedicated to the worship of the Most High -- the Sacred and the True. Its floor shall be a hemisphere -- its roof the firmament of the star-studded heavens, and its congregation an Union of many Republics, comprising hundreds of happy millions, calling, owning no man master, but governed by God's natural and moral law of equality, the law of brotherhood -- of "peace and good will amongst men.". . .
Yes, we are the nation of progress, of individual freedom, of universal enfranchisement. Equality of rights is the cynosure of our union of States, the grand exemplar of the correlative equality of individuals; and while truth sheds its effulgence, we cannot retrograde, without dissolving the one and subverting the other. We must onward to the fulfillment of our mission -- to the entire development of the principle of our organization -- freedom of conscience, freedom of person, freedom of trade and business pursuits, universality of freedom and equality. This is our high destiny, and in nature's eternal, inevitable decree of cause and effect we must accomplish it. All this will be our future history, to establish on earth the moral dignity and salvation of man -- the immutable truth and beneficence of God. For this blessed mission to the nations of the world, which are shut out from the life-giving light of truth, has America been chosen; and her high example shall smite unto death the tyranny of kings, hierarchs, and oligarchs, and carry the glad tidings of peace and good will where myriads now endure an existence scarcely more enviable than that of beasts of the field. Who, then, can doubt that our country is destined to be the great nation of futurity?
The above is written by a Christian in 18th century United States, far removed from the Garden of Eden and its nearest generations. However it has as its motivation the re-creation of a free nation that, if not reflecting Eden, with its absence of sin, reflects the kingdom of God on Earth that was available in the 18th century as well as the pre flood generations. God gave both generations the same mandate. He has made that mandate evident to the pre flood generation through the means of creation and conscience. 18th Century America had the revelation of Christ available to them but he is “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Hebrews 13:8.
http://www.sociologyguide.com/types-of-society/characteristics-of-Agricultural-societies.php
Ray Bakke,A Theology as Big as the City, (InterVarsity Press, 1997) pg 32
Ray Bakke,A Theology as Big as the City, (InterVarsity Press, 1997) pg 33
Henry M. Morris, God of the Nations, (Master Books, 2002) pg 28
Henry M. Morris, God of the Nations, (Master Books, 2002) pg 28
Questia Media America, Inc. www.questia.com Book Title: The Political Economy of the Family Farm: The Agrarian Roots of American Capitalism. Contributors: Sue Headlee - author. Publisher: Praeger. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1991. Page Number: 3.
O’Sullivan, John L. On Manifest Destiny, 1839, Excerpted from "The Great Nation of Futurity," The United States Democratic Review, Volume 6, Issue 23, pp. 426-430. The complete article can be found in The Making of America Series at Cornell University, http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/osulliva.htm
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