Away At Work

Why do we spend so much of our time at work? Why do we spend the majority of our waking hours at, preparing for, and traveling to and from work? If how we spend our time is any reflection of our deepest desires and concerns, then you’d think the majority of people just love being at work more than anything else or something!

But that’s not the case, right?

For many working people throughout the world today, whether your work is at the desk, behind the wheel, over the grill, in the warehouse, in the field, or in the home, we can’t wait to be done with work before it even begins.

What coworker hasn’t shared their dream of becoming “their own boss” in hopes of dictating their work hours and vacation time? What young worker hasn’t been lured by the dream of retiring early? The power, the time, the freedom!

So if none of us desire to spend our days away at work, is working long hours and long weeks simply a part of life? Are our working hours and conditions simply “the way things are?” Is there no other alternative to the world in which we live?

Pharaoh, the Almighty Boss

“Moses and Aaron, why are you pulling the people away from their work? Get to your labors!” - Exodus 5:4 (NRSV)

In the early pages of the book of Exodus, we can hear a story about a people whose time had come under the control of persons other than themselves. In chapter five, Moses, Aaron, Miriam, and the people of Israel are wanting to lay down their labors in order to put on a festival: they want to make time and create space for living in right relationship with their God and with one another. But Pharaoh, as master over their bodies, has other plans for their time here on this earth. Pharaoh only sees the people for the fruits that their labor can produce. He only sees them as mere means to the end of his own power and wealth.

And it is in this moment, when Pharaoh is raging at Moses and Aaron for trying to pull “the people away from their work,” that an irresolvable tension is revealed, a tension between how the God of Israel would have the people spend their time—loving God and one another—and how Pharaoh would have them spend their time—working. And as we all know, this tension would lead to a mighty clash of powers.

Time, apparently, isn’t as “free” as we have thought. Rather, time is something that is constantly being fought for.

Working People’s Time

Although today’s wage workers are not chattel slaves like the laborers in the Exodus story, the time of ordinary people living in this profit-driven world remains claimed by persons other than themselves. Just as the workers of Israel were not free to spend their time loving God and one another, working people today are not free to spend their time building and enjoying a more beloved community.

At the capitalist workplace, where humans are divided into employers and employees, the worker’s time is under the control of, and is owned by, the employer. When workers are hard at work, they are constantly being reminded that they are “on the clock”—another way of saying that the worker’s time belongs to the boss.

Yet even beyond our employers, our creditors, lenders, and landlords, too, require us to work long hours in order to pay our debts and rents, claiming a significant portion of our time month after month, year after year. This is so because to belong to the working class, as opposed to belonging to the capitalist class, is to be wage dependent. For the last four-hundred years, capitalism has continually transformed and recreated the world so that the majority of human beings remain completely dependent upon employers for wages and lenders for loans just so that they can survive.

Think about it: if you want access to clean water, a roof over your head, food in your belly, healthcare—all things necessary for the most basic levels of human existence—you have to have money in order to purchase these things.

Members of the working class depend upon capitalists because employers, creditors, lenders, and landlords exclusively own the means of survival. We cannot survive without access to what they privately possess, and the only two things we have to offer them are our labor and our time, which they dream of endlessly using to produce and extract more and more profits with.

Capitalism’s first and greatest commandment—the ceaseless pursuit of profits—compels employers to squeeze their employees; it drives creditors and lenders to burden their debtors with more debt; it pushes landlords to take more rent money from their tenants. And in doing so, capitalists end up claiming increasing portions of working people’s time.

But is this the life we believe the God of Jesus longs for ordinary people like ourselves to know? Are we really okay with a world where the time of the many is bought, possessed, and claimed by the few? Is there really no alternative?

God’s Time

What if, instead of having to spend the majority of our lives making rich people richer, workers-in-the-pews had more time for loving God and one another? More time to build deeper, wider relationships with our families, friends, neighbors, and strangers? More time to genuinely embody and enjoy the Sabbath? How might our most intimate of relationships and communities become more fully beloved if we were to pursue and realize an alternative world, one in which the time of the masses was freed from the grips of the profit-driven few?

I want more time to love, more time to rest, more time to be creative and to pursue justice. And I truly believe God wants us to have more time to live in right relationship with our neighbors and the rest of the beloved creation.

But realizing this alternative world will require our collective struggle. Just as Pharaoh was unwilling to let the people of Israel use their time to love God and one another, to spend their time throwing festivals of joy, laughter, and community, neither will capitalists be willing to hand our time back to us.

Perhaps a mighty clash of powers is coming. But first, as Christians, we must ask ourselves and one another, How might the God of Jesus have us spend our time?

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