Thatched House

Work is not a curse but toil is. God put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to work and enjoy the fruits of their labor. Work basically is therefore, not a curse but a blessing of God. Toil is a curse which is a result of men’s disobedience. The ground was cursed, thorns and thistles came up and since then, humans had to earn their livelihood by the sweat of their brows. Toil is a distortion of the blessing of Work. In Jesus Christ, the curse has been broken and we are called to do good works through his name. Many people think that in Heaven, we will work no more and instead, we will be playing praise and worship music all day long for eternity. When people think this way, I think they have in mind, what we call ‘toil’. Toil saps all our energy and sense of meaning. Vishal Mangalwadi defined toil as ‘mindless, repetitive labor that requires no choice’. However, God intends work to be a very fulfilling and meaningful activity. Mangalwadi poignantly asks, ‘Why are women i...

When we go out of the church, we brush our teeth and live our socio-economic and political lives. But while we are inside the church, these things are not talked about. Suddenly we put on our religious clothes and become different persons altogether, even though for a short while. The sermons can go on and on preaching about abstract things in the spiritual realm that has little resemblance with the realities of everyday living. The religious sphere becomes a private space in a corner and worship gets reduced to sentimental feelings just a little deeper than the guts. The church is becoming like a dinosaur which is getting extinct because it cannot cope with the times. Therefore, the call of the NBCC in the annual conference this year for the church to be more responsible in the society is a most welcome wake-up call. The NBCC asked the church to take up the cause of HIV/AIDS, Climate change, alcoholism, etc. However, instead of taking on a selec...