19111. Boundaries and Work
I
n Sunday school we were studying Adam and Eve and the Fall. I
learned that the Fall was the beginning of everything “bad.” That
day I went home and said to my mother, “I don’t like Adam and
Eve. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t have to clean up my room!”
Work at age eight wasn’t fun, and because it wasn’t fun, it
was bad. Because it was bad, it was Adam’s fault. A simple the-
ological theory for a youngster, but it was youthful heresy. Work
existed before the Fall; it was always part of God’s plan for
humanity. He planned for people to do two things. They would
subdue and they would rule (Gen. 1:28). They would bring the
earth under their domain, and they would manage it. That
sounds a lot like work!
But because Eden was paradise, our difficulties with work
came later, after the Fall. God said to Adam: “Cursed is the ground
because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of
your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will
eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat
your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were
taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return” (Gen. 3:17–19).
Other aspects of the Fall also affected our work. The first is
the tendency toward disownership. We talked in earlier chap-
ters about the boundary problem of not taking responsibility for
what is ours. This started in the garden when Adam and Eve
tried to pass the blame on to another for their original act of sin-
ning. Adam blamed Eve; Eve blamed the serpent (Gen. 3:11–
13). They were disowning their responsibility and blaming