Canter Bridge

With all the herding prowess of the aphorism, a popular saying corrals us into agreeing that the heavenly minded are no earthly good. The apostle Paul will have none of that kind of celestial religion.

In a letter that has much to say about transcendent matters, Paul directs a torrent of words to the necessity of working hard and the requirement of self-reliance.

Now we command you, beloved, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from believers who are living in idleness and not according to the tradition that they received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not idle when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it; but with toil and labor we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you. This was not because we do not have that right, but in order to give you an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.

It may be that some members of the early Christian movement did conclude that the imminent return of their Messiah drained the sweaty tasks of world-shaping, spouse-sheltering, and child-feeding of their pertinence. Why invest sweat equity in an asset whose value was bound to expire tomorrow?

Or perhaps some were simply lazy bums, with no need of ideological support for their innate inertia.

Regardless, Paul will not have the community he shepherds burdened or blemished by those who will not lift a finger to provide for themselves. He comes within a hair’s breadth of painting them out of the family photograph.

No doubt faith is a little too conveniently blamed for the foibles of the inactive and dependent. Yet it must be admitted that a pernicious logic is available to the pious who would rather avoid work than embrace it.

Paul disowns that line of thinking and brushes up against doing the same with those who adopt it.

Sweat and a bit of muddy grunting, it turns out, resound with more sanctity than the hummed hymns of the sleepy.