Truth & Toil:

All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty. -Proverbs 14:23

Prior to my first trip to Uganda, I had assumed that it was a poor nation because it was a resource-deprived desert. But my assumptions collapsed into confusion when I discovered that the River Nile comes out of Lake Victoria, one of the largest bodies of freshwater in the world. The Nile starts with such force that, in 1954, the British built up hydroelectric plants. Uganda produces more power than it consumes. Yet during my visit, I saw hundreds of women and children carrying water on their heads. The sight made me feel at home because that is what women did in Indian villages and towns.

Given the abundance of water and power, why do women in non-western countries such as Uganda, haul water and bricks on their heads? Why waste billions of woman-hours in physical labour when they could be used reading or teaching or planting? Why did the cultures that built pyramids and Taj Mahals not make wheelbarrows for their women and children, slaves and labourers?

The answer came from historian Lynn White Jr.’s pioneering research into the history of technology. He concluded that it was the Bible that made the medieval West the first civilisation in history that did not rest on the backs of sweating slaves.

Hindu and Buddhist monks are no less intelligent than their Christian counterparts. Their philosophies, sculptures and temples testify that they were second to none in imagination, ingenuity, architecture, engineering, discipline, and organisation. And Christian monks shared a common problem with their Buddhist counterparts: neither of them had wives to haul water, grind wheat, or find fuel for cooking bread. But while the Buddha required his monks to beg for food, the New Testament teaches that whoever does not work should not eat (2 Thessalonians 3:10).

This was because the first chapter of the Bible presents a God Who is a Worker, not a Meditator. God worked for six days—so must we, His children! To work is godly.

Christian monks invented machines because they had to carry their own water, grind their own wheat, and bake their own bread. Christian monasteries developed technologies, because the Bible’s requirement to work was coupled with a spiritual quest for ‘salvation from sin and its consequences.’ Toil is one of the curses of sin. (Genesis 3). While the elite in other cultures used technology for power, prestige and torture, Christian monasteries developed technologies that liberated powerless individuals from toil.

Challenge Question:

Do you have a skill or talent lying dormant within you due to neglect? How can you reawaken and actively employ it to glorify God?

Related Scriptures:

● “The craving of a sluggard will be the death of him, because his hands refuse to work.” (Proverbs 21:25)

● “For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat’. We hear that some among you are idle and disruptive. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the food they eat.” (2 Thessalonians 3:10-12)

● “Those who work their land will have abundant food, but those who chase fantasies will have their fill of poverty.” (Proverbs 28:19)

● “Our people must learn to devote themselves to doing what is good, in order to provide for urgent needs and not live unproductive lives.” (Titus 3:14)