Some Guys on CMI Might be Overdoing Work Ethic

New blog on the kid: Some Guys on CMI Might be Overdoing Work Ethic · HGL's F.B. writings: My Writings are NOT Outflows from My Innermost Devotion and are NOT Meant to be Seen and Read by God Alone

Two quotes (see source below) might illustrate this.

How much does God want us to work?

God worked for six days and rested on the seventh as an example to us. He created us to need to sleep at night, and also to need a break from working. When God rescued the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, He gave them a special gift. They never got a day off when they were slaves of the Egyptians, but to show them that He is a kind God, He gave them the Sabbath—one whole day of rest every week!

Having a day to rest is an opportunity to show we trust God to give us what we need. And God also gave Israel extra days off to worship, they were like huge parties for the whole nation!

God not just gave Israel three great feasts, which indeed were like huge parties and at which wine or shekhar (something like date-cider / bread-beer) were enjoined*, but also gave a Israel the right to proclaim more feast, also like huge parties, and we know at least two of them, namely Purim and Hanukkah. Their origins are described in Esther and Maccabees. We know from John 10:22 that Jesus observed Hanukkah.

This is important, since the Church also has the right to proclaim feasts, starting with the reinterpretation of the three great feasts and their displacing to other days, and with the displacing of Sabbath to Sunday, arguably already by the Apostles. However, there are more and more things to celebrate, and therefore more and more days off.

This is a good thing. Parts of the evils of the 16th C. Deformations and the later Modernisations and Revolutions were abolitions of Christian feasts, and this benefitted mainly employers and (for Communism) central planners.

So, let's not give the impression the ONLY times we have a right to a day off is once a week plus when God Himself mandated a feast!

Did Jesus work?

We know that Jesus was a carpenter, like His adopted father, Joseph. Carpentry was hard work, and they didn’t get paid a lot, so Jesus had to work really hard. Joseph probably died sometime after Jesus was 12 years old, so Jesus would have had to work to provide for His mother Mary and His siblings until His ministry started. Jesus’ disciples worked too; several of them were fishermen, another job that required a lot of hard work!

Catholic tradition would have contributed to give the impression St. Joseph died just shortly before Jesus was Baptised.

The guys on CMI suppose Jesus was supporting younger siblings, there weren't any. The youngest child who naturally came from St. Joseph, St. James the Brother of God, was born just before Joseph's first wife died. The Blessed Virgin was his second wife. Jesus would if anything have been supported by St. Joseph's older children, if he had died earlier than when Jesus was going on thirty.

That carpentry was badly paid is not necessarily true. A trouser or, for back then, a tunic, lasts longer than the bread or fish for a meal. But a house lasts longer than a garment.** Therefore, it would tend to get accordingly well paid. As far as we know there were no huge conglomerates of carpenters who would outcompete individual small business, underpay the employees and try to sell all of this first to non-carpenters by temporarily underpricing the product. There were no usurers who could have financed that behaviour, taking money from a fellow Israelite for a loan was forbidden***. So, probably a carpenter was fairly well paid and small business. He was however not among the posh.°

Fishermen would probably be more exhausted by their work than carpenters. Both had moments of carrying or pulling, but the other moments would be colder and night shift for fishermen.

The existence of disciples was, apart from fishing trips, definitely less physical work. Precisely as a university student is working less with other things than the brain than a building worker or off-shore fishing ship mate.

The fact of physical work is in itself honourable, as thereby we acquit ourselves of the debt owed by Adam, but the lack of it is not always dishonourable. Like when compensated by studying or by teaching. Or printing. Or writing.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Laet of Orléans
5.XI.2024

Aurelianis, in Gallia, sancti Laeti, Presbyteri et Confessoris.

Quotes above from: Creation for Kids // Work
by Erin Hughes and Lita Sanders (nee Cosner)
Published in Creation 38(2):30–33, 2016
https://creation.com/cfk-work

* They are and were licit in moderation at other times too, except special days like fast days, Yom Kippur or Good Friday tend to be alcohol free, and for special people, like the Nazorites in the Old Testament or (less strictly) the Benedictine monks in the New Testament.
** I tend to take the view that the "labour hours" view of value is false, the "usefulness" view is correct.°° Obviously a loaf of bread is more necessary than clothing, but the clothing lasts longer. The house lasts longer than the piece of clothing. This kind of value will roughly speaking coincide with work hours value, but not always.
*** Leviticus 25:35—37
° As one can see from this exchange (warning, I think the words put into the mouth of Our Lord, about Henoch and Eden, are wrong), from Young Messiah:

Young Jesus Tested by Rabbi
jnipp71 | 7 Jan 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LD_DjIsJZE

I mean from 1:13 the question "will a carpenter build it?"

°° I found the post where I had treated this at more length:

deretour: Answering John Clarke
vendredi 2 juillet 2010 | Publié par Hans Georg Lundahl à 06:59
https://hglundahlsblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/answering-john-clarke.html