Idleness and Work in the Letter to the Thessalonians

pondering

 

St. Paul’s first and second letters to the Thessalonians highlight the importance of work and the dangers of idleness. His insistence on the individuality of work clashes at least in tone with what we find in the Acts of the Apostles. Acts describes the Christian community as a state of ongoing sharing in which individuality hardly matters. “Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of things which possessed was his own, but they had everything in common.” (4:32) In contrast, St. Paul goes in the opposite direction by exhorting the Thessalonians “to aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we charged you” (1 Thes 4:11). His advice seems to be to mind one’s own business and, thus, become a better Christian.

Such advice almost seems to be unchristian as does his insistence on work. This leads to the question of how work and individuality can fit into the ideal Christian community. The answer to this question lies in exploring the benefits of labor and individuality and how they can correspond with Christian openness and generosity

Idleness is Uncharitable

St. Paul first shows that by eliminating idleness, work fosters Christian neighborliness by preventing us from uncharitably taking what is not ours and enmeshing ourselves unduly in the business of others. Indeed, the idle person must take what belongs to others and so become a burden to others. St. Paul explains that he chose to work while preaching among the Thessalonians for this very reason. “For you remember our labor and toil, brethren; we worked night and day, that we might not burden any of you, while we preached to you the gospel of God.” (1 Thes 2:9). He wishes the rest of the community to follow his example. According to St. Paul, idleness also promotes unruly and busy-body behavior. The idle in the community quickly become “mere busy bodies” who lack a “quietness” in their work (2 Thes 3:11-12). Presumably, they are loud, haughty, and know-it-all types who roam around parasitically preying on others goods. If they cannot be corrected, such people should be avoided—“keep away from any brother who is living in idleness” (2 Thes 3:6). Perhaps, they not only are to be avoided because they are burdensome but also because their slothful spirit can spread from one person to another and drag down the community as a whole.

Work contributes to personal status while also fostering humility and equality before God

Work requires individuality and raises the status of an individual. The quality of work naturally sets one man apart from another. Paradoxically, it also fosters an egalitarian spirit among the Christian community. St. Paul instructs the brethren to “respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work” (1 Thes 5:12-13). Work makes others worthy of esteem and praise. Work that involves supervision makes the worker even more worthy of esteem.

Paul’s own work as a preacher would seem to raise him to a position over the rest of the community. Yet as we know, he chooses to work among the Thessalonians to indicate his humility and obedience before them. St. Paul’s harsh statement “if anyone will not work, let him not eat” (2 Thes 3:10) reveals his belief that the Christian community should be founded on strong and self-reliant individuals who, nonetheless, believe in egalitarianism and maintain true humility.

Such a community might seem to contradict the community described in Acts. Indeed, the community found there appears to be bound together by their lack of individuality and status. However, St. Paul’s stern rebuke of idlers may have as its goal a similar sense of equality, humility, and obedience before God. For him, labor and strict boundaries between individuals are not in conflict with unity and fraternity. Rather he feels that haughtiness towards work and an undue reliance on others can corrode the spirit of fraternity that both the letters to the Thessalonians and the Acts of the Apostles highlight.

Work prepares us for the Second Coming

Finally, work prepares us for the second coming of Christ. The reason for the Thessalonians idleness can be explained by their expectation that the second coming was imminent, thus rendering work of any kind unnecessary. The question becomes how work can prepare us for Christ and not distract us from his coming. First of all, work shows our obedience to God because it fulfills God’s desire expressed in Genesis 2:15 for man to till and keep the garden. It also can help us to maintain vigilance. St. Paul writes of two kinds of slothfulness. The one is purely physical idleness, while the other is idleness of spirit, spiritual sloth. Implicitly, these two kinds of idleness are connected to each other in Thessalonians and elsewhere in the Gospel. The parables of the idle workers or the prodigal son suggest that idle hands displease God and can be a breeding ground for sin. St. Paul commends his audience “let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober” (1 Thes. 5:6). Spiritual wakefulness coincides with physical activity and temperance. We would be foolish to believe that we would better serve God and prepare for Christ’s arrival by simply sitting around or trying to be in a constant state of prayer. Work must become our prayer to God and we must keep our hands and minds occupied.

St. Paul’s vision of the Christian community

Clearly, St. Paul believes that work prepares us for Christian fellowship. It eliminates idleness and the sins of pride that that may occasion. It promotes a spirit of equality and humility before God by putting us all on the same level—we are simply all workers in the vineyard. Finally, it can be a means of keeping us active and alert for the second coming of Christ. The ideal Christian community for St. Paul is one in which all members are united in meaningful work and in which nobody is an undue burden on anyone else. Such a community goes about its affairs peacefully and quietly. It maintains order in the midst of a chaotic world. It also maintains a spirit of generosity which is rooted in individuality and minding one’s own affairs.

Applying St. Paul’s words to the present

Our mindset has changed very little since St. Paul wrote these letters. As Christians, we are often swayed by the idea that work somehow takes away from our ability to concentrate on what really matters. We might even see work as a kind of degradation. We might feel it is an activity that only non-Christians who live for nothing but bread should be engaged in. These letters reassure us that work is an essentially Christian activity. As Christians, we are meant to contribute to our world both spiritually and materially. Last but not least, we can take to heart St. Paul’s condemnation of busy-bodies. The proper way to do our work is modestly and quietly, but this can be more difficult than it seems. Complaints and laments can make our work anything but quiet. These complaints along with resistant to work make us a burden on others. We might shrink away from our work and let others do it for us. Let us take some of St. Paul’s advice and approach our work with true rigor and fairness.

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2 thoughts on “Idleness and Work in the Letter to the Thessalonians”

  1. I enjoyed this exegesis. I’d love to hear your thoughts on Christ’s work before his public life began and your thoughts on God’s original vocation for Adam and Eve to subdue the world.

  2. Pingback: MONDAY CATHOLICA EXTRA | Big Pulpit

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