More on Work

These quotes are taken directly from another blog I really like, and it is suprisingly relevant to a previous post. Sorry for the quote within the quote!

During World War II, Dorothy L. Sayers, gave a talk, Why work?, which is worth reading. Here are a few choice quotes

[We should view work] not as a necessary drudgery to be undergone for the purpose of making money, but as a way of life in which the nature of man should find its proper exercise and delight and so fulfill itself to the glory of God. That it should, in fact, be thought of as a creative activity undertaken for the love of the work itself; and that man, made in God’s image, should make things, as God makes them, for the sake of doing well a thing that is well worth doing.

.....

God is not served by technical incompetence; and incompetence and untruth always result when the secular vocation is treated as a thing alien to religion….

.....

Shall we be prepared to take the same attitude to the arts of peace as to the arts of war? I see no reason why we should not sacrifice our convenience and our individual standard of living just as readily for the building of great public works as for the building of ships and tanks – but when the stimulus of fear and anger is removed, shall we be prepared to do any such thing? Or shall we want to go back to that civilization of greed and waste which we dignify by the name of a “high standard of living”?

I found the last paragraph particularly interesting. If I've understood her correctly, she argues that we should work towards impressive public monuments/spaces/whatever instead of focussing resources on the waste that is ever increasing comfort.

This is a really interesting point. Again if I've understood correctly, this seems to be a theological argument from creation. If we, in working, are mimicking our God in creating, then we would build similar things to him. She argues for great public works in peace-time as an appropriate reflection of this work.

This has interesting repercussions for building nice churches and things like this (something I've never considered to be particularly wise).

However, she realises that during war time, tanks and ships are the appropriate thing to direct public resources toward, and rightly so. I wonder whether she would today argue for public resources going toward the necessities of the poor first and foremost?