Entrepreneurship and the Garden of Eden

Posted by Rich Swanson

This post is adopted from a lecture I heard by Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Church in New York City. He is a regular on my iPod.

We can learn a lot about how God designed mankind by looking at Adam and Eve’s lives in the Garden of Eden. It is the Garden – life before the fall – where we find clues about our true nature and the purpose of work. God made us in His image, as creative beings. Unlike other species, humans have the ability to co-create with God, who is the Creator of all things. Thus, when we innovate, we express a portion of the image of God within us.

The Book of Genesis tells us the first “job” was gardening. Gardening is cultivating soil and vegetation to produce something of both use and beauty. It is an appropriate metaphor for work of all kinds. The work for Adam and Eve was to “tend” the garden; that is to combine the existing resources and create something both useful and beautiful, which mankind and God would enjoy together.

This is the true nature of work: to arrange available resources in innovative ways, in an effort to “prosper” mankind. The effects of sin have twisted and often corrupted this arrangement, but the essence is still there. Work is co-creation with God; and what we produce with our work has the purpose of human flourishing – to make people everywhere better off.

For more on this topic please visit the website of Redeemer Church. Pastor Keller is an excellent communicator and has thought deeply about the connection between faith and work. Search his lectures/sermons on the topic of “re-visioning work.” Dr. Keller is also the New York Times bestselling author of The Reason for God, The Prodigal God, and Counterfeit Gods.

What do you think about the idea of co-creating with God? Can work be that glorious?