“God wants to give us freedom from the curse of toil”

In an interview with Evangelical Focus, Indian author Vishal Mangalwadi talked about the role of technology and how work has evolved in Western societies.

The Bible, Mangalwadi said, explains the value of work in contrast to the curse of toil. He shared these ideas in a conversation at the GBG Christian graduates conference in Valencia (Spain).

The Christian theology of the Cross of Jesus Christ is key, the author emphasised, because “it affirms the sinfulness but also the value and dignity of men. Man is so important that God would come to this earth and shed his blood for our salvation.”

“TECHNOLOGY EMANCIPATED THE COMMON MAN”

The author of Truth and Transformation and The Book That Made Your World explains that “technology was developed in all countries, but in all of them it was about war, torture and the pleasure of the aristocracy.”

“Only in the West, a peculiar technology began to be developed in the Middle Ages, which emancipated the common man.”

All this technology “was developed in monasteries, and one of the driving forces behind it was an understanding of the very important difference that the Bible made between work and toil.”

“THE EARLY CONSEQUENCE OF SIN IS TOIL”

“God is a worker, He worked for six days. Therefore, to work is godliness, and this is why Paul said: whoever does not work, should not eat”, Mangalwadi explains.

But when Adam and Eve sinned, “God put a curse upon the earth, that you will eat from the sweat of your brow, so one of the early consequences of sin is toil.”

Another consequence is “the shame for our own nakedness, you need covering, and that means more work, it is not just food. God is saying that we will have to work hard in order to eat.”

TECHNOLOGY TO MAKE THE WORK EASIER

According to Mangalwadi, Christian monks and the Buddhist shared the same problem: “They did not have wives, so, who is going to bring water from the river, who is going to bake their bread?”

“The Buddhists solved the problem easily, they went out and begged, but Christians cannot beg because of what Paul said, they had to work.”

However, these monks “were developing their minds, because they were in the monastery to study, so that they invented and maintained technology to make their work easy”, Mangalwadi points out.

“FREEDOM FROM THE CURSE OF TOIL”

“The goal of work was to end toil, because that was a consequence of sin; and sin and its curse have been nailed upon the Cross”, Mangalwadi says.

“God wants to give us freedom from the curse, including the curse of toil, which is slavery.”

“THE WORK OF CHRIST IS EMANCIPATING AND HUMANIZING”

Mangalwadi recalls that “the West became the first civilization in which technology was used to emancipate women, to emancipate human beings who were doing things that can be done with no human energy, and to emancipate slaves.”

“That is the work of Christ through the Cross, and it is emancipating, humanizing, because toil is dehumanizing”, Mangalwadi concludes.

WATCH THE VIDEO OF THE INTERVIEW: