Some People Say A Man Is Made Out Of Mud

Did you listen to the song?  Youtube wouldn't let me upload it for several days and then apparently honored my request, when it was randomly convenient.
I remember hearing this song on my grandfather’s record player when I was a kid. From time to time it comes back to me. I played the song through the classroom computer for a class of freshmen last year when we were discussing a Christian perspective on work. It seemed so funny to be looking at this picture of a guy who looks like a cross between Fred Rogers and Clark Gable as Rhett Butler.

To top it off, smiley (also known as Tennessee Ernie Ford, one of the biggest recording artists of the 50’s and 60’s) is singing this fatalistic, mournful, tough-as-nails coal miner’s lament written by Merle Travis. I still LOVE the song.

“If you see me comin', better step aside
A lotta men didn't, a lotta men died
One fist of iron, the other of steel
If the right one don't a-get you
Then the left one will”

Sure Ernie.
But seriously, what is it about this song that became a hit in 1955? What does it say to (and about) the soul?

In point of fact, when God creates the human in Genesis one and it is declared "adam," what is being said is essentially “earthling.” Creature made from earth. But this creature is also declared to be “in the image of God.”

AND, in Genesis 2:15, before anything goes awry, the earthling is given work to do.  In the next chapter, God says that because of human rebellion, making a living will now be hard work. So here is the challenge to the soul. We are created for work, yet we often experience work as soul-owning, anger-inducing subordination. Let’s face it, Marx was onto something.

So what’s the solution? Paul admonishes early Christ-followers to work “as if for the Lord, rather than men.” Let’s face something else. I doubt too many of the readers here are coal-miners and none get paid in credit slips to “the company store.” Maybe part of what is so difficult about our work is NOT that it’s so repressive (though an increasingly large number of Americans struggle to make ends meet – see Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich) but that we work mainly to fulfill our own facile fantasies of the latest luxury.  The “men” we are working for, instead of the Lord, is ourselves.

Another problem is our theology of "giftedness."  Personally, I also know that I sometimes fall victim to the privileged/entitlement mindset that my work should be a fulfilling matrix of my unique abilities with tasks assigned accordingly and then met with praise when accomplished. I have a wonderful work-situation, but… like most people reading this, I don’t live in fantasy land.

I am finding release from this self-centeredness when I daily remind myself that in fact NOTHING really belongs to me, including my time.  A better theology of giftedness is to recognize that everything I “have” is a gift from God. So, I’ve taken to reminding myself every day that my 9-5 (as with the other hours, but 9-5 needs the most reminding) belongs to God and whatever it contains must be on God’s “to-do” list for me. This doesn’t mean that everyone (including me) needs to just accept “their station in life.” But accepting each day, at the beginning of the day, one day at a time, has been producing a great deal of contentment.

Another day older and deeper in debt for the gift of life.
Saint Peter, don’t you call me, cause there’s lots to do down here.