Ergasia Brendan E Byrne

In this episode of Ergasia, we conclude our exploration of the book Hard Work Never Killed Anybody: How The Idolisation of Work Sustains This Deadly Lie by John Bottomley by going back to the beginning and exploring the origins of Bottomley's ministry to the world of work. How did Bottomley come to understand the gulf that exists between our beliefs and expectations about work and the sometimes brutal reality? How did this understanding lead him into an awareness of the gap between the Church's theological tradition concerning work and the practice it articulated through its congregation-centric polity? What is Bottomley's understanding of God's call to the Church with respect to its minstry to and within the world of work?
 
References
Bottomley, John Hard Work Never Killed Anybody: How the Idolisation of Work Sustains this Deadly Lie. Northcote: Morning Star Publishing, 2015.

When our eyes are opened to the ways in which the idol of hard work disguises its complicity in the deaths of people sacrificed to its demands; and when we see the impact which being forgotten or victimised by the systems which are supposed to protect vulnerable workers or support their bereaved families - how do we make God's governance real in the world of human suffering? What does hope look like in such circumstances? What are the issues facing the Church if it wishes to rise to the challenges posed by modernity's construction of work and economy?
 
References
 
Bottomley, John Hard Work Never Killed Anybody: How the Idolisation of Work Sustains this Deadly Lie. Northcote: Morning Star Publishing, 2015.
 

In this episode of Ergasia, we conclude our two-part examination of the ways in which the experience of those who have been harmed by modernity's construction of work and economy can be integrated with the Scriptural witness of God's love for humanity and call to the Church to engage in a ministry of prophetic solidarity with suffering humanity. How does the idolatry of hard work deflect attention away from the harm it causes by misleading its own victims into finding someone else to blame? How does the biblical account of the raising of Lazarus from the dead critique our own culturally ingrained fear of death, thereby encouraging us to persist in our false belief in the centrality of hard work in human life? How is the Church called to repent of its own participation in the idolatry of hard work and the living death it imposes on humanity?
References
Bottomley, John Hard Work Never Killed Anybody: How the Idolisation of Work Sustains this Deadly Lie. Northcote: Morning Star Publishing, 2015.

If the prophetic imagination is evoked by the process of deep listening, how can the wisdom gained by this listening result in the integration of the experience of work-related suffering with the witness of Scripture? How does Scripture continue to speak into modernity's construction of work and economy, and the false promises of the ideology of hard work? How does this process of integration challenge the Church to reflect upon its own identity as an employer, and its own co-option by the division of human life into the spheres of public and private.
 
References
Bottomley, John Hard Work Never Killed Anybody: How the Idolisation of Work Sustains this Deadly Lie. Northcote: Morning Star Publishing, 2015.

After a long delay, Ergasia is back - and in this episode, we continue our exploration of the book Hard Work Never Killed AnyBody: How The Idolisation of Work Sustains This Deadly Lie, by John Bottomley, published by Morning Star Publishing in 2015. In particular we will begin the examination of how work and life can be renewed through the prophetic imagination, beginning with the need for deep listening to the pain of both the victims and the perpetrators of injustice
 
References
Bottomley, John Hard Work Never Killed Anybody: How The Idolisation Of Work Sustains This Deadly Lie. Northcote: Morning Star Publishing, 2015.

How is the silencing of the justice claims of those harmed by modernity's construction of work and economy linked to a widespread culture of forgetting injustice? How is this culture linked to the injustice perpetrated by colonial society against indigenous Australians? How is the church complicit in injustice through its own captivity to the assumptions of modernity, and the forgetting of injustice in its own history? How can worship and the prophetic imagination it articulates become a ground for resistance to the idolatry of hard work?
References
Bottomley, John Hard Work Never Killed Anybody: How The Idolisation Of Work Sustains This Deadly Lie. Northcote: Morning Star Publishing, 2015.