Session Outline
Seth Burt | Cru Winter Conference 2026
The Babylonian Story of Work
Ancient Babylon wrestled with the same question we do: Why must we work?
- The junior gods (Igigi) grew tired of labor and rebelled against Marduk
- Marduk’s solution: create humans as slave labor
“[Man] shall be charged with the service of the gods that they [the gods] might be at ease.” — Marduk (Babylonian creation myth)
Modern Echoes of Marduk
Option 1: Work as Necessary Evil (Babs)
“Stop working late. Stop reading emails after hours. Stop working on weekends. A job is income to live your life, not your life.” — @Hell0babs (viral tweet, 2022)
Option 2: Work as Identity (GaryVee)
“I don’t take naps.”
“Wake up before everyone else and work into the night. Hustle.”
“I’m grinding when you’re sleeping.”
“If you live for the weekends and vacations, your sh*t is broken.” — GaryVee
Both narratives echo Marduk’s story: work either as burden to escape or as master to serve.
The Christian Disconnect
Christians experience a “radical disconnection between Sunday services and Monday morning activities, describing a sense of living in two worlds that never touch each other.” — Laura Nash
The Better Story: Creation
Christianity offers something radically different: an invitation to partner with the Creator God.
Key Scripture: Genesis 1–2
Genesis 1:26 — “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over…” all the things God just created.
Genesis 1:27 — “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
Genesis 1:28 — “And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over…’” everything God just created.
Genesis 2:5 — “…there was no man to work the ground…”
Genesis 2:15 — “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”
Key insight: All of this work language and instruction happens before the Fall. Work is not the result of sin—it is a gift.
God the Creator
Unlike the tired gods of Babylon, our God works and creates without exhaustion. He delights in his work and calls it “good.”
“Who formed the world of nature (which provides the raw material for physical sciences)? Who formed the universe of human interactions (which is the raw material of politics, economics, sociology, and history)? Who is the source of all harmony, form, and narrative pattern (which is the raw material for art)? Who is the source of the human mind (which is the raw material for philosophy and psychology)?” — Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
“The view that an artist or banker is simply doing ‘secular work’, not really ‘the Lord’s work’—does not fit with this view of creation. For God is also an artist and an investor in the material world.” — Timothy Keller
God’s Image Bearers
Made in His Image
We are made in the image of a Creator God—which has profound implications for our work.
- Mlkh (Mah-la-kah): The Hebrew word for God’s creative work in Genesis is the same word used for ordinary human work throughout Scripture. Your “mundane” work reflects God’s cosmic creation.
- There are no idols in Christianity because we are God’s image bearers—living representations of the Creator.
Given Dominion and Rule
We are called not to a specific job, but to rule and reign wherever we find ourselves.
“Only because mankind was created in the image of God was it appropriate to grant him the awesome responsibility of dominion over the entire created order.” — Doug Kelly
God could have created everything finished—cities, homes, systems. Instead, He invites us to continue His creative work: subduing, working, keeping, making things more beautiful.
So What?
- Recognize the invitation. You are not working “so the gods can be at ease.” God is calling you to partner with the Creator of the universe—to rule and reign wherever you find yourself.
“Work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do. It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker’s faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental and bodily satisfaction, and the medium in which he offers himself to God.” — Dorothy Sayers
- Remember the better story. When you have your “Babs moment”—when work feels meaningless and you wonder “What am I doing?”—remember: Christians always tell better stories. There is meaning in your work, even the mundane. You’re not a savage. You’re an image-bearer, invited to rule and reign.