8/17/2023 0 Comments Download sisyphus hades![]() ![]() Given this aspect of human labor, some might impute to Christians who laud the virtues of vocation that error which the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) charged to “the flatterers of work” in his day. Contrary to common assumptions, this toilsome aspect of our labor has a higher calling of its own, acting as the means by which labor prunes our hearts to bear fruit to God. While human labor does have a divine calling, we do not labor apart from “thorns and thistles” and “in the sweat of face” (Genesis 3:18-19). In the midst of the now-common Christian affirmation of all forms of work as God-given vocations, the image of Sisyphus, vainly pushing his boulder up a hill in Hades, only to watch it roll back down again, might serve to remind us of the reality of toil, the other side of the coin. “Sisyphus is punished in Hades,” writes the historian and mythographer Apollodorus, “by rolling a stone with his hands and head in the effort to heave it over the top but push it as he will, it rebounds backward.” Due to the toilsome nature of his punishment, Sisyphus became a symbol of every futile labor, the implication being that such repetitive, unproductive work could only be fit for punishing evil and would otherwise simply be torture. According to ancient legend, Sisyphus was punished by the gods for his craftiness in life.
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