Is Jam making worth it? (Or reflections on life beyond profit and pleasure)

Early in the autumn, Karuna spent a Saturday afternoon making up 12 jars of blackcurrant jam. The blackcurrants had been picked in several batches over the summer from the allotment, and it was a bumper year for soft fruits. There were more than 3kg of them in the freezer, having been frozen on trays then decanted into bags. The jam making process involves plenty of sugar (generally the same weight of sugar as fruit), and then lots of careful stirring and boiling (energy costs nothing if it’s a sunny day and the solar panels are providing the electricity). The jars need sterilising, then filling and sealing. After they have cooled they are cleaned and labelled.

On one level, this was a very worthwhile exercise. For a £3 of sugar, we produced 12 jars of blackcurrant jam that would have cost at least £2.50 each in the supermarket and a lot more at a market stall for homemade jam. We now have plenty of jars to give away as Christmas presents (and if you are extra lucky you might get the strawberry and raspberry jams as well). But… the jam making itself probably took 3-4 hours of time. At minimum wage, that time is worth more than the value of the jam we made. There were also several hours spent picking, freezing, sorting etc. And none of that reckons with the cost of allotment and plants and watering, or energy (or installing solar panels) or jars. Our productive afternoon of jam making was not as profitable as Karuna working a minimum wage job for the same time and then buying the jam we needed.

So was it a waste of time? Well, alongside productivity, we could also ask about pleasure. Perhaps it is more pleasurable to make your own jam than to work  a minimum wage job and also have time for leisure. And maybe that is true. But if it is, it is probably not pleasure in the simple sense. There are probably more fun things to do than the whole process of jam making. What comes out of this process is more of a satisfaction than fun.

Perhaps I am overthinking things. Perhaps jam making as a process really can be justified on a combination of economic and enjoyability grounds. Productivity and pleasure may be enough to explain human activity. But I wonder if our jam making indicates a third dimension to deciding what is worthwhile to spend our time on.

For want of a better alliteration, I’m exploring the idea that alongside productivity and pleasure, there is also a priestly element to making human life worthwhile. The priestly element refers to the idea that we humans are image bearers, made to reflect God in the world. We are made to be with, like and for God in the world.

And so there are activities that we do in the world that are not initially about either pleasure or productivity but about our being with God. Spirituality is not important in order to grow the economy, nor is it always immediately pleasurable. But we as humans were made to be with God in this world.

And then in this world we represent God to the world, showing his likeness in the way we rule the world. Genesis 1 certainly includes productivity (in subduing the earth) and pleasure (in food good to eat). But it also include people displaying God’s likeness in the world.

So we can’t simply have spirituality shut off from the world as image bearing priests. We also must be active in the world showing what God is like. Sometimes this is related to community- we don’t relate to other people simply for productivity or pleasure. But because people made in the image of God matter. Visiting a relative with Alzheimer’s regularly for repetitive conversation may not be very enjoyable or productive, and yet it is good.

Sometimes this is related to the physical world- we find ways to connect to and use the natural world that are not simply economic or enjoyable, but are ways of appreciating and showing God’s goodness in the world. To connect to seasons and fruitfulness, in jam making, might be good for our image bearing role even if it is not simply profitable or maximally pleasurable. And there might be many other ways to connect to the physical world in ways that steward the world without immediate economic gain or great enjoyment.

If we add a priestly dimension to life, alongside productivity and pleasure, that will change the decisions we make. The priestly category is wide ranging, including time directly with God, time acting for God, and seeking to show God-likeness in the world- social and created. This priestly category might well include creativity as well as community.

But we probably face challenges in thinking about how we best include this dimension. To take a farming example, how do we best balance our priestly role to display kindness and care for creatures and the cultivation of beauty with the requirement for productivity to feed humanity. One option is to maximise productivity on the land we do cultivate, so as to maximise the land we can fully devote to nature care and beautiful environment. Another option is to try and integrate a bit of nature care and beauty into all the productive land. To put this into the sort of choices more of us face, do we aim to maximise to income per hour, regardless of how “priestly” the role is, so as to have time and money to give to deliberate “priestly” activity? Or do we aim for work that has a strong “priestly” as well as productive element, even if it means longer hours and fewer resources spare?

I take it that God himself, in his own life, is acting for his joy, is powerful in action, and displays his goodness. For God, there is no need to make these choices, because in him all three go together. And I assume that in the New Creation we also will be able to be rightly productive and priestly and take pleasure in what we do. But here and now, I think the priestly aspect alongside the productive and the pleasurable dimensions is helpful to guide how we spend our time. But it still leaves me with many questions about the way we integrate the three dimensions living in this fallen world where we often have to make choices between them.