Latter-day Saints have a high view of "work." Not just "good works" within the realm of soteriology, but having a work-ethic, too. In Gen 2:15, we read:
And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
While reading a work on Opus Dei and the theology of their founder, Josemaría Escrivá (1902-1975), I encountered the following comment on the sanctity of work:
The fact that this statement in Genesis about work comes before the original sin of our first parents, shows that work is of the very essence of human nature. Only the laborious and tedious side of human activity is the punishment of original sin. Work in itself is good, is noble. Man is wholly fulfilled by his work, by being conscious of what he does. That is precisely what constitutes his superiority over other created beings.
Work, taken in its widest sense, is part of God’s plan for mankind. It is ‘a means by which man shares in creation. Hence work, any kind of work, is not only worthy; it is also a means of attaining human—that is, earthly, natural—perfection, as well as supernatural perfection.'
Man is a co-creator as well as a co-redeemer with God. Christ work; St. Joseph taught him his carpenter’s trade; work therefore is something which in turn has been redeemed. It is not just the framework of human life; it is a path to sanctity, something that sanctifies and that can be sanctified. For man-in-the-world work becomes the hinge on which the whole task of sanctification turns. (Dominique Le Tourneau, What is Opus Dei [Cork: The Mercier Press Limited, 1987], 31)
