Cultural mandate

Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it, have dominion over the fish, the birds, and every living creature. This is what theologians call the cultural mandate — humanity's original commission to develop the potential of creation, to take what God has made and build culture, cities, art, agriculture, and civilisation from it. What this verse establishes clearly is that work is not a consequence of the fall. Work is not punishment. It is God's original gift to humanity, given in the garden before sin entered the world. The fall distorted work — made it painful, frustrating, full of thorns. But the goodness of work, the dignity of it, the meaning of it — these are rooted here, in the beginning, in the commission God gave to the people He made in His image.