There are many topics swirling around my mind today about what to write about it. All the financial news that came out of the Trump inauguration is enough to write a very thick book. Yet, a recurring conversation and a YouTube video keep pressing on my mind.
First the conversation. This particular conversation I am thinking about is one I have had multiple times with a few different people with slight variations. The conversation is essentially me asking why people work so hard and being very dissatisfied with their answers. The majority of people say they work hard because they have to, but this has almost never been the case when I press them on the subject. This is not to say that some people do work
long hard hours out of necessity. But my personal experience has taught me that people usually work long hours because either their employer forces them into an arbitrary 40+ hr work week OR because they want nice things and financial security for themselves and their family OR they have a misplaced love for their work. All that is of course understandable, but I find the overall work environment we have adopted deeply problematic.
My reasons are many and somewhat complex as to why I think our work environment is problematic but let me cut to the chase with the risk of offending everyone. The nice things we want are unnecessary and distract us from the good, true and beautiful. The security we are chasing is a fool's errand. We should all work to put food on the table and pay our debts, and then we should give freely and be content in leisure. Someone once
told me that if you have to bang on the door for it to open then Christ does not want you to go through that door. For all those people working 70-hour work weeks saying that the business/ministry would fail if they did not work their 70 hours, then that is God telling you that your time is misplaced. I don't even care if you are feeding the poor for those 70 hours, others should help and you are setting things up for inevitable failure anyway, because your mortal and when your gone no one is
going to be able to replace you.
All this is on my mind because I constantly see people working themselves into an early grave, and for what? Because some guy somewhere decided on what the work week for every job ever should look like. Or because you want security for a future that is not guaranteed? Or even because you want to leave your kids some wealth? Come on, have you ever met a
trust fund kid? I'm being purposefully harsh here to drive the point home (knowing there is all kinds of pushback you could give). We have eagerly adopted a materialist economy that says work is the epitome of human existence, when in reality the worship of God is the epitome of existence, and the highest form of worship is a wedding feast which is leisure!
Simply put...What is
most important to you? Does your time prove your answer to be true? Sure, we can glorify God in all that we do that is not sin, but come on let's ditch the platitudes and be honest with ourselves.
Okay, now the video. This video will make my protestant brothers and sister a bit uneasy, and it should make us all uneasy, but I think it delivers a message, about one component of the
history that got us to our current "work environment," that we should all pray about it. The protestant work ethic summarized in the below Martin Luther quote has had egregiously destructive effects on the human condition... "The maid who sweeps her kitchen is doing the will of God just as much as the
monk who prays..." This is patently false, because we were made for prayer not to sweep floors no matter how valuable sweeping floors is to this plane of existence."
