05-05-09_New Blog Post for ‘If a Man Will Not Work’
My blog activities have gone on hold for four months now. It is time to put something here –
The fact that I do take a stance that I do with regard to employment still gets certain individuals worked up over the my apparent disregard for laboring. I do not have anything at all against laboring. I strongly feel it is good for all to do this. We were designed in our very physical beings to perform labor.
Nor am I against employment.
What???
What I do not like to see is the wasting of talent and creativity that gets lost in certain kinds of employment that occurs when a person’s passion and purpose in life gets mismatched with his or her position. Generally speaking, employment for most people means getting caught up in a rut, doing a routine they would rather not do, but do it because it never occurs to them that there is more to life than such a lifestyle. Far to often passion gets pushed back with intention that one day they will be pursued. For some this gets pushed right off their lifespans. That’s sad!
I’m not knocking people nor their intelligence.
If you are reading this post and get offended by some of what I write here, I will be quick to say that the reasons why you are tired and broke (like me) is because in your early life you were “programmed” to believe the way you do with regard to getting a job. I am targeting those of you who work in low income jobs you had to endeavor out of necessity. I know you are out there and can relate to the feelings you have deep inside yourself. I see it every day where I work.
I am fully aware that there are cases where employment is both fulfilling and rewarding. About 21% of the entire population of the working class are passionate about their job positions.
What about the 79%?
Very few are all out eager to get up, leave their homes, and do the mundane work they do each and every work day. Many of you have applied religious work-around to your situation and that works fine. I have no qualms about that. What I do have a problem with is many of you have been led to believe that it is a virtue to live this way. This belief puts you in a prison needlessly. God never said you have to do what you do for the sake of “just passing through” this life. When I talk about virtue here I refer to that belief where the attainment of wealth on the earth is wrong. If this were so then Solomon was dead wrong! I strongly believe that it is not the act of being wealthy that is wrong but the wrong attitude about it when having attained wealth.
In my own words, without consulting a dictionary, wealth is synonymous with “blessings.” Many, when they hear the word “wealth,” think money. This is not all there is to wealth. If this were so then people who have wealth in this regard are miserable. Now I may be wrong and way off with my definition of wealth being blessings, but I do know that wealth has much more to do than with money alone.
Another way to look at wealth is “abundance.” Few will argue that wealth does take this attribute. One can be poor monetarily but yet be wealthy! The virtues of human existence fit nicely under this thing we call abundance. Yet there are people out there who believe that lack and poverty are traits of virtue. NO SUCH THING! Anybody who believes this have been brainwashed in some way.
Today I had a conversation with “Slavica,” a supervisor I had when I worked for Sodexho at Florida College. We talked about employment and attaining wealth. The very first thing she brought up was the idea that it was wrong to be wealthy, that only certain people are privileged with such an existence. “You’ve got to be born into wealth.” she told me. All I could do was sit there and have compassion for her and then attempt to explain that this was a figure of a limiting belief that many people hold.
This belief definitely will keep otherwise highly successful people in mediocrity.
The common beliefs that being wealthy is wrong, rich people are bad, that they steal from the poor and attain their wealth in other insidious ways to such who believe this way makes scarcity and victim mentality virtuous. Sure, there are individuals out there who have gotten rich monetarily through such means but this does not in any way mean they are wealthy! The media has also played a tremendous role in the formulation of such erroneous beliefs amongst the masses. To hold such beliefs about all wealthy people whether or not it is intentional does injustice, moreover, prejudice, against those who have truly and ethically acquired wealth.
The belief that being rich or wealthy is insidious is widely held by the working class, especially low wage and is one of the characteristics of employee mentality. Schools generally teach little or nothing about the subjects of money and wealth outside of standard business education and mathematics. How to manage money, risk management, investing are all vital to the proper understanding of wealth but that is not all there is with regard to education that gets left out. Self discipline, gratitude, the responsible management of resources, creativity, and many other subjects form the well-rounded education that it takes to become wealthy. These things typically do not have high priority in the standards of education as administered by our school systems which is geared more towards producing working-class citizens.
Employment does have its place for without it business as we know it could not stand. It is vital to commerce. There will always be a working class and there always had been one in every culture. Employment and laboring for a living is inescapable for most people. However, wealth, being rich, employment, the employee, victim mentality, employee mentality, abundance, poverty, scarcity, education, and many more topics need to be viewed in the light that they truly are and not what they are commonly believed to be.
.
Such passages as, “If a man will not work, neither shall he eat.” hinge on being apathetic about labor, being lazy, irresponsible, individuals who refuse to “fill their space.” It does not mean one must get a job and live the life of employment if he has the desire to go beyond this. All too often biblical passages like this are imposed on those who seek entrepreneurial or proprietorial lifestyles but are in process of self education in such attainments. I do believe, however, that if employment is expedient for the time being for such who are endeavoring to educate themselves for such attainments until such time these become viable and profitable, the passage is applicable.
Leave a Reply