Work

Gathering Stubble for Bricks

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So the taskmasters and the foremen of the people went out and said to the people, "Thus says Pharaoh, 'I will not give you straw. Go and get your straw yourselves wherever you can find it, but your work will not be reduced in the least.'" So the people were scattered throughout all the land of Egypt to gather stubble for straw. The taskmasters were urgent, saying, "Complete your work, your daily task each day, as when there was straw." And the foremen of the people of Israel, whom Pharaoh's taskmasters had set over them, were beaten and were asked, "Why have you not done all your task of making bricks today and yesterday, as in the past?" Then the foremen of the people of Israel came and cried to Pharaoh, "Why do you treat your servants like this? No straw is given to your servants, yet they say to us, 'Make bricks!' And behold, your servants are beaten; but the fault is in your own people." But he said, "You are idle, you are idle; that is why you say, 'Let us go and sacrifice to the LORD.' Go now and work. No straw will be given you, but you must still deliver the same number of bricks." The foremen of the people of Israel saw that they were in trouble when they said, "You shall by no means reduce your number of bricks, your daily task each day." They met Moses and Aaron, who were waiting for them, as they came out from Pharaoh; and they said to them, "The LORD look on you and judge, because you have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us." Then Moses turned to the LORD and said, "O LORD, why have you done evil to this people? Why did you ever send me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people, and you have not delivered your people at all."
—Exodus 5:10-23 ESV

About 1,800 people from my area work at the Ford CVT Transmission Plant in Batavia, the largest town within twenty miles of me. Ford announced this week that the plant will be closed by 2008. The repercussions of this will be felt for miles—and for decades.

I don't know what to say to the folks that work there. I don't what to say to anyone who loses a job nowadays. I do know that economists will claim that all those lost jobs will be picked up elsewhere, but I can promise them this: the majority of those folks from Batavia will be making less money no matter what job they pick up. And I'll even argue with those economists about the truth of their statement. Car wreckMy own experience is that we're not making new jobs, at least in this part of America. Instead, we seem to be creating a new class of nomadic workers who must pick up and move to follow the jobs wherever they go. I know too many people who are caught in that existence. Of course, people will quibble with my observations, but then they're not from around here.

Earlier this week I talked about living in the country, but it's getting tough to live in rural areas. As much as we admire Mayberry and its quirky rural residents, in reality hundreds of towns like Mayberry up and blew away because the jobs left. The infrastructure decayed for want of work and those that did have work still had to leave because there was no support for what they stayed behind to do.

Increasingly, we're asking people to make bricks without straw.

I've blogged about the Church and employment more than any other topic, I'm sure. But even as I'm typing, the churches around my area are reeling from this plant closure, not only from the future lost revenue, but from a lack of preparedness for this kind of loss.

I simply don't understand why the Church has kept employment on the back burner. There's nothing we do each day that consumes more time than our jobs, but from the paucity of interest the Church seems to take in our employment, you'd think there was something sinful about working. Scratch that. We talk about sin all the time. It's the everyday parts of life we don't hear about on Sunday.

Listen, if we don't know it, I'll let out the secret. We're in a boom and bust cycle in our economy and the bust cycles are probably going to grow increasingly worse and last for longer amounts of time. No rational person can look at the meltdowns at Ford and GM and pretend that won't send shockwaves through our economy. Those companies are in deep trouble and whether we like it or not, we Christians can't sit idly by and pretend it's all sunshine and rainbows.

Pastors, what are you doing in your churches to help your people prepare for the bust years? Joseph had the Egyptians save up for the seven lean years. How are churches today doing the same? Solid organizations anticipate need. So why are churches always reacting rather than being proactive?

I could write about this subject more, but I'm weary. Last week I wrote that our churches need to get everyone in them down on their faces in prayer and fasting for as long as it takes. Must it take an economic meltdown to do it?

What do you all think? Why is the issue of our jobs and the economy so inconsequential to the leaders of our churches? During the last economic bust, the number one prayer concern at my old church was for jobs, but it took the church forever to realize they needed to be more active in meeting that need. Does it have to be that way?

The comments section is open. Please talk to me about this.

Tags: Ford, Batavia, Jobs, Employment, Work, Business, Church, Faith, Christianity, Jesus, God

Are You a Hamster?

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Douglas Groothuis strides to the plate (in his recent post, “Against Multi-tasking”) and takes a mighty swing at an issue I’ve blogged about more times than I care to admit. Noting that our society is like a videotape stuck on fast forward play, with people favoring inhuman virtual worlds they can easily manipulate at a press of a button, he says:

Reality demands an attentiveness that multi-tasking does not allow. Human beings especially tend to be opaque and mysterious beings, whose inner recesses are not easily discerned. We can push a key and make the computer or cell phone do something. We cannot push a key and understand or help change a human being. That kind of being requires more attention, more patience, more suffering. This is because we are made in God’s image and likeness, yet we are fallen and disoriented by sin’s manifold manifestations. We are sinners in need or reorientation according to truth (that which describes reality). Some of the most important truths about ourselves and others and about God himself are not easily fathomed—or when fathomed, they are not easily remembered. The discerning of these truths requires attentiveness, patience, and studiousness. These truths demand, as Pascal noted, being quiet in our own room without distractions or diversions. Conversations concerned about truth and virtue require the engagement of two people who are attending, respecting, and responding to one another without mediation.

Dead. Spot. On. Here’s his summation:

If all this is true and important, several things follow. We need to slow down and become less efficient and effective, at least as these terms are defined by popular culture. We need to unplug more often, endeavoring do just one thing at a time and to do one thing at a time well. Perhaps we should simply listen to music in order to discern its nature, structure, and aesthetic value. This requires a one-pointed immersion into its sonic reality. Just listen and think. Maybe we should simply listen to another person, laboring to exegete his or her soul and bring our soul to bear on another’s pain, yearnings, and boredom. Perhaps we should read the Bible in book form and not jump from text to text to image to image as we do while “reading” it in cyberspace. (Is that really reading or merely retinizing?) Maybe we need to talk to someone on the phone and not listen to music while talking, not type an email while listening, not exercise while listening. Maybe much should change—within and without. Much should change if we think truth is being lost, relationships are being cheapened, and virtues are being soiled by our incessant dividedness, fragmentation, and alienation known as “multi-tasking.”

And…there’s the whiff.

Great stance. Fluid form. Eye on the ball. But it’s a “K” nonetheless.

I know Groothuis is blogging and it’s not a doctoral dissertation on the subject, but the Church has got to provide better answers. Groothuis has a stellar mind and I’d love for someone in his position to develop this more in the company of other great Christian thinkers and leaders. For all our sakes, it must be developed more than telling us to unplug from our devices and stop multi-tasking.

Take the average person who…

  • Gets up at 5 AM for work, showers, gets dressed
  • Eats a quick breakfast
  • Reads the Bible for a few minutes and tries to fit in a couple minutes of prayer
  • Commutes forty-five minutes to work through snarled traffic
  • Starts work at 7:30 AM
  • Skips lunch or eats quickly in the cubicle
  • Bails from work ten hours after starting
  • Drives forty-five minutes home through snarled traffic
  • Changes clothes
  • Sits down to eat dinner at around 7 PM
  • Manages to play a couple minutes with the kids
  • Helps put the kids to bed
  • Manages about fifteen minutes alone doing something personally worthwhile
  • Squeezes in a few minutes of talk and possibly a prayer with the spouse
  • Gets ready for bed
  • Hits the hay at 10 PM
  • Repeats

That’s now the existence for a huge number of people in the United States. Given that, I must ask when we find the time for the “single-tasking” Groothuis insists we need?

That schedule I just listed is what needs to be fixed. Church leaders wonder why folks won’t commit to more volunteer activities. Businessman on a Hamster WheelI’ve got to ask if any of the leaders in the Church today understand that kind of schedule and its ubiquitousness. If they do, and they hate it as much as the people stuck in it, then why is the Church in America not doing a single thing to reform that kind of schedule?

Honestly, the disconnect blows my mind. To his credit, Groothuis nails the problem beautifully. But when we start decrying the lack of singlemindedness to deconstruct the finer points of a Beethoven sonata while simultaneously asking people to work the kind of schedule most do, I’ve got to wonder, Did we just step off the planet?

This evening, my wife and I collapsed on our couch and talked for five minutes about the truth that people are exhausted when they end their day, but not in the good way that comes from physical labor, the kind that is capped by a sweet rush of endorphins and peace in the nerves. No, the exhuastion that afflicts us today is stress-induced, the kind that blurs all thoughts and makes pushing a button the sum total of all we can muster before we slump into bed to worry about the next day, fitfully tossing and turning as the digits flicker by in rapid succession on the nightstand alarm clock.

Today’s Christians can’t start talking about depth of meaning and greater purpose if at the very core of what we do each day there’s nothing but a treadmill stuck on the “Verge of Insanity” setting. Talking on the phone while we read our e-mail is a symptom of a greater problem because choosing to talk on the phone now, followed by reading the e-mail later, simply isn’t an option for a lot of people. We’ve got to fix the hectic madness we must obey or else risk a trampling by the mad rush of the rest of the world.

Who is speaking to the greater whole of our daily scheduled existence? Who is bold enough to provide viable solutions for getting at the root of our modern work lives that command such extreme chronological attention? Will our pastor be the one to explain to our bosses why we refuse to carry a corporate-mandated cellphone guaranteed to ring at least a half dozen times each weekend (and at least twice during each evening?)

It’s time to stop talking in theoreticals. And no more Band-Aids for severed limbs, either.

I would issue this challenge to Douglas Groothuis, a much smarter man than I am: How can Christians find a more Christ-honoring means of practical living than the system we have now in place—the one that is killing us, wrecking our families, and destroying our churches? How do we step out of society’s hamster wheel? Why is the Church in America not speaking to this? Why are there no answers other than the simpleminded ones we repeatedly offer but which continually fail to fix this issue?

If people are not living the abundant life because of the system of living we have created, then for the sake of the Kingdom of God we better find a way to beat the system.

Now, where do we start?

More Signs We Are Not Ready

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I was stumbling around looking for an article on the Web and found this courageous piece in Chronicles Magazine entitled America's Descent Into the Third World. Paul Craig Roberts dismantles recently created jobs and finds that the upbeat economic news we hear of late resembles the Emperor's latest threads. This article is must-read for those of you who read through my series on the business world.

I wonder from time to time if our economic leaders are flat-out lying to us to keep us from panicking. Honestly. Alan Greenspan recently let it be known that he has no idea why the economy is acting the way it is. If he doesn't understand what is going on, then no one does. That's never a positive sign.

The spin our economy is getting is bizarre, too. The Wall Street Journal yesterday was trumpeting the roaring economy noting that Americans are spending more again and that GM and Ford's sales are up more than 40% over last year. But in the same edition in different articles, they also note that Americans are now saving nothing. Nada. Everything we make goes out. And the numbers behind GM and Ford? Well, they are effectively selling almost all of their cars at a loss, unable to cover their expenses. That's not a great business plan.

When you start unpacking all the "good" economic and business news, you find the kinds of statistics that Paul Craig Roberts did:

[In the June 2005 jobs report, only] 144,000 private sector jobs were created, each one of which was in domestic services.

Fifty-six thousand jobs were created in professional and business services, about half of which are in administrative and waste services.

Thirty-eight thousand jobs were created in education and health services, almost all of which are in health care and social assistance.

Nineteen thousand jobs were created in leisure and hospitality, almost all of which are waitresses and bartenders.

Membership associations and organizations created 10,000 jobs, and repair and maintenance created 4,000 jobs.

Financial activities created 16,000 jobs.

This most certainly is not the labor market profile of a First World country, much less a superpower.

We are fast becoming a country of waiters, secretaries, and janitors. This is not to say that these jobs are not needed, Your mop & bucket are ready...but only that they cannot sustain America. Roberts's later comments on white collar work are especially telling. Again, read the whole article (even if you've heard the same warnings from me already.)

The American Church's silence on this is becoming pathological. If we cannot speak to the business world, if we cannot prepare for bad times, if we cannot shout truth in the face of lies, if we cannot bring hope to those who continue to slide downward, if we cannot bring peace to the frantic, then are we really bringing anything redemptive to anyone's work life?

Just this week the guys from my small group were discussing the fact that we are all harried, stressed out, torn in a million directions, estranged time-wise from our families, and working harder than ever for less. Each man had a complaint that was different from the rest, but we were all united in the fact that our problems here went back to the same single issue that the Church in America refuses to discuss. Something has to give.

I'll leave it to readers to imagine what's next. Are we ready for it?