God created man to work. That’s why the prospect of extending unemployment “benefits” in California and America is so alarming. To be able-bodied and paid not to work for months on end, and to look forward each month to receiving a government check, damages a man’s identity and character.
By the end of October, the jobless rate in California stood at 12.4 percent. The overall rate in the nation was 9.8 percent in November. California state government is borrowing $40 million per day to pay for historically high “jobless benefits,” which has bankrupted the state’s unemployment insurance system. This sky-high unemployment rate, and long-term unemployment in a person’s life or the life of a nation, along with the terrible example set for children, is simply unacceptable in a free society.
The unemployed man has an urgent and important need to analyze himself, to become humble, repentant, responsible, loving, courageous, creative, faithful, and visionary. He must change his mind and actually look forward to work. To do right for himself and his family, he must be willing to take a humble job, move to get work, or create new work for himself with himself as the boss. Getting a job, any honest job, even if you have to “downgrade” your lifestyle, is much better for your character than living off the government and developing an entitlement mentality. Churches should hold classes and teach this attitude of victors to destroy the victim mindset.
Monday’s column by Nina Easton on the unemployment mentality is worth reading for anyone who is unemployed, who thinks they may become unemployed, or who loves someone who’s unemployed:
What happens to a nation’s collective psyche when millions of once-productive people remain out of work for months or even years? What happens when unemployed husbands resign themselves to relying on a wife’s income, when unemployed wives feel trapped at home, when twenty- and thirtysomethings calculate that they’d rather live off their parents than face a cut-throat job market, when middle-aged men and women stop searching for jobs after realizing they’re hopelessly lost in a haze of rapid-fire technological change?
“What happens when the jobless give up,” Nina Easton, Fortune, Dec. 13, 2010
If you’re a Christian, Dr. Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has this for you to hear: “The disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ is…active, and not passive; getting at it, not just waiting. I’ve heard horror stories out there of Christians who are saying ‘I’ve just stopped looking for work’… Sloth is something that is recognized as one of the deadly sins. It’s a soul-rotting sin. It’s a sin that repudiates the Gospel. We weren’t saved for inactivity; we were redeemed in order to get about Kingdom work.”
Listen to Mohler’s Dec. 3, 2009 radio show
Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.
Romans 12:2 NLT
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