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Hello, welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. This is a daily conversation about scripture, culture and media from a Reformed perspective. Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist. If you're hearing a little bit of background noise on today's program, I'm doing another show from the truck. I'm driving and I wanted to redeem the time by doing the show as I'm headed home.
And today we're going to be talking about the subject of the Protestant work ethic. This is something that many of us have heard about. Many of us have read about, maybe when you were in social studies class in school or maybe in some other situation.
And I want to talk about it in relation to something that is going on today, something that I have noticed. And I posted about this today on social media and I had a few people respond and I thought this is something that really is a bigger problem than many people realize.
And what first caught my attention was just a few days ago, I was going to a restaurant and as I was waiting on, it was a drive-thru restaurant. And as I was waiting on my food, the lady inside said, please sir, be patient with me.
There's only two of us in here right now. And I thought to myself, only two people working in the restaurant? And I got around and she kind of just apologized again and said that they had had a lot of people leave and they were basically working on less than what we would call a skeleton crew.
And so that got me thinking, is this a bigger problem than just in this one restaurant? And I got to talking to a few folks and hearing other stories. And lo and behold, my particular situation was not unique.
And when I posted this on social media, several people chimed in and said that since the stimulus has hit this last one, which was a pretty sizable amount, $1 ,400 per person. And so if you've got two people in a household, that's $2 ,800 for that two people.
And if it's a four-person household, two adults and two children, well, you're looking at a pretty large amount of money at one time. And the unfortunate thing is that what it seems to have done is caused some people to abandon their job, that they have seen that they can, instead of going to work, they can live off of this money, maybe for a month, maybe for two months, depending on how much they make, depending on how much they need to survive.
I mean, again, if you have three children, that's a pretty sizable amount of money for the children. And then for you and your spouse, again, $2 ,800. And so we're looking at a pretty sizable amount of money here for a family.
And so perhaps somebody saw that and said, you know what, I can go a month and not have to work. Or I can go two months and not have to work. If I live frugally, maybe I could go three months and not have to work.
And so what we're seeing is people who are choosing, instead of working, to live off of this government stimulus. Now, first and foremost, that is not what the stimulus is supposed to do. The stimulus is supposed to help.
And whether or not you agree with the stimulus, I have a lot of problems with the amount of money that the government seems to be coming up with out of thin air. But be that as it may, the purpose of the stimulus is not supposed to be causing people to abandon their jobs.
The purpose of the stimulus is supposed to be giving people more money to put back into the economy, to stimulate the economy. And again, I think it's going to cause some negative repercussions. I think it's going to cause some issues with inflation.
But be that as it may. The purpose of the stimulus was never ever intended that people would say, wow, I got a check from the government. I can now leave my job and I don't need to work for the next month or two months or three months or however long ever.
But that's what we're seeing. And again, I have a friend who owns a restaurant and she mentioned to me, she said right now they have like 20 positions open because they're having trouble keeping people.
People have been given money and they're having trouble. And again, this is also hitting at the same time as a lot of people's tax returns. And if people have children, then their tax return money is often added to by their tax credits.
If they have children, they have tax credits for those children. And so some people are coming away with $10 ,000. Some people are coming away $15 ,000, depending on the amount of children they have. And it can be a pretty sizable amount to stick into their account.
And instead of taking that money and having a reserve, instead of taking that money and paying off debt, it's, hey, look, we can live off this money and we don't have to go to work for the next couple months.
And again, I am not talking about everyone. I know everybody's situation is different. I'm not sitting up on my high horse, looking down my nose at people saying, oh, I'm so much better than them. I was young once and I made a lot of mistakes.
Financially, I made a ton of mistakes. So I know how easy it would be if I were 21 again or 24 again and somebody just plopped down $8 ,000 and said, here, here's this money. I know how easy it would be to use that as an excuse to call in sick.
I get it. I understand what would make someone do that. But here's the danger. It is so short sighted. It is so short sighted. It's almost like you can't see past the end of your nose because what's happening in that situation is you're taking what otherwise could be a benefit and you're turning it into a liability.
You're taking a positive and you're making it a negative because what could be the positive is that you can add that money to what you're already making and you can have your debts paid if you have debts.
Maybe you have a credit card. Or maybe you have other things that you've been having to live off of and you can pay off some of that debt. Pay off your automobile. Pay down some of your, another loan if you have another loan.
Or if you don't have a lot of debt, you could set that money aside. One of the things that the financial guru, Dave Ramsey, often mentions, he's a, he's oftentimes people will point to Dave Ramsey as being a, a person that you should listen to.
And I think he is very wise in the way that he deals with money most of the time. And what he says is, you know, you have to have, but before you really start investing or anything, you need to have a three to six month cushion of money that, that basically set aside for an emergency.
If you do lose your job or if you do have a problem that you need to, to, to pay for something, a medical issue or something that comes up, you can't work for several weeks. If you've got three to four, three to six months in the bank, if you've got three to six months worth of salary set aside, then you, you're, you're, you have a safety net.
And like I said, Dave Ramsey is not the only one who says that. You look around, a lot of financial advisors would say, before you invest one penny in the stock market, before you invest one cent into some type of, of account that can go up or down that, you know, a high yield account or something like that, put the money in a regular savings account and save up enough money that you have three to six months of income set aside.
And again, some of, some of the people have received a lot of money and that could be that safety net. But instead, if we're, if we're, if we're leaving our jobs, if we're running away, then basically what we're doing is we're taking what could have been a benefit and we're, we're turning it into a liability because what's going to happen when the money runs out?
Well, now we don't have a job anymore. Now we're in a situation where we are looking for a job and we're desperately looking for a job because we're out of money. We don't have the cushion that we had.
And instead of working through it and having the cushion, and I'm not saying, you know, don't treat yourself, you know, it's nothing wrong with going out to dinner or, you know, if you need a, if you need something in your house, you know, buy something, whatever, you know, I'm not saying don't do that, but the point is living off this money as if it's a replacement for your salary is so short sighted.
It's very dangerous. And I know that, I know that I'm probably not telling most of you anything you don't already know, but the few that are out there that may be listening to this, that are thinking of this stimulus as a, as a, as a replacement for your salary, that's not the intention and that it's ultimately going to come back to bite you.
Now having said all that, let's talk about the Protestant work ethic, because that was what I said I was going to talk about the beginning. We have as a society begun to really miss the mark on what our vocations are meant to be.
We have callings from God to be in certain things in life. And let me back up for a moment. When I talk about callings from God, I do think when I say that, what I mean is a vocation is something that God has, has given you as an opportunity to glorify him in work.
And so we should not be, we should not hate work. Now I know some jobs are hard. I've had some jobs that I really, it was tough getting up and going to work. I worked for UPS, boy, that was very tough.
I worked for Duval Asphalt. I laid asphalt for a while when I was a young man, and that was, that was hard, hot, difficult work. And again, as a young man, I didn't understand the Protestant work ethic.
I didn't understand seeing a job or a vocation as a calling, seeing it as something that you would glorify God in. But that is what, that was really something that the Protestants pushed. The understanding that you don't have to be a clergy member to glorify God in what you do.
You don't have to be a pastor. You don't have to be an elder or a deacon to glorify God. You can, you can literally plumb toilets to the glory of God. You can lay asphalt to the glory of God. You can, you can sweep floors to the glory of God.
And if that's where God has you at this moment, then the calling of scripture is to go and do it to the glory of God. Whatever we do, whether we eat or drink, we do it all to the glory of God, the scripture says.
And so in our work, let us not abandon work for the sake of temporary reprieve with a little bit of money that's been handed over to us, but rather let us see our work, our vocation as an opportunity to glorify God in everything that we do.
I hope this has been a help to you and I appreciate you listening today. Thank you for listening to Coffee with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey and I've been your Calvinist. May God bless you.
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As you go about your day, remember this. Jesus Christ came to save sinners. All who come to Him in repentance and faith will find Him to be a perfect Savior. He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.
May God be with you.