We may work that we may keep pace with the Earth and the soul of the Earth. Always we have been told that work is a curse and a labour a misfortune. However, I say to you that when we work we fulfill a part of the Earth’s furthest dream, assigned to us when that dream was born. Work is love made visible. And if we cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that we should leave our work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody,” reports 1 Thessalonians 4.11. Work, productivity, labor, creativity, and blood, sweat, and tears—it is basically our responsibility. There are conflicting views being bandied about these days concerning work and labor. As human beings in the process of finding out the most about ourselves and acting on that insight, we have a definite obligation to understand this important area of human experience.  #RandolphHarris 1 of 12

The principle of work has been taught from the foundation of the World. It is the bottom line of any forward motion of success. More than 6,000 years ago, Father Adam received the commandment, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,” reports Genesis 3.19. Many people believe that people work from the cradle to the grave and that a real person is one that does his or her work and does it well. This viewpoint is in keeping with the Protestant (or Puritan) Ethic. Work is far more than just a system devised by economists or managers to keep things going. It is a part of the very nature of things, just as the Earth turns. Too often we find work to be a chore, a burden, an unpleasant thing to be avoided and it is frightening how the disappearance of work as a part of our basic ethic is becoming acceptable. We constantly hear the statements, “It is too hard, give me something easier to do,” “I cannot wait that long,” coming from our young people. The ugly disease of nothing to do is growing in epidemic proportions among us. It undermines the basic fabric of our nations. “See that ye have faith, hope, and charity, then ye will abound in good work,” Alma 7.24. #RandolphHarris 2 of 12

We are what we are as a people because our ancestors were not afraid of honest, hard work. Our forefathers understood the necessity of it; sheer survival demanded it. A common ingredient among all successful people is an understanding of what constitutes paying the price of success. A common ingredient among all successful people is an understanding of what constitutes paying the price of success. Basic in that formula of paying the price is an inner gift of determination that “I will do whatever it takes. I will work hard, with integrity, to achieve my goal.” It I as natural for us to take part in the responsibilities of life as it is to breathe. Hard work is a blessing of God. It involves going after it with all our heart, might, mind, and strength. That alone is the difference between the average and the excellent. However, why is it that often we find ourselves unable to appreciate the beauty and glory of work? Why is it that even the most glamorous and stimulating work can at times seem like drudgery? It is because humans are basically lazy? It is because people consider work to be foreign to one’s nature, foreign to one’s desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain? #RandolphHarris 3 of 12

We believe that leftover vestiges of the Work-Sin Ethic and the loss of personal significance resulting from increased technology are responsible for human’s increasingly negative attitudes toward work. The system of thought and action called the Work-Sin Ethic is the underlying philosophy of the capitalistic economy of the United States and most nations in Western civilization because victory is brought to pass by one’s personal diligence and commitment to hard work, and it deserves some attention. The view of a champion, and the glory that surrounds one, must never be overshadowed by the long process of becoming one. Oddly enough, a cursory exploration of this system takes us into the realm of theology and Christian Church history. One of the ultimate strivings is the search for perfection. Based on the Old Testament account of the fall of man (“In Adam’s Fall we sinned all” says a colonial proverb), a strong notion grew up in medieval times that people should seek salvation and thus restore oneself to Adam and Eve’s original perfection. By the fifteenth century, secular affairs—economics, wars, feudal estates, monarchies, art—had become heavily entrenched in European life and the Church found itself no longer the monolithic leader in the lives of people. #RandolphHarris 4 of 12

The Renaissance opened people’s minds to the idea that they might be not just animals but fallen Angels. They also possessed abilities and could enjoy the products of achievement. The Protestant Reformation, usually credited to Martin Luther in 1517, added to the disunity of the Catholic World. Not only were secular affairs interfering with the spiritual strivings, but nationalistic power plays broke up the one World that had been led by the Church of Rome since the fifth century. Further, Martin Luther told people that no amount of good works would save their souls; it required only a simple faith in God. One of those directly influenced by Martin Luther was a Swiss reformer by the name of John Calvin. The Evangelical, Reformed, Dutch Reformed, and Presbyterian Churches are all direct-line heirs of John Calvin; American and European capitalism owes much of its widespread development to Calvinist theology. John Calvin had a unique theological system. It insisted that the paternal God of Martin Luther was unrealistic. The tern, autocratic God of the Old Testament was more true. This God had determined—predestined—before the beginning of time just who would be saved and who would be damned. Working out salvation by Catholic means and believing it by Lutheran faith were both futile. Only the Grace of God was involved; nothing done by humans. So, there were the elect and the damned. #RandolphHarris 5 of 12

Calvin met the desperate queries of his followers by saying that the elect knew intuitively of their foreordained salvation, just as the damned knew of their lostness. Furthermore, declared Calvin, the elect must participate in the affairs of this World. Thus, he gave the concept of Work as a vocation a theological base Vocation comes from a Latin word meaning calling, and the term is still used when Roman Catholic clergy speak of their work as their Vocation. In Calvin’s thought, conscience, as a subjective mode of revelation, was closely related to the sense of divinity. Conscience too, he said, is part of the native endowment of all people, written upon the hearts of all. Typically he spoke of it as a sort of knowledge whose object is God’s will; or, equivalently, the difference between good and evil, the law of God, or the law of nature. Thus it is by virtue of conscience the people are aware of their responsibility—aware of the moral demands to which one is subject with respect to God and humans. Inward law, written, even engraved, upon the hearts of all, in a sense asserts the very same things that are to be learned from the [Decalogue]; and what the Decalogue requires is perfect love of God and of our neighbor. #RandolphHarris 6 of 12

The belief system of vocation being one’s true calling assisted the economic system in Switzerland and, as it spread into Germany, did much to reinforce economic forces there. Calvin had told people that one sign of a person was one of the elects of God was one’s success in this life. Calvin also taught by reflecting on the structure of the external World and the pattern of history. “God has not only sowed in people’s minds that seed of religion of which we have spoken but revealed oneself and daily discloses himself in the whole workmanship of the Universe. As a consequence, people cannot open their eyes without being compelled to see him,” declared John Calvin. God’s attributes—preeminently for the display of his goodness to us but also of his glory, wisdom, power, and justice. And supposedly, the damned were the failures on Earth. In fairness, the economists and historians do not blame Calvin himself for this interpretation so much as they do his secular followers. Economic success, then, came to be viewed as direct evidence of the hard work, sacrifice and self-denial found among good servants of God. O LORD, be gracious to us; we long for you. Be our strength every morning, our salvation in time of distress,” reports Isaiah 33.2. #RandolphHarris 7 of 12

The Calvinist theology found its way into the lives of the people we call Puritans. The takeovers of Puritanism in Europe is a bleak, cold period of history, where art, literature, decoration and beauty were sacrificed to the harsh dictates of the stern religious teachings. The Puritan emphasized sacrifice, hard work, ambition in work and social position, temperance, and worship. The puritans made their way to the New World, and the colonial period of American history is a continual study in the gray, harsh, rigid life pattern we still refer to as Puritanism. It was in this period that children were taught that the Devil finds work for idle hands. Play was not only a luxury, but a sin. Work was human’s highest virtue, and the person who got up before the Sun and worked until one dropped, having little or no time for relaxation, creative avocations, play, or leisure-time pursuits, was the hero of colonial times. Even children were included. From the time she could hold a needle, a young colonial girl had to sew. She learned her lessons and her morality by stitching the samplers many people today collect as cherished relics and antiques. “By their work ye shall know them,” reports Moroni 7.5. #RandolphHarris 8 of 12

Carving out a new Europe in the hostile, forbidding colonies was considered by many to be a new Crusade. Setting up churches and converting the pagan aborigines was God’s will, the colonial theology insisted. Only incidentally were the economic exploitations acknowledged. They were justified, when someone brought them up, on evangelical grounds. Colonialism was conceived (and has been interpreted by historians ever since) as part of a God-inspired program for proving the hardihood of his elect, for enlarging his churches’ membership, and as The Great Adventure. During this time the concept of work grew into an enlarged version of the theological notion of Vocation. Work became the privilege of the elect, since it provided opportunities to demonstrate salvation through economic success and achievement. Even for those who were not too sure they were elected, there were the examples and lessons of the successful for them to follow. Workers were told not to despair if success eluded them; it was sure to be right around the corner. The Lord has commanded us not to be idle. #RandolphHarris 9 of 12

Developing the capacity to work helps us contribute to the World in which we life. It brings an increased sense of self-worthy. It blesses us and our families, both now and in the future. However, even those who drifted away from the religious teachings of the Puritan leaders—and to do so too dramatically was to court the charge of witchcraft and heresy—the divinity of work persisted in their thinking. Work was considered noble and Godly. The morality of the times developed alongside this perception. Good people worked hard and steadily and bad people were idle or unemployed. Many of the so-called Blue Laws, still on the law books in many Eastern states, made it a crime to engage in any kind of recreation or frivolity on Sunday. Sunday for the religious was the day for worship, not just for an hour in the morning, but by Bible reading during the afternoon and church attendance in the evening. Sunday for the less religious was a day of rest, derserved by the hardworking, and given some biblical justification by the verse in Genesis telling how God had rested on the seventh day after six days of hard work creating the World. However, for Seventh Day Adventists, Saturday is the Sabbath and the day of rest and followers are not supposed to use any kind of electronic device. They are supposed to only read the Bible and go to church and pray. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12

We are heirs to this puritan tradition called the Protestant or Puritan Ethic by historians and economists. It gibes all virtue to hard work, ambition, thrift, temperance, and personal piety. Since many of those who follow this philosophy are in no way connected with puritan religions, we prefer the newer labeling, the Work-Sin Ethic. What role has work played in your life? How has it blessed you and your family, both temporally and spiritually? “Thou shalt not idle away thy time, neither shalt thou bury they talent,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 60.13. Work is honorable. Developing the capacity to work will help us contribute to the World in which we live. It will bring us an increased sense of self-worthy. It will bless us and our family, both now and in the future. Learning to work begins in the home. Help your family by willingly participating in the work necessary to maintain a house. Learn early to handle your money wisely and live within your means. Follow the teachings of the prophets by paying your tithing, avoiding dent, and saving for the future. Set high gals for yourself, and be willing to work hard to achieve them. Develop self-discipline, and be dependable because if human life is to be renewed and our natural gifts are to be healed and God’s supernatural gifts restored, sin must be overcome. #RandolphHarris 11 of 12

Implanted on the hearts of all and clarified in the Scriptures is the affairs of a civil society. Partly due to its religious background and partly due to its traditionally being practiced, it has taken firm hold in American life: humans must work to demonstrate their humanity and their productivity and justify their being on Earth. Not to work is to be a parasite. The analogy of a large rowboat is frequently used. Each citizen is part of the crew of this Ship of State, and each one must pull one’s own oar if the vessel, USS John F. Kennedy CV-67, is not to founder.  The choice was between working and being baggage, between being a good person and being a sinful person. Today, we see this attitude not only in older people who were chronologically to puritan times, but in their children and grandchildren. We find attitudes toward work that approach a worshipful level. This ethic has, of course, resulted in a tremendous vitality and upsurge in economic productivity in this nation. It has also resulted in feelings of worthlessness and guilt in people who could not keep up with the pace, who could not produce, or who had to retired before they were finished feeling productive. #RandolphHarris 12 of 12