The Labor Dispute 3-1-09
Labor relations has been one of the most bitterly contested and crucially decisive factors in the American economy since our entry into the Industrial Age. During the times of plenty, workers tend to want more pay and benefits for less effort and risk; while during the times of hardship, workers focus more on maintaining their agreements and ensuring their employment. In those same times, shareholders (owners) try to focus on growth in the good years and on survival in the bad years. Depending on the character of the parties involved, these decisions are either made with everyone’s interests at heart (such as with the basket company Longaberger) or they are made in the arena of personal attacks and corporate warfare (such as with automobile and airline labor disputes). But in the end, no matter which way it goes, the discussion is about paying workers what they are owed and workers actually earning the pay they receive.
This often brings up a clash between economic and social ideology. In economic terms, a worker is only worth what his effort can be sold for in the market (which is why in road construction, the person operating the heavy equipment is often paid more that the person holding the sign). But from a social ideological perspective, people view as distasteful the assigning of worth to an individual (the janitor cleaning the office has equal human worth as the company CEO who occupies that office). Problems come into play when the parties disputing compensation are using different definitions of the word “worth”.
The Bible gives us two opposite views of the worth of man. These first three passages show how utterly worthless in terms of spiritual value mankind has become.
They rejected his decrees and the covenant he had made with their fathers and the warnings he had given them. They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless. They imitated the nations around them although the LORD had ordered them, “Do not do as they do,” and they did the things the LORD had forbidden them to do. (2 Kings 17:15 NIV)
Before him all the nations are as nothing; they are regarded by him as worthless and less than nothing. (Isaiah 40:17 NIV)
As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” (Romans 3:10-12 NIV)
You can see that there is no reason to expect God to forgive (or even to want to forgive) all of the sin and blasphemy that mankind has covered himself in. That is the state of affairs for all who rely on the “well, I am a good person” defense! There is only justified and well-deserved condemnation for all who go before God’s wrath and stand in their own defense.
Praise be to God that there is another view presented to us in the Holy Scriptures!
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:26-27 NIV)
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” (John 3:16-18 NIV)
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6-8 NIV)
For just as man has no intrinsic value because of sin and depravity, God desires for all to be saved. In fact, God is so passionate about salvation that he sent his son Jesus to come and bear his wrath on the cross; Jesus is so passionate about salvation and is so passionate about pleasing the Father that he bore all our sins and paid the price for our immense debt!
How extraordinary is the fact that we who were worthless by our nature were purchased at the greatest price of all! Let us all remember to strive to live up to the price that was paid for us. We do not want the wages that we have earned in our lives; we want the credited righteousness!
-Charles Peterson