The Sacred Cow
Hard work is the sacred cow of our society. Dare anybody demean hard work, He will be crucified. Jesus beckoned all those who were beat down with labor and heavy workloads to come to Him (Matt.11:28-). Then He had the nerve to promise them rest with His kind of labor. What a recruiting hook.
Christ courageously proclaimed a radical alternative to the world’s system. He championed a revolution that challenged its most revered value, hard work. He boldly proclaimed, “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Christ’s hostile takeover called to the entire workforce of His competition with a better offer. The sacred cow says, “A man must break his back to earn his day of leisure,” (John Lennon). Christ defiantly exposes that lie promising, if you’ll cease from your own labor by taking on my cause as your life’s pursuit, you’ll love your new job and the benefits can’t be beat.
Transferring our dependence transforms our labor. Bearing His easy yoke, and carrying His light burden converts vain toil into rewarding service to The True King of all things.
What’s wrong with hard work?
There’s nothing wrong with hard work but there is with workaholic obsession. There’s nothing wrong with hard work but only work in the promised land brings true prosperity that’s not in vain. Ask the slaves under Egypt’s reign how great hard work can be.
Hard work is a virtue when that’s how the Spirit leads. One step by the leading of God’s Spirit is worth ten thousand plodding’s in the flesh. One cast of your net where Jesus says can override an entire night of futile fishing. Under His yoke Christ supply’s effective guidance and motivation. He rewards our part with invaluable temporal wages plus eternal bonuses and a heavenly retirement plan. Sign me up!
It’s too bad if it takes a mental burnout or financial collapse, or a health breakdown under the hard yoke and heavy burden of the sacred cow to realize this. But if that results in surrendering to Christ’s plan of “God supplying all your needs according to His riches in His Glory…” it could be the best thing that ever happened to you. Otherwise your laboring inefficiently under the wrong yoke, the wrong cow.
The Ring In Our Nose
Financial security relieves most stresses in life. It’s powerful. Those stresses are the villains that make whatever overcomes them seem so heroic. Hard work is that idolized superhero for many. By hard work we can “pull ourselves up by our boot straps,” become our own little liberators, “self-made super saviors,” and “mini gods.” The pull in that pride is as irresistible as a ring in the nose.
Hard work gets praised more than God himself. It’s the “self-pat on the back” that’s acknowledged in every accomplishment in sports, business, science and everything else.
God helps those who help themselves
We’ve all heard that saying. Thankfully, He also helps those who don’t, there’s just nothing to brag about then and that detracts from the self-praising pontification of the “hard worker.” Those who’ve been helped by God through disastrous times know better. They no longer say, “God helps those who help themselves.” They’ve experienced that God is better than that.
The One and only Absolute?
In a society that has rejected absolutes when it comes to morality, the sacred cow of hard work is venerated as the ultimate unchallengeable righteousness. It’s always right to work hard. It’s always wrong not to. A leprous stigma attaches if you disrespect the sacred cow.
Justifications, compensations and rationalizations come with the sacred cow’s benefit package. Hard work is almost a religion. Personal identity, even manhood gets defined by hard work. Family neglect, insensitivity, personality flaws even breaking some rules along the way doesn’t matter. If you work hard you’ll be respected no matter what you do, even if you fail, or work yourself to death.
The workaholic earns a strange martyrdom like dignity in his eulogy, unlike other forms of slow suicide such as alcoholism. “Workaholism” is just as delusional and suicidal an addiction. You know this if you have ever watched someone work himself to death. I know people who cannot stop. They cannot stop, absolutely!
The National Example
Old Testament Israel is our example of an entire nation operating under the yoke of God’s economy. Sabbath Days, prolonged holiday feasts and even “Sabbath Years” of rest, characterized their lifestyle. God backed up their dependence on Him with bumper crops, prosperity, supernatural increase, houses they didn’t build, vineyards they didn’t plant, harvests they didn’t work for etc.. Success was by promise, favor in trade was assured, miraculous economic growth, increase and inexplainable market fortunes came with the nation’s moral absolute of a “Sabbath lifestyle.” The curse of vain toil, Gen.3:19, was replaced by God’s blessing.
It was impossible for any Israelite family to doubt the certainty of their prosperity or to misplace its praise. “In God we trust” was virtually written on every heart, every currency, every transaction, only theirs was sincere.
A Sabbath Year in our nation today would be economic suicide, blasphemous and impossible. The wheels of the system must be kept turning and they turn by hard work. That’s what makes the sacred cow so sacred and untouchable.
In Israel, no marriage ever broke up because of financial pressures. No couple ever had to work two jobs. No Father ever had to work himself to neglect or to death. The nation was constantly reinforced by all the wonderful benefits that come incidentally from transferring complete dependence upon God. Labor was reinstated to a nation as it was originally intended, a blessed exercise in fulfillment.
They served only one master and it wasn’t money. He said, “Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you,” Matt.6:33. That nation was an example to the whole earth.
Need a Yoke replacement?
Christ replaces the yoke of the sacred cow with His easy yoke and light burden of dependence upon Him. He’s the conqueror of the stresses. He’s our super hero deserving all The Praise! That’s Financial Security!
See Thank You For The Money 1-3