Workin' For Jesus

[Plaid Adder]

Since I can't stand NPR any more I have the radio tuned to a local classical station in the morning. Unfortunately, it's not a very good classical station; they're always playing, say, one movement of a sonata, and then just as you get into it they'll put on something else. They also work in these little inspiration spots recorded by some minister whose voice is just so damn smarmy that it is guaranteed to get me out of bed faster than the buzzer.

Today I was ironing when Smarmy Man came on, so I didn't go for the button right away. Smarmy Man began with, "Why do two out of three people hate their jobs?"

Well, I thought, I hate my @$! job right now, perhaps the Smarmster can offer me some wisdom.

Predictably, Smarmy Man counseled acceptance rather than resistance--don't try to get another job that doesn't suck, try to make yourself more contented with your sucky job. This is not particularly surprising; it's the same advice our culture constantly gives women about marriage. The next move was more of a surprise: imagine that instead of working for your boss, you are actually working for Jesus.

Smarmy Man's idea was that if you invited Jesus into your truck or boat with you to go to work and ask if you can work for him that day instead of your boss (he will of course say yes, because he's like that), then you won't hate your job any more, because you'll be working for the Lord.

My first reaction was, "What a load of crap!"

And then I thought, actually, this is not a complete load of crap. The feeling that you are working in service of an ideal or a greater good is supposed to be one of the perks of working in a profession. As a doctor, lawyer, politician, teacher, etc., you theoretically are serving humanity, or at least increasing the dignity and prestige of your profession. Whereas, if you're flipping burgers at McD's, it's harder to hang onto that idea...unless you actually buy the corporate crap that middle managers are always being paid to indoctrinate their subordinates with, which attempts to turn customer satisfaction into an ideal/holy grail/religion in itself. And in fact, part of the reason I have come to a kind of unhappy place with my job lately is the loss of the feeling I used to have that I was somehow contributing to the progress of human civilization. If I can recapture that, I'll be excited about it again.

Well, this is one possible source of the appeal of right-wing Christianity to people who are much less well-served by the economic agenda usually tied to it: as long as you're working for Jesus, you're ALWAYS working for a higher power and a glorious ideal, even if your literal job involves repetitive and futile service to a soulless corporation. So, joining Team Jesus compensates you for having to grind away 40 hours a week for Team Jiffy-Lube.

Once upon a time, the labor movement was able to offer a competing compensation by defending the dignity of work. I was reading some time ago an extremely non-subtle play written by a labor activist 90 years ago, in which the manager leans on his foreman to fire an older worker because corporate is on his ass to speed up production. The foreman argues, because as he says the guy he's supposed to fire is the best workman they've got. "Well is he fast?" says the manager. "Not really, but he does perfect work," says the foreman. "Fire him then," snarls the mean old manager. "We care about speed, not perfection." Hokey as it is, it makes the point that the emphasis on speed and volume, which has the effect of squeezing more labor out of the same worker for the same amount of money, also destroys whatever pride that worker got out of knowing that he actually did the job well. And to this day one of the things people don't get about unions is that they aren't just about getting higher pay and better conditions, but about restoring dignity to the workers by giving them agency and a voice at work.

Don't know what anyone can do with that, but I thought it was interesting,

The Plaid Adder

[Solomon]

1. Great post. Thanks.

I'm one of those professional people you mentioned (a lawyer) who has lost that feeling of helping humanity. I was sucked into it for 25 years, but now, I'm trying to find something else to do.

I got sick and tired of living down the bad reputation of the profession. For most it's all about the money and the rat race.

As of January I've stopped taking cases, trying to close out and find something worthwhile to do.

[Plaid Adder]

7. Good luck, Solomon

hope you find something more fulfilling. I'm sure you did help a lot of people along the way.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

[GoBlue]

2. "Would you like to messiah-size that".

New McD propaganda logo.

I've always worked for myself even when I wasn't self-employed. Seems obvious to me that Jesus God is quite capable of doing God's work.

[JNelson6563]

3. Doesn't the bible urge slaves

to meekly accept their wretched lot in life? I'll give 'em this, they're consistent.

Julie

[bunkerbuster1]

4. An actual idea! been awhile since I read one a' those here.

nominated for Greatest. me likey.

[LisaLynne]

5. It makes me think about the theory that ...

why the Church got so much power in the Middle Ages, when life was really, really rough for just about everybody except those at the very top, was because it offered the hopelessly poor something to hope for -- that they would get into heaven and have everything after they died. So, it didn't matter that their family was starving to death right then. They'd get their reward later.

This is the same thing. Work at Wal-Mart. As long as you're good and keep voting Republican, you'll get yours eventually. Although today, I don't think all of them think they have to wait for the afterlife. I think a lot of them still have it in the back of their head that someday, they'll hit the lottery or all their hard work will pay off, even though there's really no chance of that happening ...

Ok, I don't know where I'm going with this, either, but it's something I'm going to keep thinking about ...

[Plaid Adder]

6. Or, if not the lottery, the Cloud Hand will save them.

There was this scam artist in one of the cities I used to live in who would send out letters enclosing a piece of white batting cut in the form of what was supposed to be a "Cloud Hand." You were advised to put the "cloud hand" under your pillow and pray, and then God would send you stuff.

No, literally, he would send you stuff. There were 'testimonials' from people who had used the Cloud Hand and then miraculously had a living room suite that they did not buy delivered to their door the next morning. I forget exactly how this was supposed to lead to Mr. Cloud Hand Distributor making money--probably you were encouraged to make a small donation in order to properly prime the pump of divine generosity--but it remains in my memory as the weirdest example of religion as pyramid scheme that I have ever come across...at least until that crazy "Prayer of Jabez" book hit the big time.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. Jesus was an unemployed worker. In modern terms: a vagrant.

He and his followers made their living by being "healers", going from town to village, essentially begging, and performing "healings".

Before that, he was a carpenter. Which at that time was a job even lower than a peasant farmer's. There is no evidence of his being literate. He advocated a sort of communalism and decried the wealthy. He hung around with drunks, whores, moneylenders, and assorted riff-raff.

One of his most famous statements decries "work" and the accumulation of wealth:

"And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore, take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things . . .

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." Matt: 6:28

BTW I'm an agnostic but also an admirer of many of Christ's teachings. He was a good man in a bad time whose very words are ignored or twisted by those who claim to be his followers.