Whether the COVID-19 lockdown of 2020 achieved any good for society, I’ll leave it for you to decide. But one good thing, at least, it did for me.
See, for all the decades of my life, I’ve lived under the delusion that toilet paper is always in ready supply.
The lockdown undeceived me, once and for all.
Come to find out, if a man wants a delicate roll of two-ply at hand, the multitudes must sweat and toil. They must labor at logging companies, toilet paper mills and packaging plants, in marketing departments, delivery trucks and grocery stores – every grocery store in town, in fact, since I searched them all to find a pack of Angel Soft or Charmin.
Even so, with everything I have, from the bulbs lighting this room and the computer on my desk, to the leaves in my Bible and the hardwood floor under my feet: All of it was handed down to me through the labor of men and women, working in all their “trades” with all their “gear and tackle and trim.”
It’s reason enough to praise God for the gift of work.
Of course, because of the curse of sin, work has its downsides. Sometimes it’s simply difficult. But, as someone has quipped, “that’s why it’s called work.”
However, this negative view of work has evidently seized the attention of men across the nation. Increasingly, “prime-age” working men (between the ages of 25 and 54) are dropping out of the workforce altogether – and not primarily because of the COVID-19 shutdowns.
Last fall, Nicholas Eberstadt reiterated these concerns, which he previously described in his 2016 book, Men Without Work: America’s Invisible Crisis.
“Prime-age American men have a Depression-scale work problem today,” Eberstadt wrote in the New York Post last November. “But unlike in the Depression, the postwar collapse of work for men has little to do with unemployment per se. Rather, it has been driven by an exodus from the labor force.”
From 1965 to 2015, millions of prime-age working men have completely dropped out of the labor force. The pattern is consistent – “practically a straight line, steadily heading upwards, all but unaffected by business cycles or other notable events,” Eberstadt says.
“Today, unaccountably, it remains on almost exactly the same trajectory,” he adds, “… six world-shaking years and one global pandemic later!”
In fact, the “Not In Labor Force” (NILF) rate of prime-age men is “three-and-a-half times” higher today than it was in 1965. If the current NILF rate dropped back down to its 1990 level, according to USA Today, there would be 2.7 million more men in the workforce today.
No doubt, searching out the cause for the American “flight from work” would entangle us in a complex web of economic and social realities.
But we can’t ignore one fact: The American man’s “exodus from the labor force” coincides with the breakdown of Christian, and particularly Protestant, values in American culture – including a theologically rich work ethic.
This Christian view of work and vocation isn’t primarily “about what we do,” Gene Edward Veith writes. “Rather, it is about what God does through us.”
“God gives us this day our daily bread,” Veith explains, “through the vocation of farmers, millers, bakers, and – we would add – the factory workers, truck drivers, grocery store employees, and the hands that prepared our meal.
“God creates and cares for new life by means of the vocations of mother and father, husband and wife. He protects us by means of police officers, judges, the military and other Romans 13 vocations of those who ‘bear the sword.’
“God brings healing not primarily through miracles but through the vocation of doctors, nurses, pharmacists and the other medical vocations. God teaches through teachers, conveys His Word through preachers, gives the blessings of technology through engineers and creates beauty through artists.
“God works through all the people who do things for us, day by day,” Veith adds. “And He also works through us, in whatever tasks, offices and relationships He has called us to do.”
Scripture commands us to work (Exod. 20:9), to labor in faith, hope and love (1 Thess. 1:3), so that we might live quiet lives, providing for our own needs and giving cheerfully to others (1 Thess. 4:11-12; 2 Thess. 3:7-13).
But Scripture also reminds us that our labors are vain apart from God’s blessing (Psalm 127:1-2; 128:1-2). In His kindness, God blesses our work, but He also blesses us each night with sleep (Psalm 127:2) and calls us weekly to a Sabbath rest (Exod. 20:10), when we should lay down the tools of our trade to thank God for all His blessings.
As such, meaningful work flows from faith – namely, faith that God is working through us as we work and that He continues to work even as we rest.
In centuries past, Americans have labored in hope because of these Christian truths and values. So, whatever else may help reverse the American “flight from work,” we could do no better than to reverse the American “flight from faith.”