July 5 - 12, 2004
July 5 - 12, 2004
SOLI/Update
Stealing jobs and benefits
How do you spell stability? For most people in America, it is a simple phrase that’s becoming rarer and rarer: “G-o-o-d j-o-b.”
It’s not a favorable time for an American to be looking for work, as this week’s offerings in Gleanings point out. More and more good jobs are going offshore, and the ones that are staying are more likely to pay less and offer less in the way of benefits. But at the same time, corporate profits are relatively okay.
That’s why the June employment report took many economists by surprise. In a climate of good business profits and increasing productivity, hiring should be on the rise. But that was the old system. It used to be that corporate profits meant an upturn in conditions for everyone. A rising tide, the old chestnut goes, raises all boats. No more.
Clearly, there are some fairly major structural changes taking place in America’s economic system. One wonders where it will all end, but in the meantime, Christian stewards can ask questions about fairness. And morality.
When good jobs of productive employees are “offshored” or benefits slashed to increase the dividend to shareholders, to beef up stock prices or pad bonuses of executives, it’s a moral wrong. It’s legal. It's the way of business. It's how our system is set up. But it’s not biblical, whether you look at economics in the law of Moses or the Gospel of Jesus, exemplified by the early Christians in Acts.
True, the writers of the Bible could not possibly envision a complex modern economy and running a business according to rules of efficiency, but Scripture clearly issues this command: “Thou shall not steal.”
-Rob Blezard, webmaster and editor
New This Week: July 5-11
Needs
Should Factor Into Giving
"Since
all that we have is ours to share, then the great needs of those we encounter
should make us open our hearts and our purses. We cannot feel good when we have
so much and others are in need." In
Dana Reardon's weekly reflection.
Francis
of Assisi: Steward of a Radical Faith
He lived more than half a
millennium ago, but St. Francis has much to teach stewards of today, says Gerald
Christianson, history professor at
Lutheran Theological Seminary at
Gettysburg. "We
stand under judgment because of our greed, our grasping,
our accumulating, our self-love — in short, all that Francis perceived would
continually afflict those who have.
Yet, at the same time, we live under the promise. "I am not ashamed of the
gospel", Paul writes in Romans 1:16, "it is the power of God into salvation."
In the Lutheran Laity Movement Archives.
Children's
Messages
How do you explain concepts of stewardship to the youngest
members? Here are some on-target messages from the
The Evangelical Lutheran
Church in Canada. The messages are just
part of a
package of stewardship resources the Canadian
church is making available for free on the web. All are in PDF (Portable
Document Format) that requires
Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Fund
Your Future Dreams Today
"It
appears that despite economic changes and fluctuating equity markets ... that a
wealth transfer of at least $41 trillion will take place in the United States by
2052. ... What implication does the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in
history have for churches?" The answer is contained in this insightful article
in
Church Executive magazine.