It seems that many Americans have lost the work ethic that we used to be famous for.  Americans have also lost the doctrine of vocation, which gives work of all kinds meaning, value, and spiritual significance.

Last year we blogged about what was being called “The Great Resignation,” the phenomenon of people quitting their jobs and not returning to the workplace.  Much of that was a response to the COVID epidemic, with the lockdowns giving people a taste for not going to work and the government relief payments (including unemployment benefit supplements that paid many workers more for doing nothing than they were earning on their jobs) making that, at least for awhile, financially possible.
But now, most of those who voluntarily left the workplace back then still have not come back.  The workplace participation numbers are essentially the same as they were back in August of 2020.  This, even though pay has shot up, as companies are growing desperate for workers.  The labor shortage is throwing off the economy, but it also bodes ill for those who are cultivating idleness and for the culture as a whole.
So says an article by By Mene Ukueberuwa in the Wall Street Journal (behind a paywall) entitled The Underside of the ‘Great Resignation’.
In 2000, the labor force participation rate–which includes everyone in the population, including the retired and unable to work– reached a high mark of 67%.  Today, it is 61.9%, a drop of 5%, the same that it was last August.  Among men in their prime working age, from 25 to 54, only 88.2% work.  In 1961, the percentage was 96.9%.  Put another way, among men between 25 and 54,  the proportion of those who do not work for a living is 1 out of 8.
For women of the prime working age, the high point in 2000 was 77.3%, dropping to 75% today.  The overall percentages are lower, since women often opt out of the workplace to have children and to take care of them, but the decline is also lower compared to men.
The work rate today is lower than it was during the Great Depression.  Thirty years ago, according to the article, Americans had a 10% higher work rate than the European Union, but today Americans have fallen “a couple of points” behind the supposedly easy-going Europeans.
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Natural law, then, remains as indispensable for Christians today as it was for the many centuries in which it held a central role in Christian ethics. As Protestants, however, we cannot retrieve natural law without allowing Scripture to remain the final authoritative norm of our teaching. 

How should we then live? So Francis Schaeffer famously asked in his 1973 book and subsequent video series. The question has certainly had renewed urgency over the past two years, as Christians around the world have confronted the for-us-unprecedented (although not so much for our ancestors) moral and political challenges of navigating a global pandemic, and accompanying public health measures. How should we love our neighbors? By mask-wearing and vaccinating? By moving worship services and schools online or carrying on as normal? And by what standard should we evaluate the many answers proffered by TV personalities and public authorities?
For many Christians, the answer is quick and easy: “By Scripture, of course.” But a few minutes’ reflection will be enough to leave us scratching our heads in puzzlement. For Scripture, clearly, has very little to say on the subject of public health emergencies, and only the most general principles about how we should conduct ourselves in the face of such complex moral and legal demands. The same, we may soon realize, goes for hundreds of moral and political—and indeed ecclesiastical—decisions that we are called upon to make in the course of carrying out our vocations. If we assume that Scripture has all the answers, we are quickly bound to be disappointed. And if we say, sensibly enough, that we need to “apply Scriptural principles” to particular cases, this simply raises the question of how we identify and apply such principles? How do we engage in moral reasoning?
The answer, for generation after generation of Christian theologians and ethicists, was “natural law.” But the idea of natural law fell on hard times among twentieth-century Protestants, under pressure from Barth, fundamentalism, and modernism. It’s high time we recover it if we’re to navigate the profound moral challenges of our day with integrity.
From one standpoint, the idea that there is such a thing as natural law should be pretty uncontroversial. Everything in nature was created by God, who determined what it was and how it was meant to act. Just as a human inventor can tell you how a tool is meant to work, how to keep it in good working order, and how it’s liable to break if you don’t, so God, being a God of order rather than chaos, impressed upon all of his creatures the way they were meant to work. This is what we still often call “the law of nature” or “the laws of nature.” But man too is a creature, and as such is also subject to the law of his nature, which determines how we are meant to act and how we shouldn’t, what kinds of behaviors will achieve good results and which ones will end in brokenness. At the intersection of human nature and the natures of the rest of the world, we find natural law, the moral principles that distinguish wise and successful living from foolish and disastrous actions: sow and reap in preparation for winter, eat and drink in moderation, marry and remain faithful, honor the aged.
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Paul called Christians to bear with one another (Eph. 4:2), sing truth to one another (Eph. 5:19), forgive one another (Col. 3:13), teach and admonish one another (Col. 3:16), care for one another (1 Cor. 12:25), serve one another (Gal. 5:13), show hospitality toward one another (1 Pet. 4:9), and love one another (1 Pet. 4:8). Are these primarily ambiguous Christians? No, they’re not. They belong to the house church at Ephesus and the house church at Colosse and the house church at Corinth. Who are you responsible to teach and admonish? To show hospitality toward? To care for? To bear the burdens of? To sing to? To serve and edify? The context of these letters is instructive: we are called to practice the “one another” commands with those who belong to our church.

Have you ever heard a professing Christian say, “I don’t need to join a church to follow Jesus. Church membership isn’t even biblical!” Such a person would require a verse that says, “Thou shalt join a local church as a member”—and there’s not such a verse.
Is church membership biblical? Yes. The reason is that the biblical nature of church membership is established from a variety of passages and considerations. Here’s a cumulative case of ten reasons why church membership is biblical.
First, the New Testament letters were written to organized churches. People were to gather and hear the words of the apostles who exhorted and taught them. What evidence is there of organized saints? Think about the opening of Paul’s letters.
Paul wrote Philippians to “all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi” (Phil. 1:1). This is a group in the Philippian church. He also mentioned “the overseers and deacons” at Philippi (1:1). These were church officers. This pair of terms means there was church government! The presence of church government suggests both leadership and an organized body of believers.
Paul wrote letters to the church in Corinth (1 Cor. 1:2; 2 Cor. 1:1), the churches of Galatia (Gal. 1:2), and the church in Thessalonica (1 Thess. 1:1; 2 Thess. 1:1). If you were not part of the churches in these places, you wouldn’t be reading those letters. Paul wrote his letters to recognized bodies of believers who assembled together and belonged to one another.
Second, there are reports in the New Testament of people being counted and added. We can see such reports, for example, in the book of Acts and in 1 Timothy.
In Acts 2:41, “So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.” In Acts 16:5, “So the churches were strengthened in the faith, and they increased in numbers daily.”
People were added to the church. This involves a formal recognition. People were not just being baptized and then disappearing in their own individual pursuit of Jesus. People were being incorporated, added to those who professed to know and follow Christ.
In 1 Timothy 5:9, “Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age, having been the wife of one husband…” Apparently this church kept a record of particular church widows. This record reported the names of those who met certain criteria.
Third, elders are called to shepherd a particular flock. Elders were not tasked with shepherding random flocks. They had oversight over particular people.
In 1 Peter 5:2 we read, “Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you…” In Hebrews 13:17, the leaders are those who “are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account.”
Who makes up this flock? Anybody who would show up to an assembly? Surely not. How do you know who to shepherd? Who are the leaders responsible for? Whose souls are they entrusted with?
There is an understanding in these passages that a flock is under the oversight of its leaders, and a “church member” is our phrase for someone who belongs to that flock.
Fourth, the practice of excommunication involves removal from something you belong to. Several passages confirm this. We will consider words from Matthew’s Gospel and from 1 Corinthians.
In Matthew 18:17, the church must treat an unrepentant sinner as “a Gentile and a tax collector,” which means as an unbeliever. In 1 Corinthians 5:2, Paul is speaking about the unrepentant person when he says, “Let him who has done this be removed from among you.” Later in that same chapter, he writes, “Purge the evil person from among you” (1 Cor. 5:13).
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