Minister's Column; Reward Without Work

A few days ago, I found myself in the midst of a discussion about the widespread greed “nowadays.”

One person said, “Everyone wants benefits but no one wants to work.”

Much agreement with this lamentable observation followed.

This was a casual moment, not an evening’s serious pooling of knowledge and sober appraisal of the current state of our national situation, so I didn’t jump in with facts or points of view to the contrary.

Afterward I was thinking about the reality that, yes, we do hear of a few people who want to receive public funds, “welfare,” because they don’t want to work.

Many people believe, or say they do, that vast numbers of irresponsible people refuse to work and who stay on “welfare” for years or generations, always expecting others to pay their way through life.

That’s as may be, and I am no sociologist or analyst of widespread trends as indicated by dollars and cents.

What I do see is a life attitude which I haven’t heard commented on which is far more widespread and which I see as the same desire for reward without work. Accepting reward without effort is a form of theft: Failure to contribute means that someone else must supply what it is our responsibility to supply.

This life attitude is that cohabitation, meaning living together without marriage or commitment, is now nearly as common as marriage was for centuries.

Several years ago, it came to me that one reason cohabitation made me feel sad whenever I heard of it was that the two persons making a seemingly casual connection and maintaining it for years was that they were not building anything.

Among my own acquaintances, I have seen a young woman give five years of her life to a young man, only to realize that the beautiful engagement ring had really nothing to do with a serious intention on his part to marry. He was comfortable as he was, so why go to all the effort of marrying and bothering with a family?

She left him. By now she was 30 years old.

Years which she could have devoted to establishing a marriage, relationship, family, place in society, were gone as if they had never been, except that she was deeply hurt, perhaps never to recover. Her best chance for bearing healthy children was nearly gone.

No one would say that this couple was at all like those lazy, greedy “welfare leeches” or whatever they are called by those who would prune the rolls severely.

Yet the basic attitude was there: Reward without effort.