Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text Proverbs 6:6-11;
14:23; 21:5, 25; 24:30-34; 26:13-14:
In 1904, Max Weber, a German economist and philosopher,
began writing what became his seminal work,
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit
of Capitalism. It is considered one of the founding works in the creation of
the field of sociology. Weber argued that it was the Protestant reformation
which created the spirit of capitalism and drove the northern European
countries to economic prominence because Protestantism imbued the idea that
everyone was called by God to be productive in life, that all had a calling,
and that the ideal was no longer to be secluded in the religious life, which
eschewed things like making money, and instead the ideal became working hard
for the community and for yourself, with all the benefits that came from that.
Weber argued that in particular this was driven by the Calvinist belief in
predestination, and since under predestination you didn’t know if you were
truly saved or not, the only evidence might be seen in what happened in your
life, and hard work and frugality were seen as signs of election, plus if you
were gaining wealth it must mean that God was blessing you, and therefore
another indication that you were saved. Now it could be argued whether Weber is
correct or not in his analysis, but this idea of hard work has been tied to our
understanding of labor, wealth and worthiness in America. That if you are poor,
it must be your fault, at least to a degree, an idea we will come back to. And
yet, some of our ideas about work go back much further than Weber. It goes back
to scripture, and in particular, to the views, or at least some of the views
found in the book of Proverbs. And so today we are going to be looking at some
of the proverbs about work and laziness, or a more general term of diligence.
Now to help us understand these proverbs in particular, it’s
important to remember the purpose of Proverbs which is to provide instruction to
young men of a certain social position as they are about to embark into
adulthood, meaning getting married and also assuming their proper role in
society as leaders. And so while the proverbs may have been known to those of
lower class, or day laborers, that was not to whom proverbs was primarily
addressed. Additionally, as I said in our introduction, Proverbs is an overly
optimistic book, and while it is not fully this way, it does at least give off
the impression that if you do the wise things, and work hard, that good things
will result, including wealth and success, and if you follow the way of
foolishness that the opposite will result. That is if you do x, y will happen,
and thus if bad things are happening, it is not because of outside forces, it’s
not because God is punishing you for something, but because of what you have
chosen, or not chosen, to do. And since one of the things that the teachings and
laws want to do is to make sure first that there is a next generation and
second that they will be protected and cared for, the proverbs can make a
little more sense within that context.
