Notes on The Great Resignation

This is an addendum to a major piece I was writing from 2020-2022, Re-Examining The Protestant Work Ethic. I did not finish this in time, but what I have written down I have put into this separate essay.

The Protestant work-ethic essay as a whole has taken me over a year to write, but the world moves on irrespective of my personal schedule. In the months since I first wrote this section, a new development seems to be taking place here in the United States (perhaps other countries as well, but I am not informed enough to speak on them). The COVID-19 pandemic and the various responses to it have had numerous effects, one of which has been a spike in labor shortages, unemployment, and turnover rates within countless industries. A lot of reasons have been cited for this, both speculatively and through actual surveys:

• Existing government stimulus programs are sufficient income
• Issues with the work environment (poor safety conditions, general stress, limited benefits)
• Inflexible or overly long work-schedules

Whatever the causes, people are seeing more and more reasons to quit their job, and less and less reasons to get a job. The press has taken to labeling this the “Great Resignation”, and taking my rule regarding current events into consideration, I do think it actually holds enough relevance to merit discussion in this essay.

And it looks like I’m not the only one who thinks this way. One search later and I’ve already found plenty of articles by various Christian preachers offering their own two cents on this issue. But before we get into the actual meat of these articles, let us take a second to consider why they would care so much. The guiding principle of our society has long been “mind your own business”, and it shows in how the secular world constantly finds itself responding to Christians. They’re perplexed as to why we bother ourselves so much with the lives of others, and I see no reason why it wouldn’t be the same for this issue? Why should a Christian preacher care about whether or not others are living off of government assistance? But when we consider our discoveries in the earlier sections of this essay, it begins to make sense: labor constitutes one’s own life-activity. How one labors exists as a refection of how one lives their life and views the world around them. If we are witnessing a clear shift in how people labor, then it makes sense to investigate the issue.

How any of these various articles put forth by said preachers approach and respond to the matter is of course something subject to variance. Some are more sympathetic, others more disapproving, all of which of course stem from various political, denominational, and personal leanings of the author in question. I’ll be focusing this section towards the attitude which is more critical, as it seems to be more prevalent in evangelical circles (which I am a part of), and will prove more relevant to the arguments made in the previous section.

In this article by Reformed blogger Elizabeth Prata, we definitely see the ways in which Christians can react with condemnation to the events going on. She derisively refers to the phenomenon as “The Great Laziness”, going at length to describe the ways in which it is ultimately selfish:

Some of the top five reasons people are leaving their jobs, and 4 million quit this past April (WUT!), are that they aren’t making enough money (hello, we have received multiple pandemic stimulus monies in the last 18 months), that the job isn’t interesting enough, (self) that their job won’t let them work from home or remotely (self), or work is just so hard it interferes with or leaves little energy for leisure pursuits. (self)

She seems to hone in on this idea that the wave of quitting is for fundamentally selfish reasons, which I won’t dispute. But it’s still rather disingenuous to frame it this way given how the free-market literally functions based on these principles of rational self-interest.

Why do shop owners charge money for their goods? Because it is in their self-interest to do so. Why do people spend their weeks working with the expectation of a wage? Because it is in their self-interest to do so. How many of these ideal pre-pandemic Christians and business owners would offer their services independent of compensation? Should they be expected to feel the same willingness to contribute to society even if they get nothing out of it? Of course not, so why start now? If we are going to uphold the free-market, then that means upholding freedom of contract. If employers are offering a poor work environment, then laborers have the right to look elsewhere or not at all.

There’s this bizarre double-standard when it comes to market-morality, where the right to self-interest is granted to everyone but the employee. Why is this the case? Well, I think it ties back to the earlier discussions had regarding the work-ethic as seen in Section 2.1. The work-ethic is something that varies on a class-basis because each class has a different role to play in the reproduction of the economy. When an entrepreneur acts in self-interest, it helps spur competition, innovation, and efficiency. When a consumer acts in self-interest, they create demand and help the market select out the best products for continuous production. It’s only in the case of the workers where the self-interest can often prove disruptive to said economy.

The assertion of these interests whether shown through strikes or occupations (as seen historically), tend to bring the functioning of society to a halt. The effects of this can be felt all over, not just by capitalists but also by consumers trying to get on with their day. And the article briefly testifies to such:

At school, we can’t get substitutes. Farmers can’t get workers into the barn. Restaurants can’t get wait staff. Almost every industry is reporting a shortage of workers. Law Enforcement particularly is feeling the pinch, with great swathes of officers putting in their retirement papers.

For a lot of people, this undeniably sucks. At the end of the day it’s going to be their problem if their neighborhood is under-policed, if their kids aren’t getting a proper education, if produce prices are beginning to rise to the point that it hurts their wallet. All of that is self-interest, the same self-interest they condemn the unemployed for, and it colors their perspective on the world. Self-interest is a fact of the world (especially a market-driven one) which gives us an understanding of how people on average tend to make decisions and how their own individual experiences affect how they view the world. As a model, it can give us an idea of how to best enact solutions which deal with these widespread problems most effectively or how to approach and talk to those with said experiences.

None of this is a substitute for moral guidance; that can only be found within Scripture. And we must be careful that while we can apply Scripture to modern problems, we cannot start with our own interests and retroactively weaponize Scripture to justify them. So, when we look in Scripture, what do we find? The Bible undeniably condemns sloth, as far as I am aware, this is beyond dispute. (Proverbs 21:25, Proverbs 26:13-17, 2 Thessalonians 3:8-12, etc.) But, at the same time, why should we assume that work (and by extent its opposite, sloth) is a purely vocational concept?

Instead of reflexively condemning others for not returning for their jobs, let us take a second to stop and think what opportunity this actually provides. A lot of people who may not otherwise have the opportunity to think about anything apart from their career are finally being given a great deal of free time that they may not be sure what to do with. The world has provided a false dichotomy as its solution: either suppress your feelings and return to your job or spend your time idly lounging, presumably through the means of passive forms of consumer entertainment. Our society can only conceive of work as a means to a wage, and free-time as a time for us to spend said wage on consumer goods. In both of these scenarios, the choice is done towards the end of spurring on the economy, towards continuing the circulation of money. Perhaps that’s why the debate had to be framed in such binary terms, rather than considering if there’s even a third option.

The fact is that even if there’s a social safety net, people are lost, they’re uncertain. The disruption caused by this pandemic has altered many lives and has left people who had a plan without a plan, and people without choices with plenty of choices. Contrary to what popular myth tells us, human nature has a drive towards contribution, the need to feel a part of something larger than them. Without it, one begins to shrivel and become lethargic, and this is why we consider conditions such as depression to be abnormalities. This is a drive that was visible as early as in the days of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:3-4) to the modern day.

What the church has the opportunity to provide here is guidance, on how and where people can direct their energies and time. Instead of chiding them to return to the job they fled, why not encourage them to use this time to take upon other forms of activity? This could be requesting their help in various church faculties, getting them connected with soup kitchens and various volunteering opportunities, or perhaps sending them off to spread the Gospel in their neighborhoods. Even beyond organized forms of volunteer work, why not encourage them to spend more time with their families, channel their creative faculties towards art, learn a new skill, or use the time to study Scripture more in-depth? Ask yourself: should any of this be considered less fruitful than time spent in a cubicle? If the wage really makes the difference, then maybe the next question we have to ask ourselves is: to whose glory are we really working?