The “Protestant Work Ethic” is what made America a free society by empowering the individual and making “work” a holy effort, as the Apostle Paul wrote to the Colossians, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.” But more importantly, work itself was ordained in the Garden of Eden for our wholeness and wellness…Our Father in heaven knows what is best for us and He decreed “work” to help us build character in His image, after all, it was God who “worked” in creation and it was “very good.”

The growth of the Democratic-Socialist Movement and the recent COVID-19 individual stimulus payments has begun a clarion call for a most dangerous social program called Universal Basic Income (“UBI”). This “statist” agenda of the Progressives gives everyone in the nation a payment, which theoretically will give people the power of choice: to learn, to care, to start their own business, etc. But to the contrary, the UBI enslaves workers to the supremacy of the State by decoupling income from work. The State becomes the “master” and future politicians will merely raise the ante to buy votes by incrementally promising more “free” money. From a practical perspective, the UBI creates a multitude of social pathologies, such as drug and alcohol addiction, as seen on America’s Indian Reservations and in the impoverished ghettos of large urban centers. However, the greatest threat of the UBI is to religious freedom.

The late Christian Apologist, R. C. Sproul once asked America’s great Theologian, Dr. Francis Schaeffer what was his biggest concern for the future of the church in America, and he replied, “Statism.” The learned man’s biggest concern was that the citizens of the United States were investing supreme authority in the government of the country, such that a free America would become one that would be dominated by a philosophy of the supremacy of the state. As Francis Schaeffer predicted, the current creeping Statism of the Progressive-Left is beginning to vest more power in government, whereby reducing individual liberty by prescribing how citizens must conform to its rules and regulations, and finally becoming the ultimate authority for every thought, word and deed.

The primary flaw with the Progressive-Left’s drive to establish the UBI rests in their misunderstanding of anthropology and the theological necessity of “work” for human wellbeing. Ironically, the “Protestant Work Ethic” is what made America a free society by empowering the individual and making “work” a holy effort, as the Apostle Paul wrote to the Colossians, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.” But more importantly, work itself was ordained in the Garden of Eden for our wholeness and wellness. As it says in Genesis 2:15, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” Our Father in heaven knows what is best for us and He decreed “work” to help us build character in His image, after all, it was God who “worked” in creation and it was “very good.”

J. A. Holtz, MA is Dean of The St. Andrew School of Apologetics, an Elder in the EPC and graduate of Covenant Seminary (MA) and The University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School (BS).