earning a living

138:7.4Je­sus now asked them how much money they had among them; he also in­quired as to what pro­vi­sion had been made for their fam­i­lies. When it de­vel­oped that they had hardly suf­fi­cient funds to main­tain them­selves for two weeks, he said: “It is not the will of my Fa­ther that we be­gin our work in this way. We will re­main here by the sea two weeks and fish or do what­ever our hands find to do; and in the mean­time, un­der the guid­ance of An­drew, the first cho­sen apos­tle, you shall so or­ga­nize your­selves as to pro­vide for ev­ery­thing need­ful in your fu­ture work, both for the pres­ent per­sonal min­istry and also when I shall sub­se­quently or­dain you to preach the gospel and in­struct be­liev­ers.” They were all greatly cheered by these words; this was their first clear-cut and pos­i­tive in­ti­ma­tion that Je­sus de­signed later on to en­ter upon more ag­gres­sive and pre­ten­tious pub­lic ef­forts.

138:8.6They had won­der­ful times through­out these five or six months dur­ing which they worked as fish­er­men ev­ery al­ter­nate two weeks, thereby earn­ing enough money to sup­port them­selves in the field for each suc­ceed­ing two weeks of mis­sion­ary work for the king­dom.

135:6.8John con­ducted classes for his dis­ci­ples, in the course of which he in­structed them in the de­tails of their new life and en­deav­ored to an­swer their many ques­tions. He coun­seled the teach­ers to in­struct in the spirit as well as the let­ter of the law. He in­structed the rich to feed the poor; to the tax gath­er­ers he said: “Ex­tort no more than that which is as­signed you.” To the sol­diers he said: “Do no vi­o­lence and ex­act noth­ing wrong­fully—be con­tent with your wages.” While he coun­seled all: “Make ready for the end of the age—the king­dom of heaven is at hand.”

99:7.5Eco­nomic in­ter­de­pen­dence and so­cial fra­ter­nity will ul­ti­mately con­duce to broth­er­hood. Man is nat­u­rally a dreamer, but sci­ence is sober­ing him so that re­li­gion can pres­ently ac­ti­vate him with far less dan­ger of pre­cip­i­tat­ing fa­nat­i­cal re­ac­tions. Eco­nomic ne­ces­si­ties tie man up with re­al­ity, and per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence brings this same man face to face with the eter­nal re­al­i­ties of an ever-ex­pand­ing and pro­gress­ing cos­mic cit­i­zen­ship.

165:5.2“Yes, An­drew, I will speak to you about these mat­ters of wealth and self-sup­port, but my words to you, the apos­tles, must be some­what dif­fer­ent from those spo­ken to the dis­ci­ples and the mul­ti­tude since you have for­saken ev­ery­thing, not only to fol­low me, but to be or­dained as am­bas­sadors of the king­dom. Al­ready have you had sev­eral years’ ex­pe­ri­ence, and you know that the Fa­ther whose king­dom you pro­claim will not for­sake you. You have ded­i­cated your lives to the min­istry of the king­dom; there­fore be not anx­ious or wor­ried about the things of the tem­po­ral life, what you shall eat, nor yet for your body, what you shall wear. The wel­fare of the soul is more than food and drink; the prog­ress in the spirit is far above the need of rai­ment. When you are tempted to doubt the sure­ness of your bread, con­sider the ravens; they sow not nei­ther reap, they have no store­houses or barns, and yet the Fa­ther pro­vides food for ev­ery one of them that seeks it. And of how much more value are you than many birds! Be­sides, all of your anx­i­ety or fret­ting doubts can do noth­ing to sup­ply your ma­te­rial needs. Which of you by anx­i­ety can add a hand­breadth to your stature or a day to your life? Since such mat­ters are not in your hands, why do you give anx­ious thought to any of these prob­lems?

126:5.1Grad­u­ally Je­sus and his fam­ily re­turned to the sim­ple life of their ear­lier years. Their clothes and even their food be­came sim­pler. They had plenty of milk, but­ter, and cheese. In sea­son they en­joyed the pro­duce of their gar­den, but each pass­ing month ne­ces­si­tated the prac­tice of greater fru­gal­ity. Their break­fasts were very plain; they saved their best food for the evening meal. How­ever, among these Jews lack of wealth did not im­ply so­cial in­fe­ri­or­ity.

126:5.2Al­ready had this youth well-nigh en­com­passed the com­pre­hen­sion of how men lived in his day. And how well he un­der­stood life in the home, field, and work­shop is shown by his sub­se­quent teach­ings, which so re­pletely re­veal his in­ti­mate con­tact with all phases of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.

126:5.3The Naz­a­reth chazan con­tin­ued to cling to the be­lief that Je­sus was to be­come a great teacher, prob­a­bly the suc­ces­sor of the renowned Gamaliel at Je­ru­sa­lem.

126:5.4Ap­par­ently all Je­sus’ plans for a ca­reer were thwarted. The fu­ture did not look bright as mat­ters now de­vel­oped. But he did not fal­ter; he was not dis­cour­aged. He lived on, day by day, do­ing well the pres­ent duty and faith­fully dis­charg­ing the im­me­di­ate re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of his sta­tion in life. Je­sus’ life is the ev­er­last­ing com­fort of all dis­ap­pointed ide­al­ists.

126:5.5The pay of a com­mon day-la­bor­ing car­pen­ter was slowly di­min­ish­ing. By the end of this year Je­sus could earn, by work­ing early and late, only the equiv­a­lent of about twenty-five cents a day. By the next year they found it dif­fi­cult to pay the civil taxes, not to men­tion the syn­a­gogue as­sess­ments and the tem­ple tax of one-half shekel. Dur­ing this year the tax col­lec­tor tried to squeeze ex­tra rev­enue out of Je­sus, even threat­en­ing to take his harp.

126:5.6Fear­ing that the copy of the Greek scrip­tures might be dis­cov­ered and con­fis­cated by the tax col­lec­tors, Je­sus, on his fif­teenth birth­day, pre­sented it to the Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue li­brary as his ma­tu­rity of­fer­ing to the Lord.

126:5.7The great shock of his fif­teenth year came when Je­sus went over to Sep­pho­ris to re­ceive the de­ci­sion of Herod re­gard­ing the ap­peal taken to him in the dis­pute about the amount of money due Joseph at the time of his ac­ci­den­tal death. Je­sus and Mary had hoped for the re­ceipt of a con­sid­er­able sum of money when the trea­surer at Sep­pho­ris had of­fered them a pal­try amount. Joseph’s broth­ers had taken an ap­peal to Herod him­self, and now Je­sus stood in the palace and heard Herod de­cree that his fa­ther had noth­ing due him at the time of his death. And for such an un­just de­ci­sion Je­sus never again trusted Herod An­tipas. It is not sur­pris­ing that he once al­luded to Herod as “that fox.”

126:5.8The close work at the car­pen­ter’s bench dur­ing this and sub­se­quent years de­prived Je­sus of the op­por­tu­nity of min­gling with the car­a­van pas­sen­gers. The fam­ily sup­ply shop had al­ready been taken over by his un­cle, and Je­sus worked al­to­gether in the home shop, where he was near to help Mary with the fam­ily. About this time he be­gan send­ing James up to the camel lot to gather in­for­ma­tion about world events, and thus he sought to keep in touch with the news of the day.

126:5.9As he grew up to man­hood, he passed through all those con­flicts and con­fu­sions which the av­er­age young per­sons of pre­vi­ous and sub­se­quent ages have un­der­gone. And the rig­or­ous ex­pe­ri­ence of sup­port­ing his fam­ily was a sure safe­guard against his hav­ing over­much time for idle med­i­ta­tion or the in­dul­gence of mys­tic ten­den­cies.

126:5.10This was the year that Je­sus rented a con­sid­er­able piece of land just to the north of their home, which was di­vided up as a fam­ily gar­den plot. Each of the older chil­dren had an in­di­vid­ual gar­den, and they en­tered into keen com­pe­ti­tion in their ag­ri­cul­tural ef­forts. Their el­dest brother spent some time with them in the gar­den each day dur­ing the sea­son of veg­etable cul­ti­va­tion. As Je­sus worked with his younger broth­ers and sis­ters in the gar­den, he many times en­ter­tained the wish that they were all lo­cated on a farm out in the coun­try where they could en­joy the lib­erty and free­dom of an un­ham­pered life. But they did not find them­selves grow­ing up in the coun­try; and Je­sus, be­ing a thor­oughly prac­ti­cal youth as well as an ide­al­ist, in­tel­li­gently and vig­or­ously at­tacked his prob­lem just as he found it, and did ev­ery­thing within his power to ad­just him­self and his fam­ily to the re­al­i­ties of their sit­u­a­tion and to adapt their con­di­tion to the high­est pos­si­ble sat­is­fac­tion of their in­di­vid­ual and col­lec­tive long­ings.

126:5.11At one time Je­sus faintly hoped that he might be able to gather up suf­fi­cient means, pro­vided they could col­lect the con­sid­er­able sum of money due his fa­ther for work on Herod’s palace, to war­rant un­der­tak­ing the pur­chase of a small farm. He had re­ally given se­ri­ous thought to this plan of mov­ing his fam­ily out into the coun­try. But when Herod re­fused to pay them any of the funds due Joseph, they gave up the am­bi­tion of own­ing a home in the coun­try. As it was, they con­trived to en­joy much of the ex­pe­ri­ence of farm life as they now had three cows, four sheep, a flock of chick­ens, a don­key, and a dog, in ad­di­tion to the doves. Even the lit­tle tots had their reg­u­lar du­ties to per­form in the well-reg­u­lated scheme of man­age­ment which char­ac­ter­ized the home life of this Naz­a­reth fam­ily.

126:5.12With the close of this fif­teenth year Je­sus com­pleted the traver­sal of that dan­ger­ous and dif­fi­cult pe­riod in hu­man ex­is­tence, that time of tran­si­tion be­tween the more com­pla­cent years of child­hood and the con­scious­ness of ap­proach­ing man­hood with its in­creased re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and op­por­tu­ni­ties for the ac­quire­ment of ad­vanced ex­pe­ri­ence in the de­vel­op­ment of a no­ble char­ac­ter. The growth pe­riod for mind and body had ended, and now be­gan the real ca­reer of this young man of Naz­a­reth.

133:3.7As they stood there in the moon­light, Je­sus went on to say: “There lives within ev­ery hu­man mind a di­vine spirit, the gift of the Fa­ther in heaven. This good spirit ever strives to lead us to God, to help us to find God and to know God; but also within mor­tals there are many nat­u­ral phys­i­cal ten­den­cies which the Cre­ator put there to serve the well-be­ing of the in­di­vid­ual and the race. Now, of­ten­times, men and women be­come con­fused in their ef­forts to un­der­stand them­selves and to grap­ple with the man­i­fold dif­fi­cul­ties of mak­ing a liv­ing in a world so largely dom­i­nated by self­ish­ness and sin. I per­ceive, Ga­nid, that nei­ther of these women is will­fully wicked. I can tell by their faces that they have ex­pe­ri­enced much sor­row; they have suf­fered much at the hands of an ap­par­ently cruel fate; they have not in­ten­tion­ally cho­sen this sort of life; they have, in dis­cour­age­ment bor­der­ing on de­spair, sur­ren­dered to the pres­sure of the hour and ac­cepted this dis­taste­ful means of ob­tain­ing a liveli­hood as the best way out of a sit­u­a­tion that to them ap­peared hope­less. Ga­nid, some peo­ple are re­ally wicked at heart; they de­lib­er­ately choose to do mean things, but, tell me, as you look into these now tear-stained faces, do you see any­thing bad or wicked?” And as Je­sus paused for his re­ply, Ga­nid’s voice choked up as he stam­mered out his an­swer: “No, Teacher, I do not. And I apol­o­gize for my rude­ness to them—I crave their for­give­ness.” Then said Je­sus: “And I be­speak for them that they have for­given you as I speak for my Fa­ther in heaven that he has for­given them. Now all of you come with me to a friend’s house where we will seek re­fresh­ment and plan for the new and bet­ter life ahead.” Up to this time the amazed women had not ut­tered a word; they looked at each other and silently fol­lowed as the men led the way.

132:5.12“10. Earned wealth—riches de­rived di­rectly from your own per­sonal la­bor, the fair and just re­ward of your own daily ef­forts of mind and body.

132:5.24“10. That part of your for­tune which rep­re­sents the earn­ings of your own men­tal and phys­i­cal ef­forts—if your work has been done in fair­ness and eq­uity—is truly your own. No man can gain­say your right to hold and use such wealth as you may see fit pro­vided your ex­er­cise of this right does not work harm upon your fel­lows.”

160:4.10It re­quires in­tel­li­gence to se­cure one’s share of the de­sir­able things of life. It is wholly er­ro­neous to sup­pose that faith­ful­ness in do­ing one’s daily work will in­sure the re­wards of wealth. Bar­ring the oc­ca­sional and ac­ci­den­tal ac­quire­ment of wealth, the ma­te­rial re­wards of the tem­po­ral life are found to flow in cer­tain well-or­ga­nized chan­nels, and only those who have ac­cess to these chan­nels may ex­pect to be well re­warded for their tem­po­ral ef­forts. Pov­erty must ever be the lot of all men who seek for wealth in iso­lated and in­di­vid­ual chan­nels. Wise plan­ning, there­fore, be­comes the one thing es­sen­tial to worldly pros­per­ity. Suc­cess re­quires not only de­vo­tion to one’s work but also that one should func­tion as a part of some one of the chan­nels of ma­te­rial wealth. If you are un­wise, you can be­stow a de­voted life upon your gen­er­a­tion with­out ma­te­rial re­ward; if you are an ac­ci­den­tal ben­e­fi­ciary of the flow of wealth, you may roll in lux­ury even though you have done noth­ing worth while for your fel­low men.

196:0.7The all-con­sum­ing and in­domitable spir­i­tual faith of Je­sus never be­came fa­nat­i­cal, for it never at­tempted to run away with his well-bal­anced in­tel­lec­tual judg­ments con­cern­ing the pro­por­tional val­ues of prac­ti­cal and com­mon­place so­cial, eco­nomic, and moral life sit­u­a­tions. The Son of Man was a splen­didly uni­fied hu­man per­son­al­ity; he was a per­fectly en­dowed di­vine be­ing; he was also mag­nif­i­cently co-or­di­nated as a com­bined hu­man and di­vine be­ing func­tion­ing on earth as a sin­gle per­son­al­ity. Al­ways did the Mas­ter co-or­di­nate the faith of the soul with the wis­dom-ap­praisals of sea­soned ex­pe­ri­ence. Per­sonal faith, spir­i­tual hope, and moral de­vo­tion were al­ways cor­re­lated in a match­less re­li­gious unity of har­mo­nious as­so­ci­a­tion with the keen re­al­iza­tion of the re­al­ity and sa­cred­ness of all hu­man loy­al­ties—per­sonal honor, fam­ily love, re­li­gious obli­ga­tion, so­cial duty, and eco­nomic ne­ces­sity.

178:1.14You are not to be pas­sive mys­tics or col­or­less as­cetics; you should not be­come dream­ers and drifters, supinely trust­ing in a fic­ti­tious Prov­i­dence to pro­vide even the ne­ces­si­ties of life. You are in­deed to be gen­tle in your deal­ings with erring mor­tals, pa­tient in your in­ter­course with ig­no­rant men, and for­bear­ing un­der provo­ca­tion; but you are also to be valiant in de­fense of righ­teous­ness, mighty in the pro­mul­ga­tion of truth, and ag­gres­sive in the preach­ing of this gospel of the king­dom, even to the ends of the earth.

165:5.3“Con­sider the lilies, how they grow; they toil not, nei­ther do they spin; yet I say to you, even Sol­o­mon in all his glory was not ar­rayed like one of these. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive to­day and to­mor­row is cut down and cast into the fire, how much more shall he clothe you, the am­bas­sadors of the heav­enly king­dom. O you of lit­tle faith! When you whole­heart­edly de­vote your­selves to the procla­ma­tion of the gospel of the king­dom, you should not be of doubt­ful minds con­cern­ing the sup­port of your­selves or the fam­i­lies you have for­saken. If you give your lives truly to the gospel, you shall live by the gospel. If you are only be­liev­ing dis­ci­ples, you must earn your own bread and con­tribute to the sus­te­nance of all who teach and preach and heal. If you are anx­ious about your bread and wa­ter, wherein are you dif­fer­ent from the na­tions of the world who so dili­gently seek such ne­ces­si­ties? De­vote your­selves to your work, be­liev­ing that both the Fa­ther and I know that you have need of all these things. Let me as­sure you, once and for all, that, if you ded­i­cate your lives to the work of the king­dom, all your real needs shall be sup­plied. Seek the greater thing, and the lesser will be found therein; ask for the heav­enly, and the earthly shall be in­cluded. The shadow is cer­tain to fol­low the sub­stance.

156:5.10Re­li­gion is the ex­clu­sively spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of the evolv­ing im­mor­tal soul of the God-know­ing man, but moral power and spir­i­tual en­ergy are mighty forces which may be uti­lized in deal­ing with dif­fi­cult so­cial sit­u­a­tions and in solv­ing in­tri­cate eco­nomic prob­lems. These moral and spir­i­tual en­dow­ments make all lev­els of hu­man liv­ing richer and more mean­ing­ful.

160:4.1While you have an eye sin­gle to the at­tain­ment of eter­nal re­al­i­ties, you must also make pro­vi­sion for the ne­ces­si­ties of tem­po­ral liv­ing. While the spirit is our goal, the flesh is a fact. Oc­ca­sion­ally the ne­ces­si­ties of liv­ing may fall into our hands by ac­ci­dent, but in gen­eral, we must in­tel­li­gently work for them. The two ma­jor prob­lems of life are: mak­ing a tem­po­ral liv­ing and the achieve­ment of eter­nal sur­vival. And even the prob­lem of mak­ing a liv­ing re­quires re­li­gion for its ideal so­lu­tion. These are both highly per­sonal prob­lems. True re­li­gion, in fact, does not func­tion apart from the in­di­vid­ual.

148:5.3“But, my son, you should know that the Fa­ther does not pur­posely af­flict his chil­dren. Man brings down upon him­self un­nec­es­sary af­flic­tion as a re­sult of his per­sis­tent re­fusal to walk in the bet­ter ways of the di­vine will. Af­flic­tion is po­ten­tial in evil, but much of it has been pro­duced by sin and in­iq­uity. Many un­usual events have tran­spired on this world, and it is not strange that all think­ing men should be per­plexed by the scenes of suf­fer­ing and af­flic­tion which they wit­ness. But of one thing you may be sure: The Fa­ther does not send af­flic­tion as an ar­bi­trary pun­ish­ment for wrong­do­ing. The im­per­fec­tions and hand­i­caps of evil are in­her­ent; the penal­ties of sin are in­ev­i­ta­ble; the de­stroy­ing con­se­quences of in­iq­uity are in­ex­orable. Man should not blame God for those af­flic­tions which are the nat­u­ral re­sult of the life which he chooses to live; nei­ther should man com­plain of those ex­pe­ri­ences which are a part of life as it is lived on this world. It is the Fa­ther’s will that mor­tal man should work per­sis­tently and con­sis­tently to­ward the bet­ter­ment of his es­tate on earth. In­tel­li­gent ap­pli­ca­tion would en­able man to over­come much of his earthly mis­ery.

149:5.3“Much of man’s sor­row is born of the dis­ap­point­ment of his am­bi­tions and the wound­ing of his pride. Al­though men owe a duty to them­selves to make the best of their lives on earth, hav­ing thus sin­cerely ex­erted them­selves, they should cheer­fully ac­cept their lot and ex­er­cise in­ge­nu­ity in mak­ing the most of that which has fallen to their hands. All too many of man’s trou­bles take ori­gin in the fear soil of his own nat­u­ral heart. ‘The wicked flee when no man pur­sues.’ ‘The wicked are like the trou­bled sea, for it can­not rest, but its wa­ters cast up mire and dirt; there is no peace, says God, for the wicked.’

72:5.8These shall first be met in ac­cor­dance with con­tract, or in the face of de­creased earn­ings they shall share pro­por­tion­ally in tran­sient re­duc­tion. And there­after all earn­ings in ex­cess of these fixed charges shall be re­garded as div­i­dends and shall be pro­rated to all three di­vi­sions: cap­i­tal, skill, and la­bor.

72:5.9Ev­ery ten years the re­gional ex­ec­u­tives ad­just and de­cree the law­ful hours of daily gain­ful toil. In­dus­try now op­er­ates on a five-day week, work­ing four and play­ing one. These peo­ple la­bor six hours each work­ing day and, like stu­dents, nine months in the year of ten. Va­ca­tion is usu­ally spent in travel, and new meth­ods of trans­porta­tion hav­ing been so re­cently de­vel­oped, the whole na­tion is travel bent. The cli­mate fa­vors travel about eight months in the year, and they are mak­ing the most of their op­por­tu­ni­ties.