God Required Us To Toil In Order To Eat by Robert Socha

An animated discussion with my oldest son took an exciting turn once he left the room in a huff. I leaned back against the backrest and looked at my wife and said, “I just had an epiphany. I think I know one of the roots of the unrest and confusion plaguing our society, especially the younger generations.”

This statement piqued her interest, and she inquired to its origin.

I replied, “The Lord just reminded me of the consequence of original sin.”

Genesis 3:17 (ESV) To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”

I continued, “The consequence required man to toil and sweat to eat, and our generation, my mom’s generation (she just turned 80), our children’s generation has never had to labor and strive to ensure his next meal will come.”

In these United States of America, we achieved extraordinarily, produced extravagantly, that none of our citizens need to go hungry. Those of us in the middle, upper-middle, and upper classes don’t know what it means to want. Our children have grown without the struggle to survive for four generations, with every luxury and with a substandard education failing to teach proper civics and history and hold succeeding generations to higher ideals.

It is apparent to me the fruit of this misguided labor is civil unrest, animosity toward our country’s foundation, and anger toward those whose appearance doesn’t closely match our own.

“Through painful toil…by the sweat of your brow…”

What have we had to toil for painfully? How much have we had to sweat to reap a harvest, which would cause us to starve if it didn’t come?

Yes, many of us have soaked their blood, sweat, and tears into a business venture or job opportunity, hopefully reaping a fantastic financial reward. What I am talking about transcends the ability to create wealth.

In my 48 years on God’s green Earth, I have never been in need. I have never missed a meal because I didn’t have the means to provide or received someone’s generosity in a time of need. My children have never known want. Born in 1940, my mother has never known what it means to go hungry, even living her toddler years during the ferocious World War II.

I am not saying that people do not go hungry in the United States. I know firsthand that is not true. I am not speaking to the planet’s general condition because I have seen the starvation and need in other parts of the world.

What I am saying is a vast majority of those of us who have the privilege of being born in these United States have never been starving to the point we didn’t know where or if our next meal would come.

There has been no toil, there has been a lack of sweat, yet it is a requirement as a consequence of original sin.

In our largess, therefore, we manufacture opportunities that require us to yell and scream for equality. This goalpost continually shifts, so there is a neverending cry of inequality.

These shifting goals’ visible manifestation has erupted in America’s most cherished cities burned and looted while their inept government cowers behind social justice. All while the average working citizen stays home and obeys draconian edicts or faces this same incompetent government’s wrath. Its manifested in our youth and young adults carrying movements (BLM, Antifa) whose ultimate aim is to destroy our cherished culture and ideals, where violence is accepted, encouraged, and perpetrated on an innocent populace.

I have a solution. It calls on those who have Liberty coursing through our veins to raise our voices calling out her name.

As Patrick Henry galvanized the colonists to battle, I hope to stir our passions: “It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! … Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

We must lend a hand to these generations who manufacture a crisis to fulfill an unseen need requiring sweat and toil. We must speak the uncompromised truth in love and beat the war drums of Liberty. We must stand in defense of her tenants, gifting them to succeeding generations of those yet unborn. We must be bold, strong, and courageous and not back down.