Work, justice, & social reform
by Dan Doriani
Is a believer free to take any job, provided it's legal? First, we need to define "legal." For centuries, gladiatorial "games" and animal fighting were legal and popular with a certain crowd. We cringe to think that men fought each other to the death, that people trained dogs to kill bulls, bears, and other dogs, for sport. But what occupations will seem loathsome in a century? Gambling? The making of pornography? Boxing? Football, with all its concussions? Might lawyers excoriate the adversarial system in a century? Might industry spurn the burning of oil, gas, and coal?
Gambling is a good test case, since it's legal and widespread. At one level, we can say work is good if it lets workers do justice to their neighbors, near and far. To press deeper, work is good, first, if it is moral. Second, labor is good if it builds character, but evil if it wounds character. Third, toil is good if it achieves good goals but evil if it is aimless or harmful. Fourth, work is good if it pleases God, conforms to the structures of his world, and fits his vision of the good.
Let's apply these tests to the gambling industry. Gambling seems like harmless entertainment to some, or even a social good, since state lotteries fund education. Others call it theft, since it takes a person's money without offering a good or service (except diversion). Winners deprive neighbors of their money and losers deprive themselves or their families. It debases character by encouraging people to take money without offering anything in return. It achieves no noble goals; it preys on the poor, and it fosters addiction. It shatters the families of chronic gamblers and contradicts God's order by exalting chance and offering wealth without labor or planning. Therefore, believers should not work in the gambling industry, even if they have a knack for it. One can be skilled at boxing and gambling, but that doesn't make boxing and gambling good work.
Here are questions we can use to appraise our work: Does my job advance the common good? Do I help people or exploit them? Am I glad to tell people what I do? Do I please the Lord as I earn my bread, or do I merely earn my bread? Can I joyfully present my work to the Lord? If we can't answer these questions properly, we should probably seek different work. Or, if we have the right position, we could try to reform our organization. To say it another way:
Too much Christian instruction on work urges disciples to be faithful in the work assigned to them. Not enough considers, "Should we do this work?"
Leaders should ask themselves: Is the work I oversee good? Should it be redesigned, strengthened, or even abolished? We often speak of reform, but there are some products and activities that should be eliminated, not restructured. So much labor goes to tasks that are pointless, even destructive by most measures. That holds in the obvious cases, like gambling, pornography, or cigarette production. But should we produce food that is high in calories and barely nutritious, even if demand for it stays strong? Should we devote talent and energy to create violent video games that are calibrated to addict its players? Some work is perfectly legal but utterly immoral. I am not asking that we outlaw potato chips, but I do ask if disciples should devote their lives to marketing potato chips.
By questioning marginal labor, we guard an important principle: To do good work we need more than skill, persistence, and good motives. We must do good to "the other," who receives our efforts. Labor has effects in the external world. All acts have social consequences, therefore disciples must ask, "Does my work contribute to the common good?" In short, work can be skillful, legal, and profitable, yet dishonorable. We must focus on both the subjective side of work -the laborer's skills and attitude - and the objective aspect – the results of the toil. So the statement "Whatever you do, give it your best effort" is simplistic at best and misleading at worst. Some tasks do not merit our best effort.
Thus, we hope to find work that demands our greatest skill and effort. At times, evil work merits sabotage. Laborers in Hitler's munitions plants rightly botched the manufacture of war materials. Other tasks deserve benign neglect or judiciously minimalism. Human energies are finite and we should preserve it for demanding and consequential tasks. Why give our best to sweeping floors, dressing toddlers, raking leaves, or grading elementary school book reports? But other work summons our strongest efforts to sustain the good or to reform evils.
The American criminal justice system circa 2020 has a great need for reformers. The United States has the highest incarceration rates in the Western world and alarming rates of recidivism. Complicating matters, over the decades, many acts that were once civil offenses have been reclassified as crimes. Driving with a suspended license and sleeping in a library is often a crime, not a misdemeanor. Therefore, even though rates of violent crime fell for decades, the legal code drives ever more criminal arrests and prosecutions. Courts could not handle the increased case load, so prosecutors, defenders, and judges began to rely on plea bargaining to settle more criminal cases.
The goal of the plea bargain is efficiency. If prosecutors believe a man is guilty of armed robbery, they make the accused an offer: Plead guilty to a lesser offense, such as illegal possession of a firearm, and receive a light sentence – perhaps six months or even time served awaiting trial. Or proceed to trial and face the possibility of a decade in prison . In one case, a sixteen year-old who participated in an attempted robbery that ended with stitches for a restaurant manager faced this choice: plead guilty and receive one year in prison and two years on probation, or go to trial and face possible life in prison without parole.
This system, one noted law professor said, "creates incentives that induce rational innocent people to plead guilty." It is especially onerous for the poor. If a plea bargain leads to a sentence of time served awaiting trial, it means the accused was too poor to raise bail money. This essentially negates the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" and creates a double standard: the poor await trial in jail while the rich await trial at home.
Further, the rich can afford strong legal representation, but the poor rely on overtaxed, underpaid public defenders. With nominal representation, an innocent person will sensibly choose a year in jail, even for a crime he did not commit, over the possibility of a decade in prison. This makes the system more efficient, but less just. For one thing, a guilty plea generates a criminal record that follows the accused for life. Worse, many convicted criminals are, in fact, innocent. In early studies, the legal community found that DNA testing exonerated one quarter of convicted criminals. Clearly, in the plea bargaining system, which resolves over 90% of all criminal cases, expediency prevails over justice. Remember the testimony of Scripture: "Woe to those who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right!" (Is. 5:22-23). Again, "He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the LORD" (Prov. 17:15). It will most difficult to change this plea-bargaining system. May the Lord bless those who give sustained effort to the lawyer and politicians who work for justice for all.
Dr. Dan Doriani is Executive Director of The Center for Faith & Work Saint Louis and serves as vice president at large and professor of biblical and systematic theology at Covenant Theological Seminary.