Intro to Work-Money Mountain
Our culture has tied work and money together in such a way that there is a pervading subconscious idea that if I have money, I do not need to work. But is this really true?
The 7 Mind Molding Mountains of Cultural Influence are threaded through every facet of a culture and they influence our minds, behaviors, emotions, desires, expectations, and habits. I conceptualize and order them as:
Faith,
Governance,
Money-Work,
Learning-Education,
Health-Wellness-The Family,
Creativity-The Arts & Entertainment,
Media.
If you haven’t read Intro to the 7 Mountains yet, see that HERE.
Essence
Humans are designed to sow their gifts and abilities out into the world and then reap a return from that work that is not only fulfilling and satisfying, but it also meets the needs of others. The concept is multi-layered because our gifts and abilities differ from each other.
Work and money are very much yoked to one another and utterly central to our existence. I place it third in the 7 Mountains line up, after Faith and Governance, because what we believe in matters of Faith determines how we see, perceive, and live out ideas around Work-Money. Then governance policies in a land or nation set the tone for how the people of the land can either thrive in matters of work-money or not. Governance policies also determine "winners" and "losers" in matters of work-money.
Work was a part of God's original design before the fall of man. The original design was that man would work and cultivate the land and co-labor with God in working and enjoying His Creation in complete and perfect union with Him. Work is a vehicle for caring for God's creation and for drawing out of our soul the beautiful things God has embedded in us. Work is a pathway for those beautiful gifts and abilities to be drawn out and sown into the land for God's glory and our benefit and enjoyment. It is a vehicle for full manifestation of the unseen things within man (a general term for "human") to come into the seen realm to be enjoyed with all of our senses.
More Color
Many in the 7 Mountains teaching will call this mountain "economy" or "business" and those are absolutely valid. I call this mountain the "Work-Money" Mountain because those two concepts touch every single one of us. If you are a human, living on this planet, matters of work-money touch and influence you in some way.
Our culture has tied work and money together in such a way that there is a pervading subconscious idea that if I have money, I do not need to work. If I have money, all I need to do is play or volunteer. And if I don't have money, I have to kill myself to acquire it so that I can then go "play." It is a great deception and falsehood of our time and causes the poor to hate the rich and the rich to be ambivalent and disconnected from the poor. This is not God's design.
Over time, we'll get into God's design where all flourish, but I surmise that we have gifted teachers out there not working because they have all the money they need to pay their bills and live the life they desire. Yet they feel bored and unfulfilled because their true gifting is sidelined. And we have gifted plumbers out there who are venture capitalists because they believe that's where the money is, yet they live their days miserable and irritated because their true gifting is sidelined. And we have gifted craftsmen out there sitting at a desk, not working with their hands because that's what their dad did and they were expected to carry on the family business. These are just a few little possible examples as to how all of us can get these things a little mixed up for a whole host of reasons. Threaded through the Work-Money Mountain, I'll share some of my story as to how I got these things royally mixed up and how I started on the path of un-mixing them up.
I hear all the time, "Well they don't need the money." So what? If they are performing a job, then they should be properly compensated for it. Besides, how do we know what's actually in the bank and should that determine a rate of compensation? Of course not! If someone chooses to perform a service and be compensated for it, yet they don't need the funds to pay their bills, they can then choose to donate that compensation to a worthy cause or even give it away. But compensation should never be determined by what someone thinks is in someone else's bank account. That's no one's business anyway. The point is that a man is worth his hire, and knowledge, skills, and gifts should be compensated accordingly.
Over time, I'll make the case how this non-profit world that has grown to beastly proportions is not Biblical, does not have a Kingdom of God perspective, and actually inadvertently sets up a class system. The God of the Bible is a for-profit God--in fact, He says, "Come! Eat and drink freely of the very best (Isaiah 55, Gen 2:16, Hosea 14:5, Psalm 112:9, Matthew 11:19, Revelation 21-22)!" His heart is that all should partake in the endless and abundant bounty of God and His endless resources--that is to everyone's profit. I have come to believe that He absolutely wants everyone to profit in all kinds of ways: monetarily, relationally, emotionally, and physically. This world, apart from God, is a scarcity model where there is never enough: never enough resources, too much work and too few to do it, never enough money, relationships, jobs, etc. But God's Kingdom, that is already here and now unleashed by Jesus, The Messiah, is an economy of abundance, not scarcity.    Â
I believe there is great treasure out there inside of people that is buried under falsehoods, wounds, errant ways and thinking, expectations, etc. and the world is crying out for us to get right with God and start operating in the ways He designed each one of us--without being buried under all the crap. One of my favorite business writers and researchers is Jim Collins. In his genius book, Good to Great, he outlines what it takes for businesses to go from good to truly great. A key ingredient in that recipe is that you have the right people on the right bus, seated in the right seats, heading in the right direction. He suggests that this is of foundational and primary importance in order to reach greatness.
Eventually I will begin to fold in how our education system is causing such chaos in our culture by not meeting individual and marketplace needs because the system is totally disconnected from the reality of everyday living and human needs. Ideally, our education system would start young, cultivating and calling out those individual gifts and abilities and help channel those in such a way to not only eventually meet marketplace needs, but also to be fulfilling to the individual human. That educational system would also teach throughout the educational career things like balancing a checkbook and basic household finances, cooking, taxes, etc. And it is thosed gifted in teaching who can truly plant seeds of greatness within another human being. It's all connected. Somewhere along the way we lost sight of preparing the next generation for actual life. We have trained people to be in classrooms and then there is great difficulty translating that into making an actual living to support yourself. But more on that under the educational mountain!
Because the work-money yoke is so uniquely tied to our core selves, especially in America, these "meta rules" easily usurp our conscious and subconscious minds and very quickly become gods or idols to us and often we are very unaware of that being true. Over time, we'll unpack some of the insidious ways damaging cultural messages can get in and pervert our ideas and behaviors around what is intended to be one of our greatest blessings: work and the flow of money/resources!
Work Is A Good Thing: How the Work-Money Mountain Connects to the Faith Mountain
I've made the case in Intro to Faith Mountain that your views on faith are the lens and foundation from which you see and experience all else in your world. Whether you're an atheist in which the rational mind is your foundation of faith or you're a Christian in which Jesus is the foundation of your faith or you're Jewish in which Torah and rabbinical law is the foundation of your faith, it is that mental construct from which you determine your beliefs around Work-Money and how to govern your world within and around principles of work-money.
As mentioned above, work is a good thing. Work became toil and corrupted after humans chose to disobey God and enter into sin and the realm of the devil. God didn't ever leave humans, humans left God. Under the Faith Mountain, we'll unpack more the particulars around God and the adversary, also known as Satan or the devil, and how we are caught in the middle of the two and get to make a choice.
But basically, at that moment in history in the Garden of God, man chose to enter into disobedience and now became naturally yoked to the devil, not God. At birth, humans are born into a sinful or fallen world that has been hijacked by the adversary (or Satan) and that requires each individual human to make a choice of who they will be yoked to: God or Satan? While Satan and man in that moment in the Garden forged a strange and unhealthy partnership, God immediately began to make known the plan of redemption for any who are truly His and interested in a way out of sin and death.
That errant partnership forged between Satan, Adam, and Eve still has repercussions today and is a partnership each of us is born into. Before that moment of disobedience in God's Garden, humans were yoked to God and fully free to work and enjoy all the food, fruit, beauty, bounty, and amazing creatures of God's Creation in endless abundance. It is THAT environment that all of creation is crying out for and longing for. All of Creation is currently crying out for the true Sons of God to rise up and step out and walk in their true God-given authority. Many would like to "get there" without choosing God's chosen pathway back to Him: JESUS (The Way, The Truth, and The Life). Any system or pathway to God apart from The Way, The Truth, and The Life, The Savior of the Whole World, Jesus of Nazareth is trying to come in by another way (Matthew 24). God considers that thievery. This is NOT a truth I have come to believe lightly. To see more about my wrestling's with faith, read Intro to Faith Mountain. After much wrestling on this, I have come to see that it is actually good for us that there is only one way. Having one way offers clarity, safety, and security.
So after that moment of disobedience in God's Garden, humans became yoked to the devil. And the devil likes slaves. God likes free people. Because it originated as a choice, there has to be a choice to overcome it. Meaning, I am born into death (no matter how wonderful my parents are), yoked to the devil and his ways of total counterfeit. Once I'm introduced to God and His ways, I must make a choice to enter in and choose His ways on a daily basis because the pull into disobedience while standing on this earth and the ways of the devil are so magnetic and so appealing and so spellbinding to a certain side of me and my flesh that I have to choose, with God's help, daily to enter into God's ways.
According to free will, God allows us to choose and He honors that choice. He is not a God of force and compulsion. He is a God of invitation--ALL are invited, few choose it. But why? We'll unpack some of that over time.
I have found that the ways of the devil are completely and fully counterfeit and often I have experienced that counterfeit through the vehicle of Work-Money. Meaning, I have found myself pursing certain work or work activities, thinking they would be full of life and prosperous and really what I found was lack, misery, and even death (death of ideas, dreams, hope, productivity, etc.). The devil's ways do not satisfy, they make me want more, more, more, more like a black hole. They do not make me feel full and at peace--they make me feel agitated and irritated, like I'm stuck in a labyrinth and I swear I have the map and I'm looking at the treasure but I just can't get there.
I am naturally a work horse, so my default is working 24-7. I like to work. But my nature, apart from God, is a slave driver, a perfectionist. And I will work myself to a nub and while I may technically accomplish much. The to-do list is never finished--it only grows, no matter how many "checks" I get to put down. And I am never satisfied with the good that is accomplished--I want to do more. Yup--slave driver.
Once I saw and felt the difference between the counterfeit and the REAL things of God, it started to click for me. Once I truly tasted and saw that the Lord is good, generous, so very faithful, abounding in unending love, and His beauty is endless and beyond measure, and is not a slave driver I started to say, "Huh. All these things that seem to promise life actually deliver death and dissatisfaction. But the things of God actually deliver what they promise to--peace, joy, happiness, fulfillment, satisfaction."
I began to see in the Bible how God institutes cycles and seasons of work and rest, that when abided in, produce great abundance. God knows the importance of both work and rest. He knows the balance and importance of being fully yoked to Him. Jesus says, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light. Put my yoke upon you." Jesus is basically saying, "I'm not a slave driver. Put my ways upon yourself as if they are your own and walk in them and you will have peace and joy." That's INCREDIBLE. The infinite, invisible, eternal, Living God chose to submit Himself to the human form and existence and teach us HIS ways of living free. Whoa. John Mark Comer says it so well in his book, Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.....even if you're not a slave driving perfectionist like I am, every American should read that book.
Because that issue of work goes all the way back to that human genesis point, it is one of the greatest mechanisms the devil can use to corrupt us. And he is so cunning and sly, he doesn't come to us as a ghoulish, slimy devil. He comes as an angel masquerading as light causing us to believe we're doing good by providing for our family, when really that work takes away from our family in thought, in our minds, and in our behaviors. Think of the song Cat's in the Cradle. If you haven't heard it in a while, listen to it. It's very poignant in its depiction of this cycle of the human sacrifice that goes on right under our noses in the name of Work.
It is my theory that if we can find and operate fully in what we are designed by God to do, then money will flow. The Bible is pretty clear that if you want to eat, you have to work. There is no prototype for welfare in The Bible. But there is provision for all no matter what your lot in life. For example, those who had fields and crops were to leave the edges of the field unharvested for the poor, needy, and the travelers. Those in need still had to work in order to receive what they needed because at its core working is a good thing.
When I was young, conceptually I understood this precept. However, the concept I didn't understand was "means to an end." Meaning, often it can take us a while to actually find what we're designed to do and it's really an ever evolving process and I still have to eat and pay bills in the meantime. So sometimes we have to take a job as a means to an end. I have gotten myself into trouble in the past when maybe I left a job too soon because I was so ready to jump out on my own, but the side gig wasn't really ready to sustain me. Or I've also stayed in a job longer than I should have because there was safety and security in it and it was really time to move on. It's always a balancing act and it's in that tension that we stand to learn the most.
Money
The history of money is fascinating and money and work are very much yoked to one another. There was a time when you essentially had to be a farmer or a hunter or you didn't eat. Never mind if you weren't any good at it or didn't want to do it--it was about survival. Barter was really the monetary system of the time and eventually that evolved to coins and then paper money and now we have plastic cards that represent some form of monetary trade between one person and another. We're currently in another monetary system shift with crypto currencies and there's a lot I can say about all of that. It's a very exciting time and we are on the brink of another monetary system evolution. It is going to be more important than ever to clearly understand what you value and why.
Over time, our American culture has somehow linked work solely to money. So instead of people seeking after their gifts and abilities and choosing a path in accordance to what their true gifting and God-given design is, we seek after careers and certifications and jobs that will make us money in order to craft and create the life we think we want. The result is a lot of unhappy, unfulfilled people seeking after money and not even realizing we're doing it.
We become very disillusioned, bored, and unfulfilled when we are not working in some capacity and especially when we are working out of alignment with our true gifting. Our culture, over time, has picked winners and losers in terms of career paths. For example, at one time it was a noble profession to be a postman. They were revered and honored. The same was true for policeman, fireman, electricians, plumbers, carpenters and so on. Somewhere along the way national consciousness has made venture capitalists and influencers and famous people (often, I'm not totally sure why they're famous) the revered "profession." But what exactly do they provide society? Even being an actor at one time required great skill. The cameras used actual film and editing was a major undertaking. So the actors had better have their craft honed and get it right the first time. They had a skill and a trade that provided society something of value.
Money and work affect absolutely everyone. In the Bible, if you didn't work you didn’t eat. There is a direct correlation between work and the ability to eat, but modern culture has largely perverted this notion and we’ve lost sight of the value of hard work. Modern society has programmed us to seek money and riches and accolades, not necessarily hard work. We live in a culture that tells us we need more certifications or degrees to get a better paying job. That in and of itself is not necessarily wrong, but as a culture we've gotten out of balance.
For example, we have too many venture capitalists and not enough plumbers, carpenters, or electricians. And somehow in our minds, being a "venture capitalist" is a "better" or more "noble" aspiration when in fact, both have their value and quite frankly one is absolutely imperative to human society while another is entirely expendable and when push comes to shove not at all necessary.
What we spend our money on says so much about our inner heart. I've heard many financial gurus say, "Show me your checkbook and I'll tell you what matters to you." EEK! Talk about convicting!
The yin and the yang, the push-pull relationship of work-money within the human existence is highly yoked to what our culture tells us is valuable. It is also highly yoked to the foundational mountain of Faith and it is the principles of Governance in any given land that either allow true life-giving work-money principles to flourish within a people or not.
So what you believe in matters of Faith shapes what you believe in matters of work and what to do with your money. And the policies that a governing body institutes either incentivizes work and innovation and the flow of capital of all kinds (resources in addition to funds) or kills it. Additionally, what you believe in matters of personal governance (how you manage yourself) also shape what you're drawn to in terms of work and how you spend the money that comes under your care.
The two mountains of Faith and Governance set the stage for the individuals in a land and permeate a culture in such a way that often it is in the Work-Money Mountain that you can see a full manifestation of what's going on behind the scenes. You can look at any given generation and start to unpack this concept with great detail.
How Work and Money Are Yoked to Governance
In Intro to the Governance Mountain, I spoke of how issues of governance are not in any shape or form solely in politics. How we govern our home, work, and money are not only heavily tied to our faith system, but they speak to who we truly are. For example, I can say all day long that I am a Christian and a believer in the Bible. But what I do with my time, my thoughts, how I work, and what I spend my money on will tell you actuals. Accountants and investors will tell you, "the numbers don't lie."Â Â Every single human on the planet has to reconcile this.
On the micro level, if I spend more money than I take in, then I'm imprisoned by debt and often a cycle of envy and jealousy at the perception of what I believe others have that I think I deserve, which in turn can feed more debt. Beastly system. And there are plenty of predatory lending practices out there to feed my desire for more. Credit cards are often 30% interest. THIRTY PERCENT! That is legal highway robbery, yet it is the cost of "desire" if I just can't wait and save to have the cash. This is why I love Dave Ramsey so much--he can come across as a bit harsh, but his message is a thousand percent correct. It's the best way he knows to love people out of the prison of debt.
On the macro level, the government of the United States of America is in theory a non-profit entity. It does not make any sort of profit other than what comes in as tax revenue from the people. Yet, instead of managing that money properly and answering for that, the beastly system just wants more. No correction, just more money to mismanage and don't ask any questions. That is not reality and there will be a reckoning. The policies instituted by a government effect the generations.
For example, my Papa was a little boy in the Great Depression. Because his generation was forced to survive in very difficult circumstances, they became pretty scrappy and very tough. After World War II they came home and gave birth to the Baby Boomers. Because any parent doesn't want their children to suffer the way they did and because we had a booming and prosperous country in many ways, the Baby Boomers grew up in a very different way than their parents did. Every single generation thinks the next generation is a little "soft" or "my goodness, kids these days." That has been happening since the beginning of time.
Unfortunately, coming out of World War II and the Great Depression, there were some well-meaning policies that absolutely gutted entire generations when it comes to Work-Money and it has taken us a while to see the repercussions of well-intended, but bad policy--WELFARE.
The unintended consequences of welfare have absolutely devastated large portions of our population. Instead of it being a temporary bridge, it has become a devastating blow to our poorest and most needy populations. The policy inadvertently incentivizes people not to work. Other government policies that track right along with welfare incentivize women to have more children (because they get more "benefits" the more dependent children they have) and not get married. Our own government has instituted policies that absolutely destroy dignity and human existence. But why would a government do that to its own people? Because the system of government is not designed to meet the deepest needs and longings of the human soul. When government gets too big, it tries to be all things to all people and then you're nothing.
Conclusion
The Work-Money Mountain is one of my favorite topics because God has taught me so much through work and money. I have come to believe that the economy of God is the coolest system out there and it is available here and now for those willing to enter into it. It can often look on the outside somewhat similar to the rest of the world, but what it is built on is worlds apart.