Living in Babylon

Don't be so heavenly minded that you're no earthly good,
Propaganda if you ask me.

Seek ye first the kingdom of God,
that I can understand.

The problem is I'm living in Babylon,
but my home is in Jerusalem.

And here the Lord knows I got a million problems,
yet I heap on more.

And the difficulty of focus, is its narrowness,
cause I'm cursed with peripheral vision.

Jesus and every good general know,
divide and conquer and the house will fall.

For me caught inbetween, how long can my division hold up?
I know a double minded man is unstable in all his ways.

Never been on rough seas, but I've been tossed by waves,
its worse than a jerky driver on a bumpy road when you're car sick.

Christ incarnate was both human and Divine,
so He's twice the man I am.

I don't hate what's physical,
I just want to be more spiritual.

PoP: Laborers in the Vineyard

***I delayed the posting of this essay because I had second thoughts on its usefulness, let me know if this PoP series is worth continuing***


TEXT: Matt. 20:1-16 & Liberty of Contract Clause
Article 1, Section 10: No State shall...pass any bill...or law impairing the obligations of contacts.

I bring up the previous clause because in this parable liberty of contract is the first implication I noticed. The owner promises the first set of workers a certain wage and they agree (a contract). A third party, the later workers, do not change the terms of the first contract, nor does the first contract affect the payment of the later workers: the later workers do not have a pro-rated payment in relation to the wages of the others. In the Constitution we see a somewhat similar principle in the aforementioned clause, but in this case the third party is the state, whereas it is other workers in the parable. The Supreme Court had followed this principle to the degree that the minimum wage law had been ruled unconstitutional. In the decision of Adkins v. Children's Hospital an attempt at minimum wage was ruled unconstitutional (in 1923). In the ruling, Justice George Sutherland, speaking for the majority says, "freedom of contract is... the general rule."

Second principle from the parable: Equal pay for Unequal work. Note we normally hear Equal pay for Equal work, but in this parable we see a slight variation. Of course, all the workers received the same pay that day, regardless of how many hours they worked. I think from that principle we could logically state the converse: Unequal work for Equal pay, but from these alone I don't know if we could derive: Unequal pay for equal work. We might discuss this later.

Third principle: Some jobs aren't 9-5. If my understanding of the Biblical timing is correct, then the first set of workers hired at the first hour had a 12 hour day. Mind you this is labor intensive agricultural work. Do you think this would be allowed in present day America, with the laws limiting number of hours worked? I'm beginning to see that the implications of this parable would give OSHA terrible fits.

Wow, I am not done yet, but I will post now anyways and finish later.