Veritas Aequitas

I know what many who read this will think: duh! We’re told repeatedly in the Bible to pray to God. The model prayer given to us by Jesus begins with “Our Father Who art in heaven”. Jesus prayed to His Father a lot, and as “little christs”, we should be mimicking that example.

The real question for many Christians, though, is why don’t we take advantage of this tool more often? Why do we neglect opportunities to talk to God?

Initial responses might be, “I’m busy”, “it’s too petty to worry about”, or the famous “I forgot”. While these are typical, they are all wrong. Going back to Jesus’ example, He would often spend entire nights in prayer – talking directly with the Father. I find it hard to believe we can’t find even 5 minutes where we can spend time talking to God.

In the Bible we are also given the example of Nehemiah, cup-bearer to the king, who uttered a prayer to God while talking to the king to make a request [Neh 2:4].

There really is no excuse to not talk to God. In any relationship, communication is really the vital link between the parties. Whether it’s a marriage, a business, a family, or the Christian’s walk with God, all the parties of the relationship have to talk. God talks to us through His word, and we talk to Him via prayer.

From personal experience, I can say that the worst times in my walk have been when I wasn’t listening to God, or talking to Him. And the opposite has been true, too. When I’ve spent more time reading God’s word and listening to it, and then talking to Him, I’ve grown.

Atheism is a belief that there is no god. Contrasted with agnosticism, the belief that we can’t know whether or not there is a god, atheism is predicated upon a basic belief held by others that there is a god. Interestingly, though, many atheists take great pains to attempt to prove their beliefs.

Some say that belief in a god is not useful to life. Others claim it is dangerous to an individual’s psyche. Most, though, claim to not care what anyone else believes, so long as they can go about their business believing in nothing. If neither believing nor disbelieving in god really matters, why would an atheist care to defend his position?

Atheists defend their position, because they know that they have to be right to have any security in their beliefs. Realistically, if there is no god, it doesn’t matter whether or not you believe in one. If an atheist were true to his/her claims, they wouldn’t care about defending themselves. We’re all going to some great oblivion when we die, and we won’t know about it, since we’re really just animals that can think.

The problem faced by any defensive atheist is that they have nagging at the backs of their minds that they might be wrong. What if that Muslim is right? the Jew? the Christian? The only reason to defend a belief there is no god of any kind is to give confidence to the defender. The atheist has to be correct in his beliefs. A Jew doesn’t have to be right in her belief – if it turns out there is no god, she’ll never know. The same is true of the Muslim or Christian.

The atheist, on the other hand, will be sorely disappointed if it turns out there is a god. After a lifetime of espousing nothingness, if there is an eternal realm after death, the atheist will end up spending it in some form of separation from the god he claimed didn’t exist.

For the sake of the atheists, I could hope there is no god. I could hope that my belief and reliance upon the omnipotent God of the Bible is wrong – that I’m just wasting my life going to church, participating in the sacraments, and spreading my faith to others. But I can’t do that. I believe the God of the Bible is real. I believe in eternal, happy, fulfilled fellowship with the triune God for those who have trusted in His proffered method of salvation, those who have trusted in the atoning work of Christ on the cross. I believe in an eternal separation from God’s favor for those who have scoffed at Him, where they will suffer forever.

I believe any who claim there is no God will be in that place of suffering for eternity. I don’t want to see them go there, and will continue to tell them about the God I serve as long as I’m capable in this life.

Just consider whether or not I might be right.

My title today is a compact pair of acronyms. From a presentation I saw this week on WalMart’s investments in RFID (radio frequency identification) technologies as a cost-savings measure, they expect to be able to save around $6.7b dollars annually in salary expenditures by moving to RFID tags and scanners to reduce theft and ease purchasing.

With a quick, back-of-the-envelope estimate, that comes out to 1 billion man-hours they won’t have to pay for. Considering the size of their workforce (estimates are placed between 1.25 and 1.5 million [mostly part-time] employees), that’s about a 65% reduction in their workforce. Getting RIFd is a common euphemism for being down-sized, itself a euphemism for being laid-off or fired.

RFID technology is a very promising means to promote accurate inventorying, better shipment tracking, etc. However, laying-off ~1 million part-time workers in the process raises some interesting economic questions in my mind. Stereotypically, WalMart’s primary workforce – teenagers, housewives, and older folks – don’t tend to have high educations, and often aren’t qualified to do a lot of the work necessary in our technology- and service-based economy. Admittedly, the younger workforce will be more likely to go on to higher education and improve their careers in the future, but I do see an issue over so many others being more-or-less dumped on the unemployment rolls.

So here’s the ethical question: is it right for a company to lay-off a huge percentage of its workforce to improve its bottom-line? Legally, it’s legitimate. From a business perspective, it makes a great deal of sense, too: RFID tags don’t need training, sick time, lunch breaks, or bathroom trips. And, if the stereotype is even 25% true, those folks WalMart lets go from their jobs will not be able to go out and replace their jobs elsewhere.

One of the beauties of capitalism is that those who can market a good idea can make out really well with it. The dark side of it is that they will pay people as little as possible to produce that service or product. WalMart takes a lot of heat for paying its workers not much, and employing folks as mostly part-timers to save on benefits costs. It’s their right to pay their employees whatever those people will work for, but cutting that many people off from a job all at once could have some interesting repercussions.

I’m all for the company improving its bottom-line, reducing theft, and cutting prices to its customers. However, I would like to see them take some initiative along the way to help train at least some of their workers to do something else productive after they leave.

(For more information about RFID, see these Google results.