Workplace

One morning, I was riding my bicycle along Washington, D.C.’s Anacostia River when an egret glided over the trail. The pure-white wading birds have always fascinated me with their elegant stillness and regal grace. They look even more impressive on the rare occasions when they spread their wings and take flight, making them look even larger. Yet this impromptu bird-watching experience came to an abrupt and discordant end. The moment before the egret swooped into the brush and out of sight, he made like a bomber and dropped a load of ordnance worthy of an animal twice his size.

A graceful bird, caught in its least graceful position.

The minor incident nearly passed out of my mind until I realized that this un-constipated egret provided an apt example for man’s complex condition. From beginning to end, mankind’s creation is the gift of God. We are created in God’s image and likeness, given dominion over every living thing, and blessed with the good command to fill the earth with God’s image-bearers through procreation (Genesis 1:26-28). Yet our first parents squandered these divine blessings through disobedience and rebellion, for which they were cast out of God’s presence (Genesis 3:22-23) and condemned to die (Genesis 2:17).

Man is a graceful bird, caught in his least graceful position.

Christianity’s nuanced view of human nature becomes incomprehensible without the first three chapters of Genesis. This is why so many human philosophies veer into error on either one side or the other. Most human philosophies boil down to the opinion that man is basically good, or that he is basically bad. Only the Bible (and those influenced by the Bible) can explain how man is created good, but corrupted.

Mankind’s complex condition affects every aspect of our lives, even the way we work. Before anything had tarnished God’s “very good” creation (Genesis 1:31), we read that “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15). Work is not a consequence of the fall, but a basic function of man, which God created for good. Adam’s task was merely to imitate God’s own example in creative effort (Genesis 2:9), and it carries religious undertones, as the same verbs are used to describe service at the tabernacle in Numbers 3.

However, mankind’s work did not escape the Fall unscathed. Not only was Adam cast out of the lush garden into uncultivated land, but God also declared, “cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:17-19).

The ground was Adam’s domain of work. By extension, this curse extends to all arenas of work. All work is toilsome, demanding, and sometimes fleeting, as the whole creation is “subjected to futility” (Romans 8:20).

Man is a graceful bird, caught in his least graceful position.

Again, the Bible’s complex theology of work has better power to explain the different attitudes people have towards their work than the fractured, individualistic worldviews dominant in America today. Some people love their jobs, while some people hate them. Why? Can individualism or critical theory offer a satisfying answer to this question? (Critical theory would blame group oppression, but that is not satisfying.)

The Bible has an answer. Some people love their jobs because work is a gift from God — a good gift that God created as part of his blessing on mankind. Even in a fallen world, the wise preacher concludes, “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God” (Ecclesiastes 2:24, see also Ecclesiastes 5:18-19 and 9:9). Yet some people also hate their jobs because work is cursed after the Fall.

Man is a graceful bird, but he is still caught in his least graceful position.

The very unseemliness of the aforementioned egret’s evacuation is what makes it an appropriate metaphor for fallen man under sin. “We have all become like one who is unclean,” Isaiah confesses, “and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment” (Isaiah 64:6). We need one who can wash our filth away, to achieve for us what we could never achieve by our own works.

Even though work is good, it is not ultimate. The Lord God engaged in his creative work for six days, “and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done” (Genesis 2:2). Just as man was made to imitate God’s work, so man was also supposed to imitate God’s rest (Exodus 20:8-11). But, under the curse of sin, that rest became fleeting and far off.

From the earliest generations, Adam’s descendants sought one who would restore them to God’s rest. Thus, Noah’s father Lamech said in hope, “Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands” (Genesis 5:29). Yet Noah did not bring an end to toil, hard labor, or the futility of human industry. Nor did Moses, Joshua, David, or any human leader called by God throughout history. All were sinners, after all.

Yet painful toil under the curse is not man’s final condition, for “there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God” (Hebrews 4:9). Those who are forgiven of their sins by the blood of Christ receive true grace. They are not only restored to right fellowship with God, but they also receive eternal life and enter into God’s rest.

For now, we recognize that all honest work is good. “In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty” (Proverbs 14:23). “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need” (Ephesians 4:28). “It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops” (2 Timothy 2:6). But work is not ultimate, and one day our painful toil will come to an end.

Man is a graceful bird, and one day his graceless condition will be remedied in full. One day, those who are in Christ will enter into the glory and rest of their Redeemer.

This article was originally written by Joshua Arnold and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.

Across the U.S., a startling statistical anomaly has quietly metastasized into a national crisis: millions of working-age males have begun ditching the workforce. They’re not retiring, nor are they registering as unemployed. They simply have stopped looking for work.

While economists have debated endlessly over structural shifts, such as automation and wage stagnation, a more uncomfortable conversation is appearing in policy circles. The silent exodus of American men denotes a deeper cultural pandemic, which is a decaying work ethic stoked by a swell of public handouts and a pervasive social narrative that tells the individual that they should settle for nothing less than a passion project.

The Vanishing

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, labor force participation for those in the prime age for work — between 25 and 54 years of age — has experienced a steady, decades-spanning decline. At the midpoint of the 20th century, over 95% of men were working or seeking employment. Today, that rate has plummeted dramatically, leaving nearly seven million men of prime age sidelined as contributors to the American economy.

Policy analysts and sociologists alike warn that this developing trend cannot be explained away by mere shifts in demographics. Unlike past generations, who considered self-reliance a badge of honor, today’s lack of a vigorous workforce illustrates the fundamental erosion of the conventional work ethic.

As scholar Nicholas Eberstadt observed in his feature study on the crisis, “the progressive detachment of so many adult American men from regular paid labor can only result in lower living standards … and the consequences are not just economic. The male exodus from work also undermines the traditional family dynamic, casting men into the role of dependents and encouraging sloth, idleness, and vices.”

The Trap of Entitlement

A major driver of this contraction in the workforce is the direct consequences of social safety net expansion. What was once designed with the intention of being temporary cushions during economic recession has morphed into a permanent way of living for millions of able-bodied Americans.

Divided amongst state-funded disability benefits, nutritional assistance, and low-income housing subsidies, the economic estuary that exists between a demanding career and remaining jobless has dried up to almost a point of non-existence. When safety nets mitigate non-work without demanding an exchange, the motivator to persevere through demanding labor dissolves.

Eberstadt warned that this trajectory threatens the fundamental ethos of the country, noting that “whether we choose to recognize it or not, this feature of the American condition, the new ‘men without work’ normal, is inimical to the American tradition of self-reliance.”

The Myth of Passion

Building upon this policy failure is a corrosive cultural fable that has been fed to the younger generations, which is the notion that everyone is entitled to a job that falls in line with their own passions perfectly.

Over decades, higher education institutions and popular media have preached a doctrine of self-fulfillment above everything. Young men have been conditioned to believe that a job in manufacturing or heavy construction is a compromise of the potential they have when it doesn't align with their dream career.

Economic reality operates in the context of necessity, however, not utopian ideals. Popular figures such as Mike Rowe have strongly pushed back against this cultural illusion, arguing that “when people follow their passion, they miss out on all kinds of opportunities they didn’t even know existed… never follow your passion but always bring it with you.”

Branding ordinary, tough jobs as “beneath” today’s worker, American society has spurred young men to wait around for their dream opportunities to manifest — even though there’s no guarantee that it will ever arrive, rather than rolling up their sleeves and doing what is needed.

The Fallout

The economic consequences resulting from millions of idle men prove staggering. Business owners across trades report chronic labor shortages, superficially driving up supply chain costs and delaying infrastructure growth. Local communities meanwhile must deal with rising rates of isolationism and civic-service decline, a phenomenon tied directly to the absence of systemic labor.

The reversal of this decline will be vested in a realignment of policy and cultural values. Until policymakers take the steps to confront this reality that a flourishing state relies upon its citizens’ willingness to do things that are hard and uncomfortable, the already far too high number of America’s missing able men will continue to rise.

This article was originally written by Zach Patton and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.

In a setback for religious freedom, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled last Thursday that Christian schools in Maine must comply with pro-LGBT regulations that conflict with their religious beliefs, if they want to participate in a public tuition assistance program. “Essentially what the court has said is that you can believe what you want to believe, you can talk about what you believe, but once you exercise what you believe, that’s conduct that the state of Maine can regulate,” said Jeremy Dys, senior counsel for First Liberty Institute, which brought the lawsuit.

In Crosspoint Church v. Makin, a two-judge panel (one judge died before the opinion was issued) partially upheld a lower court order denying a preliminary injunction against Maine’s pro-LGBT regulations. Crosspoint Church runs Bangor Christian School (BCS). The court decided a second lawsuit featuring a Catholic school (St. Dominic Academy v. Makin) on the same day, on almost identical grounds.

BCS holds employees and students to basic biblical standards for gender and sexuality, and requires teachers to ascribe to a statement of faith. But those standards run afoul of provisions in the Maine Human Rights Act (MHRA), which Maine now applies to schools seeking to participate in its tuition assistance program. “A private school that participates in the tuition-assistance program and then violates the MHRA exposes itself to civil suits from both the Maine Human Rights Commission (MHRC) and private alleged victims, with remedies including injunctive relief and monetary damages,” the court described.

Specifically, the MHRA “‘Religious Nondiscrimination Rule’ bars covered schools from discriminating in admissions, financial aid, academics, and the like on the basis of religion,” as the court described, and its “‘Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Nondiscrimination Rule’ bars discrimination in all the same activities on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity but exempts religious schools that do not receive public funding.”

In practice, this rule would have the effect of preventing BCS’s attempts to enforce its biblical norms of sexuality and gender, Dys told The Washington Stand. For instance, if a male student identified as transgender and wished to use the female restrooms and locker rooms, BCS could not enforce its policies against him without violating the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Nondiscrimination Rule. “When the state of Maine presents this sort of regulation on conduct, it creates a real problem,” he said.

Yet the court concluded the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Nondiscrimination Rule “works no constitutional violation.” It also held that “certain of BCS’s policies” violated the Religious Nondiscrimination Rule, including “church member discounts” and “consideration of ‘prospective students’ spiritual fit.’”

Besides these rules, the MHRA also establishes an “Employment Rule” that “bars employment discrimination based on ‘race or color, sex, sexual orientation or gender identity, physical or mental disability, religion, age, ancestry, national origin or familial status,’” as the court described. With regard to this rule, the court partially reversed the district court, finding that Crosspoint Church fell into a carveout in the rule, thereby eliminating the “case or controversy.”

Finally, the MHRA’s “Religious Expression Rule” stipulates that, “to the extent that an educational institution permits religious expression, it cannot discriminate between religions in so doing.” The court rightly held that “the Religious Expression Rule unconstitutionally violates Crosspoint’s free-exercise rights” and remanded it to the district court for an injunction.

In the lawsuit, Crosspoint argued that “a set of recent amendments to the MHRA specifically targets BCS, in violation of the Free Exercise Clause,” as the court characterized it, based on a years-long history of litigation.

Maine has offered state tuition assistance to enable parents to send their children to the school of their choice since 1980. However, the program excluded Christian schools until 2022, when a 6-3 U.S. Supreme Court found the policy unconstitutional in Carson v. Makin. Parents at BCS were at the center of that case.

Based on its recent decisions in Trinity Lutheran (2016) and Espinoza v. Montana (2019), where government entities tried to block Christian schools from generally available public benefits, the Supreme Court in Carson held that “Maine’s ‘nonsectarian’ requirement for its otherwise generally available tuition assistance payments violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Regardless of how the benefit and restriction are described, the program operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise.”

In anticipation of a defeat in front of the Supreme Court, the Maine legislature amended the law in 2021, allowing Christian schools to receive state tuition assistance, but only if they complied with the state’s rules for nondiscrimination towards sexual orientation and gender identity.

In 2023, Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey (D) professed to be scandalized at the very nature of a Christian school. “The education provided by the schools at issue here is inimical to a public education,” he complained. “They promote a single religion to the exclusion of all others, refuse to admit gay and transgender children, and openly discriminate in hiring teachers and staff.”

Frey’s comments came in response to another federal lawsuit filed by Crosspoint Church, alleging that attaching general state funding to LGBT strings amounted to a “poison pill” for accepting the money. “Putting Plaintiff to the choice of participating in a generally available benefit program or surrendering its constitutionally protected religious exercise penalizes its religious exercise and constitutes a substantial burden,” the lawsuit argued.

However, the district court refused to view the circumstances in that light, or to apply the recent string of Supreme Court precedents. Instead, U.S. District Judge John Woodcock, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled in February 2024 that “the educational antidiscrimination provisions do not violate the Free Exercise Clause because they are neutral, generally applicable, and rationally related to a legitimate government interest.”

This language reached further back to the “neutrality” test established in the Supreme Court’s 1990 ruling in Employment Division v. Smith, the controversial decision that prompted a furious Congress to overwhelmingly pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1991.

Dys contended that both the district court and the appellate court were wrong to rely on the neutrality test in this context, “because you can’t simply exclude religious exercise because it’s religious,” he told TWS. “You have to give full faith and credit to that part of the Constitution,” referring to the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

“I suspect there’s going to be further action on this case,” he concluded. First Liberty is still reviewing whether to appeal the case to the full First Circuit or directly to the Supreme Court. In either case, Dys said, “We’re going to seek further review.”

“We are disappointed that though the First Circuit acknowledges that religious institutions can teach what they believe, it would then refuse to allow conduct consistent with those beliefs,” Dys declared. “Religious education plays a critical role in our diverse society, but Maine’s leadership will not tolerate conduct consistent with those religious beliefs. As the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly said, punishing religious institutions for being religious is odious to our Constitution.”

This article was originally written by Joshua Arnold and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.

When ideologically opposed governments clash, those caught in the middle usually duck for cover like pedestrians in Godzilla’s shadow. Such instinctive acts of self-preservation can produce absurd situations, like the one Colorado Children’s Hospital found itself in on Monday. After the Colorado Supreme Court judicially compelled the hospital to resume providing gender transition hormones to minors, not one doctor in its gender center was willing to shoulder the risk, out of fear of federal consequences.

Through 2025, Colorado Children’s in Aurora was the state’s largest supplier of gender transition hormones to minors, subjecting 257 children to puberty blockers and 549 children to cross-sex hormones last year alone (though it reportedly never carried out transgender surgeries).

But that practice came to an abrupt halt on January 5, when the hospital announced it would no longer provide gender transition hormones to minors. Along with dozens of other hospitals, Colorado Children’s had received a federal subpoena for information on its provision of the drugs to minors, which it is trying to quash in court. The hospital was also concerned about losing access, even temporarily to federal Medicaid funding, which covers roughly half of the hospital’s patients.

But the Rivendell of Californian expats could not long endure any behavior — however rational its basis — that smelled like compliance with the Trump administration, which Colorado treats with all the hatred and disgust of elves for orcs. Left-wing activist groups brought a state lawsuit to force the hospital to reverse its suspension of services, arguing that a state anti-discrimination statute required it.

After losing in a district court, the activists won a favorable (5-2) ruling from the Colorado Supreme Court on May 18. “Any potential harm to the public’s interest in access to healthcare is speculative,” wrote Supreme Court Justice William Hood. In a dissent, Justice Brian Boatright countered that “CHC’s decision to terminate gender-affirming care for minors was plainly not ‘because of’ petitioners’ gender identity, sex or disability. It was a decision driven by the direct threat to the viability of the entire hospital.”

Nevertheless, the pro-transgender position prevailed by a sizable majority, holding that the hospital must provide gender transition hormones as a matter of law and returning the case to a lower court to deliver the final order. Denver District Judge Ericka Englert issued that order on Thursday.

The hospital initially asked the judge to require its opponents to post a $250,000 bond to cover the hospital’s financial risk but withdrew that request the next day. In the final analysis, Judge Englert set the bond at one dollar.

Thus, on Monday, Colorado Children’s announced that it had “reinstated medical gender-affirming care into our scope of services,” to comply with the Colorado courts. But the announcement contained one major twist: not one of the doctors who worked at Colorado Children’s TRUE Center for Gender Diversity was willing to prescribe puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones. Instead, each doctor “has independently decided they will not prescribe or renew gender-affirming medications for patients under age 18,” the hospital said.

How the hospital is complying with the court order without the cooperation of any of the doctors remains unexplained. Are the prescriptions being written by nurses or by doctors from other departments? Or is this the hospital’s way of saying, we wish to comply, but it is out of our hands?

The reason why the doctors could refuse to cooperate with the hospital is that “Children’s Colorado does not employ the medical providers at the TRUE Center or direct their independent clinical decisions,” the hospital explained. Instead, the doctors are all employed by the nearby University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine and retain control over their care and prescription decisions.

It turns out that the doctors had each individually reached the same rational conclusion the hospital had reached on January 5 — that the risk of consequences for carrying out gender transition procedures on minors had become greater than the benefit of providing them for an interim period.

“At this time, the medical providers at the TRUE Center have each determined that we will not be prescribing, refilling, or renewing gender-affirming prescriptions for patients under 18 years old,” the doctors said in a statement. “We were each individually forced to make a very difficult decision and none of us reach this decision lightly. Ultimately each of our decisions is driven by the serious risk of federal action that could result in the inability to continue serving and caring for any patients for years into the future.”

The risk of federal action to individual practitioners is not hypothetical. In May, the U.S. Department of Justice reached a settlement with Texas Children’s Hospital after which the hospital paid $10 million to cover fraudulent medical billing, agreed to open a detransitioner clinic, and permanently fired five doctors who had provided gender transition procedures to minors there. Weeks later, the DOJ reached another settlement with the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio that included “a decades-long commitment to not perform or offer sex-rejecting procedures.”

Unsurprisingly, these Colorado doctors had no wish to become the next whitecoats in the DOJ’s crosshairs.

Nor is it surprising that left-wing activists responded with outrage to the news. “Instead of complying with the court order, Children’s Hospital is now claiming that it is not responsible for whether its medical staff discriminates against children based on sex, gender identity, race, religion, or any other protected category,” complained Attorney Paula Greisen, who brought the lawsuit. “The hospital at first sacrificed the children and now they’re throwing the doctors under the bus, basically raising their hands in the air, saying we have no control over these doctors.”

The better question is, who is under which bus? With state penalties looming on one side and federal penalties on the other, the many hospitals and doctors who conducted gender transition procedures merely to make a quick buck are scrambling for the nearest exit.

This has been the hope of pro-children strategists for years. One goal behind state laws protecting minors from gender transition procedures was to increase the risk of liability. For many doctors, this is a far more effective method of deterrence than any amount of state prosecution. Thus, most state laws allowed for private civil suits over a long period of time. Already, this spring, a detransitioner won the first ever malpractice suit for $2 million, even under New York’s pro-transgender laws.

But state laws and individual lawsuits could only slow the runaway semi of transgender medicine one speed bump at a time. It took the might of the federal government — with its massive law enforcement apparatus and control of incentives through Medicaid — to finally pull out a titanium lasso strong enough to halt its momentum mid-career and begin to reel it backward.

It’s a rare day when such positive news washes down from the marijuana-scented slopes of the Rocky Mountains’ majesty. The bizarre situation demonstrates that, even in far-left jurisdictions, there are rational actors who will respond to incentives — if the government sets the incentives properly. It also demonstrates that the Colorado Supreme Court remains far out on the Left fringe, where it would force a hospital to shoulder massive liability against federal wrath in the misguided pursuit of non-discrimination.

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This article was originally written by Joshua Arnold and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.

If the internet can be trusted, we spend one third of our life at the office.

That’s a lot of time.

Work is all around us. It’s unavoidable. For most people, work involves hanging out with coworkers, stressing over projects, and joining the rest of the commuters on the highway heading home. Jobs can feel mundane, boring, routine, unspiritual. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Your job is your ministry, whether it’s considered “spiritual” or not.

Every occupation has a chance to be more than clocking in and out every day. All good work, ecclesiastical or otherwise, is a launchpad for kingdom work. The danger happens when we believe “secular” work is less meaningful than “sacred” work (occupations deemed “religious,” such as biblical counselors, church leaders, ministry partners).

Just as it takes a calling to be a pastor or spiritual leader, it also takes a calling to be a technician or a car salesman or a high school teacher or a stay-at-home mom. Each person is equipped with unique talents to serve the body of Christ and minister to the world. To paraphrase the Apostle Paul, we can’t all be eyes or ears. Someone’s gotta be the toes. And the beauty is that we can only step forward when everyone is working at the thing they are best at. Just as it would be wrong to force an eye to carry the weight of the body, so it is also wrong to force toes to use glasses.

English writer Dorothy Sayers provocatively puts it this way: “Let the Church remember this: that every maker and worker is called to serve God in his profession or trade — not outside it. The Apostles complained rightly when they said it was not meet they should leave the word of God and serve tables; their vocation was to preach the word. But the person whose vocation it is to prepare the meals beautifully might with equal justice protest: It is not meet for us to leave the service of our tables to preach the word.”

The mistake of categorizing work into sacred and secular is that we steal dominion from God. In essence, we’re saying “religious” work glorifies the Lord more than “non-religious” jobs do not. But this isn’t the case. As Abraham Kuyper famously said, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!” God seeks glory from the most mundane of tasks: eating and drinking (1 Cor 10:31). The God who blesses the farmer (2 Cor 9:10), cares for the field laborer (Ruth 2:19), and provides for tentmakers (Acts 18:3) is intensely interested in all good occupations. God demands more than just religious jobs; to him, all worthy jobs belong to the realm of sacred.

At the end of the day, it’s not what the job is (assuming it’s a non-sinful occupation), but rather how the job’s done. In Jesus’s parable of the Talents, it wasn’t ultimately about the sum of money the three servants received. The point was how they did — or didn’t — steward that money in the ruler’s absence. Jesus delights in faithfulness to small things. Erik Cooper, who (among many roles) serves as an executive leader for a nonprofit real estate company, comments, “There was never intended to be a sacred-secular divide. Whether we’re putting our hands to closing loans, making films, or accounting, it all matters to God. It is all part of his forming, filling, and subduing. It can all be redeemed by the finished work of Jesus because it was always intended to be part of God’s work in the world.”

As stewards in God’s kingdom, our calling is to labor well. God’s dominion extends far beyond the walls of church buildings. He cares about how you cultivate that one-third of your life. No task is too small or insignificant to go unnoticed by the King. Jon Bloom, co-founder of Desiring God, sums it up nicely, “According to 1 Corinthians 7:17-24, your job (assuming it’s not inherently unethical or immoral) is a ministry assignment from God. It may not be your career assignment, but it’s today’s assignment. And God wants you to carry out that assignment with dependent faith, diligence, and excellence.”

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This article was orginally written by Hannah Tu and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.