Bulletin Articles: Full Article for Record Number 997
Is Your Career Worth It?
by Larry Ray Hafley
It is good for a man to work and provide for his family. God expects us to do so. "But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel" (1 Tim. 5:8). "And let ours also learn to maintain good works for necessary uses, that they be not unfruitful" (Titus 3:14).
However, one must be careful in his labor that he not neglect his family. Hear from Jeffery Skilling, he of Enron infamy, a former high official and officer in that failed company.
"Personal life suffers. Skillings drive exacted a personal cost. He was divorced from his wife of 21 years in 1997. He later expressed regret about the failure of his marriage and the time he spent away from his three children.
"’Years of airplanes, late nights, consulting challenges, heady exhilarations, equity markets that rise and fall, and general personal exhaustion make for a bad relationship partner,’
he wrote in a personal note to a Harvard Business School alumni publication in 1999" (Houston Chronicle, February, 2004).
How unutterably sad! Was what he gained in this world’s goods, gold, glamor, and glory worth the loss of his family? Only a fool would say so.
Men, brethren, how is it with you? Are you neglecting your wife and children? Are you selling your soul for ashes in your mouth? That is what your wealth will be one day when you wake up to find a wife with whom you have nothing in common and grown children who feel no emotional or family attachment to you. What a sad, lonely, and impoverished man you will be! Oh, you may still have your money, but you will be a broken man, bankrupt with respect to things that endure and are of real value.
Do not spend yourself for a poverty of spirit which will drown you in misery both now and forever.
Are we saying that a man should not pursue his work with vigor and energy? Are we saying he should not tend to his business with diligence? No, we are not, for "He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand: but the hand of the diligent maketh rich" (Prov. 10:4). "Love not sleep, lest thou come to poverty; open thine eyes, and thou shalt be satisfied with bread" (Prov. 20:13). "Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds" (Prov. 27:23).
We are saying that you must exercise moderation in all things (Phil. 4:4-6). If you do not, you will awake one day to find that you have been robbed of true riches. By allowing "the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in" to choke the life out of your soul, you will wring the last vestiges of love and admiration from the hearts of your wife and children.
Open your eyes and be wise lest you achieve a wealth you cannot afford and pay a price you cannot endure.
