Each of us has a skill or talent we have been given by
God that allows us to earn a living or somehow improve our lives or the lives
of others. In the book of Exodus,
chapter 35:10, Moses said,
The chapter continues with a description of all that is
to be made and what skill will be required to do the work as God wished. Moses might have argued with God saying where
will I get so much talent and so many things as you require of me, but he trusted
God and he knew that as with the natural resources of the earth, which never
run out, neither will talent if man is allowed to freely associate with a
community of his choice.
It never happens that a whole town has nothing but
doctors and no firefighters. A town with
only musicians and no carpenters. To
some extent it is a matter of economics where people decided to settle and
where they establish a business or a trade because the consumer determines demand
and sets prices. Generally speaking
however, talent is distributed by God to serve the needs of society at large.
The following are the skills that were required in the
book of Exodus to fulfill the command of God to build the Ark of the Covenant and
all the other things that would be needed for the tent of meeting: a tent maker, lumber cutters, spinners, weavers,
seamstresses, incense makers, stone cutters, sculptors, bronze workers, rope
makers, tanners, costume designers, gold smiths, embroidery workers, jewelers,
teachers, engravers, cloth dyers, silversmiths, artists, a perfumer, chain
makers, and tailors.
Besides all these people, those who donated their
treasures and jewelry for the task had their own skills which had allowed them
to accumulate such wealth—gold, silver, jewelry, violet, purple, or scarlet
yarn as was needed for this project.
Kids don’t always know what they want to be when they
grow up. Some have talents we recognize
immediately---the ability to draw or sing, for instance. Sometimes talent must be developed for jobs
that are not always so obvious when we are young, such as accounting,
engineering, teaching, and medicine.
Man cannot live alone; he needs the company and the
skills of others to survive over time.
He also needs the right distribution of those skills that must not be interfered
with for society to thrive. Who would
disrupt talent, you ask?
Hilary Clinton
proposed to shut down the coal industry and “retrain” all the miners to do other
things. Against their will, I might
add. It is ok when a person decides to
change jobs on their own, but when social engineers think they can do a better
job of determining how men and women earn their living than man can decide for
himself, the world is in trouble.
In the book “Russia’s Iron Age,” the author tells how
thousands and thousands of people were “relocated” to places they didn’t want
to live, to work on large industrial projects they had no desire to do, and no
talent or skill to perform.
Often things
were ruined because the people managing the construction were not good
planners. Sometimes they waited for
weeks for the necessary materials because production somewhere else was not on
time. Sometimes the project fell behind
schedule simply because the workers were pushed beyond their human limits, were
worked seven days a week without a day of rest, and were given tasks they
didn’t understand or know how to complete with proficiency.
In a socialist society, the planners always know better
than God what men should do with their time.
I met a woman a few years ago who had immigrated to the United States
from Cuba so her daughter could go to college in Virginia. Her daughter had applied to study engineering
in Cuba and was told they didn’t need any engineers, which is not likely to be
the case, but dictators are never wrong. In a socialist society workers are not seen as
vital to society beyond the fact they represent man hours of labor. This is why the EU is content to import half
the Muslim world into their countries without regard for their skills or desire
to work, because when you are a socialist it is up to you to decide the distribution of workers to whatever industry or
trade you have a need for. This is working out poorly for the EU which
is now finding out that people are not as easy to manipulate as they
assumed. Without exerting the kind of
cruelty we’ve seen occur in China and in Russia after their revolutions, it is
almost impossible to get men to do well what they don’t want to do or simply
are not fit to do. Besides, what a shame
it is to see a musician go to waste because a factory needs him on an assembly
line. What a shame it is to see
mathematicians and engineers go to waste because a forest needs to be cut or
goods need to be loaded on a truck or a ship.
The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave |
This freedom to chart one’s own course in life is what
has made our country so great and why our citizens are the most productive and
happy in all the world. God understands
our needs and provides for each of us and for society exactly what is needed at
any point in history. He will always
endow the right number of poets, composers, and artists to go with the right
number of carpenters and welders, and lawyers and priests and wives and
mothers. There will always be brave men
to defend us and lawmen to protect us, fighters of fire to save us, doctors to
heal and restore us, and leaders to govern us and maintain peace in our
communities. Nothing can alter this
result but the men who assume for themselves power over others and take away
the liberty of individuals to follow the course for which God has prepared
them.
Land Grant universities were formed in this country in
1862 for the purpose of providing educational opportunity for the study of
agriculture, engineering, and mining, without which it was determined, a
country cannot survive. Most are
referred to as A & M colleges. Men
and women with a desire to study those things can be assured that
attending one of those schools will give them the knowledge they need to pursue
their goals.
Today we have another kind of planned education supported
by a group called STEM Education Coalition, who have made it their goal to
“train” our future workforce. I don’t
know enough about STEM to argue well the pros and cons but I do know presenting
opportunity for kids to learn and
develop is not the same as establishing a system whereby they will be trained to do what central planners have decided they
must be trained for and programmed to
work in fields they might not otherwise like, or have an aptitude for,
simply because industry has the need for so many units of man hours. Something about this just doesn’t feel right
for our children and for society as a whole.
We should never forget that on July 20, 1969, the USA put
a man on the moon using the knowledge and talent of men whose own choice had led them to study the things they would need
to know for this feat to be accomplished.
It may seem at first a good idea for someone to check the pipeline and
make sure we will have enough engineers in the future, but frankly, I think God
already has that covered. All we need is
faith. Be not afraid.
No comments:
Post a Comment