Roy Robinson Oxley’s Puritan Work Ethic

A Christian’s indoctrination to enjoy work.

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 If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.  The apostle, Paul

… for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. Jesus

“If you work real hard . . . “  Colonial minister.

Roy Robinson Oxley, did work real hard, toiling six days a week, 14 hours a day to keep the colony clean with that promise of a better future drilled into him, one filled with holy happiness and a heavenly afterlife.   With no sanitation union coming to his support, he worked for crumbs, but held out hope that someday he’d get out of the hole he and his family were currently living in.  Roy wished he could have been trained in a more glorious occupation like carpentry, farming, or defending the place from marauding redskins, but he was chosen to take out a different kind of trash than them — For the betterment of all! Such was the division of labor ordained by the Monarchy. And by the great unseen God from above.

“We are destined to be here staking out new territory for the Queen,” declared the speaker at the pulpit, “and that requires dedication and hard work.  Besides, idle minds and idle bodies are an affront to the Almighty!” After their one day off to worship this Supreme Being who decreed such a life of hardship and drudgery (not so labor intensive for the higher up mucky-mucks, it seemed) as holy, it was back to the mines for the next six.  

The colonists were Protestants;  it was Martin Luther who conceptualized earthly work as a duty which benefits both the individual and society as a whole and that diligent labor was not an obligation, but a sign of grace. Whereas Catholicism teaches that good works are required of the faithful as a necessary manifestation of the faith they received, and that faith apart from works is dead and barren, Calvinistic theologians taught that only those who were predestined to be saved would avoid the place deeper underground.

“Salvation is a gift from God, so we must view work as a stewardship given to us,” the preacher thundered down to his parishioners. “Thus, we labor in poverty to not only achieve salvation, but, as a blessing to others.  Other denominations say our brand of altruistic Christianity smacks of cultish socialist behavior, helping the lesser among us with food and drink when we should be hoarding, plundering, killing, and destroying everything for ourselves, like the money-changers of the world demand.  That if you don’t work, all you Sauls of Tarsus, you don’t eat!  We are accused of being Socialists!  Oh course, we are Socialists, we’re social creatures! And although you live as squalid peasants in this life, you shall live like the Queen in the next!”

Despite the minister’s effervescence, Roy was growing bored and antsy, preferring to be scurrying across the hills with the kids rather than listening to this pep-rallyesque sermon that will drone on well into the afternoon. Kept ignorant by the Church, and with a family growing annually,  he tried to keep the faith, but try as he might, it was impossible to get ahead, even here in a new land. But they keep promising . . . 

It will be another Martin Luther who will come centuries later, this one with a “King” nailed behind it who will finally expose the truth behind the entire religious/economic facade of cheap, dumb labor, when he will declare “we have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor—both black and white, here and abroad.”

What’s this?—exploitation vastly favoring the ones who write, deliver, and perpetuate the rigid rules and edicts—a scam that the vast dumb majority in the caste system lived by, from the cradle to their grave—rules and edicts brainwashed orally every Sunday to those who lived and died in abject poverty. The ones here to only serve the very wealthy few—and “God”—and will live in eternal wealth like them in Heaven after eking out an existence in this one, got it?

Roy Robinson Oxley died after a lifetime of intense labor—a total of 81 days. His three-sectioned corpse was dragged out of the colony by his six tarsi and left outside the main tunnel to rot outside in the sun.  There were hundreds of worker ants awaiting the promise of Ant Heaven ready to take his place.

By CraigE

From: United States

Website: https://www.penana.com/user/182129/craige/portfolio

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