Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from every brother who leads an unruly life and not according to the tradition which you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example, because we did not act in an undisciplined manner among you, nor did we eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with labor and hardship we kept working night and day so that we would not be a burden to any of you; not because we do not have the right to this, but in order to offer ourselves as a model for you, so that you would follow our example. For even when we were with you, we used to give you this order: if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either. For we hear that some among you are leading an undisciplined life, doing no work at all, but acting like busybodies. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to work in quiet fashion and eat their own bread. But as for you, brethren, do not grow weary of doing good.
Before we get into how this verse has sent waves of distortion throughout Western society, we should first try to understand what Paul is getting at in his verses. He talks about the example that he and his fellow missionaries set when living with the Thessalonians. Even though they could have, by merit of being church officers, expected the church to provide them lodging and food, they decided, instead, that they would set an example for how members within a body of believers should behave. That is, to say, that they provided their own finances instead of burdening the local church. This part is well understood and has become a model for missionary support - that the missionaries seek their own sponsorship from home, or they find a job in an area and provide their own support, ministering on the side.
However, Paul, says, there are some who are financially abusing the church. He calls them undisciplined busybodies. I think a pretty good correlation to today's society is that the Thessalonian church had a bunch of "Kens" and "Karens" running around telling people how to live their lives, and expecting special treatment in the form of food and money. Somewhat like the Kens of the world who use some perceived slight to demand special treatment. Paul gives an interesting command that rings true today. Shut up and get a life! I bet it would be interesting to channel Paul when talking to the church micromanagers of today!
Paul was talking specifically about the church, though. The church was functioning somewhat like a communist society. The rich were selling property so that they could support people in the congregation, such as widows without families and people who were religiously persecuted. People who were in true need. The widows, some have suggested, took on diaconal ministry for the church, but they were primarily people with no ability to earn wages and no family to provide. As often happens, greed entered the picture and there were people who provided fake diaconal ministry (busybodies) and expected a free lunch (undisciplined).
Out of Context and out of proportion
This narrow command to address a problem in the early church of undisciplined busybodies taking advantage of church-based charity ends of taking on a life of its own and being used as a bludgeon to beat down all sorts of sensible practices. First, it is taken out of context - from the local church to a general principle of personal charity and societal structure. Then it is blown out of proportion. Instead of undisciplined busybodies, this is applied generally to all needy people everywhere.
When the context is expanded, there quickly become conflicts with other laws. For example, the Old Testament commands a charitable system that works in an agricultural system. In Deut. 24, God specifically commands a form of societal charity - limit your harvest so that the poor and disadvantaged can eat. Now that we aren't generally agricultural, Paul's argument wears new wings - work or starve. In other words, there is no longer a need for charity because charity in the Old Testament required people to work a harvest, therefore we can just tell poor people to "Get a job". There's no longer a need for any sort of state-managed system to combat poverty because we just tell everyone "work or starve". We may give when a hurricane hits or we may give when fire burns someone's house down, but something like structural poverty (remember Jesus said you will always have the poor with you?) doesn't need to be addressed.
Likewise Paul's argument is blown out of proportion. Here we have a few people who are taking advantage of the church for whom Paul recommends a specific form of discipline - essentially being freed to experience the consequences of their actions. Certainly in many cases, people develop poor discipline because they are protected from the consequences of their actions, but it is very Pharisaical thinking to say that all negative consequences are a result of negative actions. It was their rationale that said a man born blind was either himself a sinner or born of parents who sinned. Not some general concept of sin, like living in a broken world, but they did something so evil that God punished their child with blindness. Job's friends assumed that he had committed great sin and was being punished by God. This type of thinking persists in Evangelical thinking. The person who is begging on the street is assumed to be there because of some poor or evil decision. The man who is destitute because a medical issue wiped out his finances wasn't sufficiently frugal. So, we've turned "undisciplined busybodies" into a generalized accusation of all poor people. If only they tried harder (legalism), they would experience the blessing of God and better employment. I fell into this trap myself - trying to push people who were experiencing poverty to work harder or make themselves more marketable.
How does this get twisted in Reformed Christianity? Let's talk about some of the ways:
1. Individual charity - since our country is rich, we don't need to help people other than tell them to fix themselves. Maybe we can help people who don't work or give to a GoFundMe to help someone in dire straits, but for the most part if people just got off their butts and worked there would be no need for charity. Besides I pay my taxes, so that's all taken care of anyway, even though I only vote for candidates who want to lower my taxes and reduce any government payouts.
2. Church charity - if only our churches had enough people that we could give to the poor we could make progress. We barely have enough to make ends meet. For churches that have more, we really want to invest in ourselves first - maybe an associate pastor and a fellowship hall would be good. Once we feel comfortable then maybe we look outside the walls to help those in need.
Tying value to work
Another facet of this verse is the Evangelical focus on work - it comes in many forms from legalism (focusing on the works we must do to demonstrate our faithfulness), to vocation (a word that elevates our work to a religious necessity) and calling (similar to vocation, but expanding on the idea that God somehow has a unique purpose for our daily grind).
What is interesting is that Jesus's vocation was to preach the gospel. Not in the sense of today's pastor who gets paid to prepare a sermon each week, but more like a street preacher who maybe passes around a hat after he's done. He was a carpenter's son, but nothing is said about what he did before he was 30 years old. So, if his supposed job as a carpenter was a "calling" why do we hear nothing about that spiritual experience?
I'm not saying that work should be useless drudgery devoid of spirituality. My pastor comments often that people watched Brother Lawrence wash dishes "in the presence of the Lord". The emphasis, though, isn't on him being called to wash dishes, but that he learned to experience joy in the presence of God even doing something his fellow monks thought servile and perhaps pointless.
Maybe this idea came from contrast with the Catholic church. Priests take a vow of poverty, and maybe it seems so ridiculous that poverty is somehow spiritual (remember that many in the time of Jesus also associated poverty with a lack of blessing and thus sloth or some other sin) that Protestants decided that poverty is a sure sign of some moral failing.
I wonder how much of this is conflated. For example, consider a person who retires and within a year or two dies. Pastors love to say that the retiree forsook work and because work is so built into our DNA that the retiree lost their sense of worth and died. Is it that work is somehow core to our being, or is it, perhaps, that work is core to how others value us? Do we see retires as valuable, or are they just waiting out their days until they die?
When I say we worship work, that is what I mean. We as a society, and as a church, value people for their capability to contribute tangibly to something than their value as a human being. As a friend of mine says, "We are human beings, not human doings!" I've had to have that internal struggle with work. I want to be present with my family and with God, but it's difficult, to say the least, when my boss also expects me to be present in ways that make me have to choose between being a "good" worker, good father and good Christian. It's difficult to feel a tangible value as a family man and a church member when work writes my value on a paycheck each month. Work-based value is built in our society at many levels. Schools value children based on their intelligence and ability to output work. I know people who struggled with school who were told to "work harder". It's hard because we obviously want people to learn to the best of their ability, but when school is consuming 10 hours a day and a student is still sinking, maybe the solution isn't to spend 12, and maybe even striving for the 'A' isn't what is best for the person. I think it's easy for a person who is struggling with work to end up in a spiritual crisis, just like the retiree.
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