Piety and Hard Work

Introduction

We are talking about removing our modernist glasses so we can look backwards and learn.

Consider the looking at technology with suspicion instead of wonder (Jas. 3:5-8).

What lessons to do we need to learn?

Piety at Home

What do you think the word piety means?

In Rome, it had to do with your devotion and duty especially in the home (1 Tim. 5:4; Acts 17:23; 1 Tim. 5:8).

Virgil wrote the Aeneid just before the 1st century in order to codify a Roman myth about the origins of the city of Rome (an alternative to the story of Remus and Romulus.

It surrounds a hero named Aeneas eventually will become the founder of the city of Rome.

But the story starts with the sack of Troy (Trojan horse and all of that).

The ghost of Hector wakes Aeneas up and tells him the Greeks are in the gates and Aeneas gets his sword and goes to war.

But the battle is lost before he even engages and his compadres are dead in no time.

So Aeneas retreats but instead of just running out of the gates, he runs back into the fray to go to his house.

There he picks up his father and puts him on his shoulder and grabs his son and wife by the hand and runs.

Pretty soon, he turns around and sees that this wife is not with them anymore. He stops, turns around and goes back for his wife.

She is actually dead and he finds only her ghost and she tells him to take what is left of the family and flee. Go to this city and build a new home.

By the time Virgil wrote this story it had been being told for centuries.

There was a Roman coin called pietas and on it was the image of Aeneas carrying his father and leading his son by the hand.

Piety doesn’t say, “you do you,” or “whatever makes you happy” or “discover who you really are.” It says, this is who you are, do what is required.

People get so wrapped up in the romance of marriage and the trinkets of marriage that they completely dismiss the duty of marriage. I wonder how many times my great grandfather bought my great grandmother flowers?

“Do You Love Me”

Do you love me? (Golde) Do I what? (Tevye) Do you love me? (Golde) Do I love you? With our daughters getting married And this trouble in the town You're upset, you're worn out Go inside, go lie down! Maybe it's indigestion (Tevye) "Golde I'm asking you a question..." Do you love me? (Golde) You're a fool (Tevye) "I know..." But do you love me? (Golde) Do I love you? For twenty-five years I've washed your clothes Cooked your meals, cleaned your house Given you children, milked the cow After twenty-five years, why talk about love right now? (Tevye) Golde, The first time I met you Was on our wedding day I was scared (Golde) I was shy (Tevye) I was nervous (Golde) So was I (Tevye) But my father and my mother Said we'd learn to love each other And now I'm asking, Golde Do you love me? (Golde) I'm your wife (Tevye) "I know..." But do you love me? (Golde) Do I love him? For twenty-five years I've lived with him Fought him, starved with him Twenty-five years my bed is his If that's not love, what is? (Tevye) Then you love me? (Golde) I suppose I do (Tevye) And I suppose I love you too (Both) It doesn't change a thing But even so After twenty-five years It's nice to know

We are so scared of “guilt trips” and “being a burden” or “disrupting” our children’s lives.

We are so scared of just telling our children “it’s your job” (Gen. 22:6)

We need to learn to bear the burden ourselves even when everyone is telling us we don’t have to.

A Theology of Work

Paradise included a garden to tend to (Gen. 2:12).

Prepare a path for work to do in your home and don’t just think of efficiency.

Take care how you talk about work.

Make rest and play the occasional break from a life of work and service.

We live lives filled up (especially our kids) with entertainment and then we are shocked (and so are they) when life, all of the sudden, life is made up of work.

It was always made up of work, they were just enjoying the benefits of the work of others without even being made aware of it.

Train them to be assets to the home.

They are considered in terms of expense but not value.

Regular reports are given of the “cost of raising a child” ($277,000 last I checked).

No thought is given that they might actually bring economic value to the home (we even make laws discouraging that kind of thing).

Prepare a path for work to do in your home and don’t just think of efficiency.

Try to find work that allows you to be the greatest possible part of your home.

Encourage other young men (and young women) to do this.

Don’t encourage them to get wrapped up in the same old corporate rat race that demands loyalty to a company for whom they are just another commodity.

Find ways to work WITH your family.

Sacrifice stuff for people not the other way around.

Begin to lay the groundwork so that your children can get closer to the ideal even if you can’t. Fill them up with a vision of this beautiful picture and help them long for it with you.