Just imagine that everyone gets along perfectly. What an amazing world that would be to live in! No arguments, no fights, no greed, no hate, no lies, no suicide attacks . . . the list goes on.
However, before you run off and reconcile with all your opponents in a quest for world peace, there’s one major problem with this dream: unemployment. Bet it never occurred to you, but there would be a huge number of job losses if everyone was nice all the time and in all circumstances.
For starters, police officers would lose their jobs because everyone would be doing their very best to do the right thing in all their relationships with others. The community would decide the rules for driving and everyone would drive politely in harmony with those rules. No-one would steal from, let alone murder another person, so detectives would also lose their jobs.
Lawyers would need to find new careers, because discussions about entitlement would be settled quickly without the need for an expensive third party. Even parking inspectors would find all cars parked legally, making their jobs unnecessary.
And the armed forces? Fired! The job losses would be epic. There would be no more need for their services because all countries would get along harmoniously and each one would be content with its own borders.
And it wouldn’t be just the army, navy and air force personnel who would lose their jobs. Think of all the defence manufacturing businesses shutting down. No gun or ammunition production, no military planes, boats, tanks, personnel carriers or submarines. Bugle sales would drop, as would the demand for large tents, camouflage cargo pants, boots, dog tags and khaki face paints. Even the millions of rivets used to hold military-related things together would no longer be needed, creating a global recession right there.
As people’s consciences grew stronger than their greed, tobacco production would wind up and the illegal drug makers and distributors would come clean and start looking for more savoury jobs. Alcoholic beverage production would grind to a halt as people would choose to consume alcohol-free drinks, having taken seriously the evidence of the harm that beer, wine and spirits do to their bodies—and to society. And don’t forget the companies that make all the straws that people use to savour those drinks—and that the police use to do breath tests. They’d all go bust too!
As good morals become dominant in society, the ever creative advert-ising industry would have to take its own commercial break from the truth-twisting, temptation-creating industry it has become. It would instead transform into a fact-sharing industry that would give consumers the information they need to make a reasonable decision whether a product is appropriate for them. Also, the fine print at the end of print ads and the unintelligible language at the end of radio and TV ads would no longer be needed.
Speaking of advertising changes, telemarketers would now politely ask up front whether you might be interested in their product and they’d profusely apologise for inconveniencing you if you said No (one time only), and then they’d send out gift vouchers as compensation for wasting your time. They’d be out of business in no time just for the cost of those gifts!
Agencies that provide political advertising would lose all their work too, because electing a leader for your country would turn from today’s popularity contests into a simple case of who’s the best qualified for the job. If all politicians were equally nice and honest, elections would be based solely on their capabilities and intelligence.
There’d be no need for computer antivirus programmers; lock makers would be out of business; security system manufacturers would become redundant; and pepper spray manufacturers would shut down. Then there’s the pornography and brothel industries. With everyone being faithful to their partners, these industries would go broke within a week.
Then there are the scientists who are trying to figure out a way to get humanity off our planet and onto another one because of the way we’re polluting this one. They’d be out of jobs, because all nations would be working together to combat pollution, manage forests, preserve the oceans and ensure good distribution of food and wealth. If everyone worked together to care for planet Earth, what terrible job losses that would mean for all those chasing a Plan B for us!
With all the unemployment that’s bound to happen, you can see how much our world is wasting because of humanity’s selfishness.
Unfortunately, even if everyone did lose their selfish tendencies overnight and got along perfectly, our human race would still have one other trait that would stand in the way of achieving global unemployment: our mortality.
Nurses and doctors. Pathologists and surgeons. Dentists and mechanical chair manufacturers. Syringe makers and needle disposal services. Pharmaceutical companies and bandage-winding machine engineers. Spectacle and denture fitters and manufacturers. Toothpaste and haemorrhoid cream concocters. Undertakers, coffin builders and cremation oven thermometer technicians. Tombstone engravers and grave diggers . . . how comforting to know that we will always have sickness, injuries and deaths to help our economy!
If only it really were all just a joke.
There’s only one time in all of Earth’s recorded history when the whole world was at peace and without selfishness. Sadly, it didn’t last long and you and I weren’t born in time to experience it.
Details about this perfect society are recorded in a book called Genesis that occupies the enviable spot as the first book in the Bible. It tells how on the sixth day of Creation week, God formed a man and a woman with His own hands and breathed life into them. Their nature was perfect. There wasn’t a selfish thought or feeling in their minds. Not only that, living in harmony with God meant that there was no possibility of sickness, injury or death. Those were the original “glory days”!
Tragically, before God even created this perfect world, the story goes that an angel who held the highest position in heaven—Lucifer by name—wanted to be promoted beyond the purpose for which he’d been created. And being denied his aspiration for self-importance, he rebelled against heaven’s government. When the war was over, he and his angel associates had been exiled to Earth. (See Isaiah 14:12–15 and Revelation 12:7–9.)
So then Lucifer, now Satan, embarked on a new mission. Since he couldn’t beat God and was too vain to rejoin Him, Satan set out to hurt God by attacking and stealing the allegiance of God’s most loved creation: humans, who’d been created in His very own image. Satan conned Adam and Eve into straying from their loving Creator, driving them to a life of selfishness, suffering and death. This was Satan’s long-term plan to hurt God’s heart as much as possible, and the nature of human beings has never been the same since.
But there’s good news: God didn’t forget us. He sent His own Son Jesus to Earth some 2000 years ago—not to punish us for our evil nature but to offer us a path back to the original perfect life that humans were created for. John 3:16 gives a brief summary: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Of course we humans, in our selfish wisdom, killed Jesus. Fortunately, that now plays an important part in salvaging the human race, for Jesus rose from the dead and promises to soon come back and bring to His home anyone who is determined to follow Him. He said so in John 14:3: “[I am going to] prepare a place for you, [and] I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”
Until then, unfortunately, we’re all stuck riding the rough seas of a disintegrating humanity together. No matter what your religious views are, you know humanity is decaying. But there are two things we can all do:
- Comfort and support each other through the stomach-churning ride of a self-destructing earth.
- Join the battle against the one who has caused all the trouble and hurt to humanity, and pledge allegiance to the loving God who offers restoration to the human race, including a life where there’ll be no more selfishness, sickness or death.
It’s an exciting offer that I’m certainly accepting and you can too, if you can be at peace with all the job losses it will entail!
