Aging Populations Create Demographic Crises
In this century, people are living longer and retiring at about the same age as in the last century. This results in an increasingly aging population that does not work and thus needs to be financially sustained by the work of the younger generation. This makes it more difficult for the younger generation to gain higher education and own a home.
Similarly, and more alarming, is that many nations are experiencing a declining birth rate resulting in a decreasing working population and increasing retired population. Both phenomena—people getting older and a declining birth rate—results in working people being taxed more to financially sustain retired people, often through some form of a social security system.
Replacement-Level Fertility Rate Is 2.1 Children
The mean birth rate for sustaining a nation’s population—called the replacement-level fertility rate—is 2.1 children per woman. In this century, South Korea is experiencing a movement in which an alarming number of young women are refusing to be married and have children. It has resulted in South Korea’s current birth rate of 0.7 children per woman, the lowest of any nation in the world. China is not far behind, with only 1 child per woman. And Japan has a 1.2 birth rate per woman. So, this declining birth rate is especially prevalent in Eastern Asia. In the U.S., it is about 1.6 children per woman. But this figure would be considerably lower if not for its Hispanic population, which has grown to 25% of U.S. citizens.
Will Robots Reduce the Work Week?
Many companies around the world are developing sophisticated robots, and even may experts fear that it will reduce the number of jobs for people to have work to sustain life, although there is much debate about this.
But even despite robots, many demographics experts have been calling for a reduced work week from five days to four days per week, and a few are insisting on three days. What will people do if they have more time off work and than they do on work? Probably a lot of them will just get into more mischief!
Be Fruitful, Multiply, and Fill the Whole Earth
The Bible says that when God created the earth and made the first humans, he told them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue” (Genesis 1.28 NRSV). And when God brought the judgment of the flood, yet Noah and his family survived it in the ark, we read, “God blessed Noah and his [three] sons and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth'” (9.1). And he repeated it by saying, “And you be fruitful and multiply, abound on the earth and multiply in it” (v. 7).
But humans soon disobeyed God’s injunction about “fill[ing] the earth. For we read, “Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as they migrated for the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the fact of the whole earth'” (11.1-4). That was the exact opposite of what God had said about “fill[ing] the earth.”
God Made It Happen by Confusing their Language
Then we read, “The LORD said, ‘They are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them,” surely referring to evil (Genesis 11.6). They started to build the city of Babel, later named Babylon, and the Tower of Babel. But God then interrupted this evil design by confusing their language so that they could not understand each other (v. 7). Then we read, “So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth” (v. 8). This is then restated in the next verse.
When the Bible says something twice, it is for emphasis. God stated the same thing to the first humans and then Noah about multiplying and filling the whole earth, and he did the same about his scattering them about the earth due to confusing their language. Thus, the current trend in much of the world, about a declining birth rate and thus failure to continue filling the earth, is in disobedience to this divine command for all peoples.
The Sabbath and a Six-Day Work Week
We further read in the Bible, “On the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it” (Genesis 2.2-3).
It was not until God chose the Israelites through Abraham and chose Moses to deliver them from bondage in Egypt that God established the sabbath day of rest for them as one of their Ten Commandments. It says, “Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work … For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day and consecrated it” (Exodus 20.8-11).
(I am not a Sabbatarian Christian, meaning to keep the sabbath day holy by doing no work during the 24 hours of about 6 PM Friday and 6 PM Saturday. My reasons are that this command was given to the Israelites, and there is nothing in the New Testament that commands Gentile Christians to keep the sabbath day holy. However, I believe in the concept of having a day off from work to worship God by going to church on Sunday, which is not actually the sabbath.)
“Lovers of Pleasure” in the Last Days
So, one of the Ten Commandments says, “Six days you shall labor and do all your work.” Yet during my entire lifetime, society in the western world has had the five-day work week. Now, experts are suggesting reducing it to a four-day work week or even three. With all that time on peoples’ hands, I suspect it will result in what the apostle Paul predicts about “the last days,” when “people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, … swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3.1-2, 4-5).
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