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WAGE CONTRACTS AND PRIVATE TYRANNY

Almost everyone already spends most of their life living in a totalitarian system, which is called having a job. Within this system, you are under the total control of the “masters of the enterprise“. These employers, acting as “private governments” (whether you like it or not), determine various aspects of your life at work, including what you wear, when you go to the bathroom, when you wake up, what you do with your time, and what you do etc.

The modern corporate system can be compared to a disguised form of feudal aristocracy, where individuals are bound to employers (private governments) that exert total control over their lives in modern in “prison” cities or encampments. These labourers have only one function and are sedated with the illusion of having the potential for freedom, a freedom that is unachievable.. This is similar to how serfs were controlled by feudal lords in the not so distant past. While not physically confined, workers are metaphorically imprisoned by their economic dependence on jobs, which require sacrificing personal aspirations for survival. The argument that one is free to leave a job but faces starvation highlights the lack of true freedom.

The very idea of a wage contract is characterized as selling yourself into servitude. Corporations or “private governments” are more totalitarian than public or national governments, however they differ in that they cannot legally murder or imprison you …yet. By selling your time, through indentured servitude (voluntary slavery) to them, which ultimately becomes the majority of your life. This is how you let your dreams wither from neglect. While they may not have the legal power to take your life, they possess the ability to control every aspect of your existence and kill your soul, your will, your hope and your flourishing.

A counter-argument attributed to “libertarians” is that you are free to leave a job at any time you choose. This is a lie. The reality is starkly different since being free to leave essentially means being free to starve.

The average worker is reduced to a choice of either starving or selling yourself to a tyranny.

The growing integration of corporations with national governments could lead to, and is leading to private tyrannies with no accountability, creating a system where individual freedom is subjugated to the interests of the powerful few, who live off the masses like parasites. This potentially gives rise to more radical ideologies like Marxism in response. In truth, even Marxist societies have “feudal” overlords.

The call and active integration of corporations i.e. private companies to be integrated into national government is deeply troubling and highly problematic since we are essentially being marched toward subordination to private tyrannies, which are the worst kind of tyrannies since they are accountable to no one since even those in goverments are being forced to comply through various nefarious means.

THE INVISIBLE YOKE

There is a sorrow too subtle for headlines, too common for protests, and too domesticated to recognise as injustice. It is the daily death of the human soul beneath the fluorescent lights of corporate captivity. It is the angst driving individuals to the brink of insanity. We were made in the image of a Creator who breathes stars and speaks worlds into being—yet here we are, begging for fifteen-minute breaks, for fair wages, and for permission to live…or go to the toilet.

In the midst of the crises we are facing today, as the economies of this world crumble under their own weight of corruption, it is high time we take the necessary step—a step we should have taken long ago. This is the call to freedom that Christ has extended to us. As Scripture reminds us,

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1).

Christ’s freedom is not just a spiritual concept; it is a declaration that we are not to be shackled by the systems of this world that bind us into cycles of debt, toil, and submission.

All the “good advice” of this world—those strategies that promise security through accumulation, credit, and debt—are simply tactics to make us reliable debt slaves, forever serving the whims of lenders and institutions. The Bible makes this starkly clear: “The borrower is servant to the lender” (Proverbs 22:7). The systems that promise financial freedom often keep us enslaved to their demands, promising security while leading us further into bondage. But in Christ, we are called to something higher—a freedom not dictated by the fluctuations of markets or the whims of lenders, but a freedom grounded in trust, stewardship, and divine purpose.

It is time to break free from the economic chains that bind us and step into the true freedom God offers—a freedom that transcends the temporary and fleeting promises of this world’s economy. This is the freedom to live with purpose, with provision from God, and with the ability to create, build, and serve in His eternal household.

The vast majority of people on this planet spend the bulk of their waking lives under what political philosopher Elizabeth Anderson calls “private governments.” These are the corporations that own your hours, dictate your dress, regulate your restroom breaks, and rent your attention span. These are not just jobs. These are soft totalitarianisms—systems where obedience is exchanged for survival, where you are not whipped but withered, not imprisoned but invisibilised.

Anderson writes:

“The employer exercises sweeping, arbitrary powers: the power to fire workers for their political views, their recreational activities, their taste in clothes, their choice of sexual partners. Workers surrender basic freedoms when they take a job.”

Some might say, “You’re free to leave.” But in the words of Noam Chomsky,

“Yes, you have a choice….you’re free to starve. It’s exactly right. You have a choice between starving or selling yourself to a tyranny, very libertarian.“

This is the tyranny not of a king, but of market forces disguised as meritocracy. The very wage contract, as philosopher David Ellerman notes, is a quiet form of self-sale—a legal fiction in which a person agrees to sell their labour (i.e. their time, their mind, their body) for the profit of another. It is, in essence, the slow erosion of divine purpose in exchange for temporary provision.

This is not liberty. This is economic feudalism with a digital interface.

A SNEAKY PEAKY INTO CORPORATE “ECONOMICS”

THE CALENDAR TRICK EXPLAINED

Most salaried workers are paid monthly based on an annual salary divided by 12, assuming 40-hour workweeks over 52 weeks.

But:

• 52 weeks × 5 workdays = 260 workdays/year
• 260 workdays ÷ 4 (weeks/month) = 13 months’ worth of actual work

So even though you’re told you’re working and being paid for 12 months, you’re effectively working 13 full months (in hours and days), while only being paid for 12.

In essence: You work 13, get paid for 12—one month is stolen.

So when you’re told you get one month of paid leave, it’s a very clever trick by corporate magicians—they’re just “giving you back” the time you already worked for free. This clever payroll magic is downright greed feigned as concern for worker well-being.

If that math doesn’t work for you, then consider this:

Ancient calendars (like many Indigenous and lunar systems) followed a 13-month calendar, based on 13 cycles of the Moon:

• 13 months × 28 days = 364 days
• Add 1 “day out of time” = 365 days

That extra day was once sacred, set apart for reflection, not work.
But in the modern Roman-Gregorian calendar, the 13th month was hidden—merged and disguised.

That “extra day”? It became April 1st—April Fools’ Day—
the day the old new year (used to be March 25 or April 1) was ridiculed.

So:

• The year has 13 months of 28 days, but you’re told it’s 12 months of 30/31 days.
• One month disappears—yet the labour remains.

It’s the same trick. Different disguise. You are told: “You get a paid month off.” But the truth is: You already worked for it. Just like the calendar hides the 13th month, the payroll hides your 13th month of work. It’s corporate illusion at a cosmic scale.

WHAT WENT WRONG?

The slow erosion of human dignity in the modern economy did not happen by accident—it is the logical outworking of a worldview that severed man from God.

When a society rejects its Creator, it no longer sees humans as divine image-bearers, but as units of productivity. In a world without a moral compass or eternal accountability, the highest law becomes:

“Survival of the fittest.“ And the market becomes the jungle.

This is not just a spiritual crisis—it’s an economic architecture built on atheistic assumptions:

• Workers become commodities.
• Value is measured in output per hour.
• The soul is irrelevant—only performance metrics matter.
• People are managed like inventory, reduced to ID numbers, QR codes, and KPIs.

Without belief in a higher authority, we worship what is left: power, profit, and progress. It’s still Cain vs. Able, those who care about rebuilding “paradise” in their own broken image and those who realise that we are just passing through, and that the only thing you can take with is ultimately people. in essence humanity is mined for all its worth, and left a hollow shell of their former self that is discarded like worthless husk.

And in this system, there is a pattern—everywhere you look:

Profits are privatised. Liabilities are nationalised.

• Corporations reap wealth, but when they collapse, the public pays.
• Workers generate billions, but when cuts come, they are disposable.
• Elites own the upside, but the people bear the risk.
• Who is asked for donations for medical research? Who reaps the profits?

This is not economics—it’s idolatry dressed in spreadsheets.

“You cannot serve both God and Mammon.” (Matthew 6:24)

the modern economy has become the household of Satan, “worship at my feet and I might through you a few crumbs.” Without accountability to God, there is no justice, only strategy.

THE SYSTEM IS DYING—AND KILLING YOU

The biblical prophets, though speaking in agrarian times, foresaw our plight. Isaiah thundered,

“Woe to those who join house to house and field to field until there is no room, and you are left to live alone in the land.” (Isaiah 5:8)

Modernity has become the Babel of acquisition. Men stack concrete upon concrete, believing taller towers equate to safer futures. But the world’s economy—rooted in scarcity, competition, and endless extraction—is not simply unsustainable. It is unholy. We think we are building monuments to our glory, and yet what we erect is rather mausoleums for our arrogance, ignorance and ultimate predictable demise.

This economic structure, while sophisticated on the surface, is still Cain’s city: earthbound, anxious, and built by the sweat of domination rather than the flow of relationship. Cain’s descendants forged tools, built cities, mastered industry—but they also perfected the art of exile from God.

GOD’S ECONOMY: A FAMILY BUSINESS

But there is another way.

A gentler, ancient rhythm—whispered through shepherds, sung by psalmists, demonstrated by Christ. It is God’s economy, which is not powered by exploitation, but by trust, stewardship, and kinship. It is not about what you earn, but who you are—and whose you are.

Let us begin with the word itself.

WHAT IS “ECONOMY”?

• Greek: oikonomia (οἰκονομία)
  • oikos = household
  • nomos = law or management
  • Originally meant “household stewardship or management.”

Economy is therefore not fundamentally about money—but about the wise, relational ordering of a household.

• This word shares its root with ecology (oikologia)—the logic of the home (earth).
• God, as revealed in Scripture, is not merely King or Judge—He is Father, and His economy is a household system.

In God’s household:

• There is no hoarding, for “He gives food to all flesh” (Psalm 136:25).
• There is no scarcity, for “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” (Psalm 24:1)
• There is no orphanhood, for “He sets the lonely in families.” (Psalm 68:6)

Christ revealed this divine economy when He multiplied fish, when He taught on lilies, and when He said,

“Seek first the kingdom [control of heaven]… and all these things will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33)

GOD’S ECONOMY: FOUR VOCATIONS (MODERN “VARNAS”)

Ancient Role	Hebrew/Indic Parallel	Function in God’s Economy	Modern Equivalent
Shepherd (Nomad)	Abel / Brahmana	Spiritual care, prayer, intercession	Priests, counsellors, visionaries, prophet.
Artisan	Bezalel / Vaishya	Building, beauty, creativity	Designers, builders, entrepreneurs
Warrior	Joshua / Kshatriya	Protection, justice, courage	Soldiers, police, politician, activists
Servant/Helper	Ruth / Shudra	Hospitality, support, humility	Nurses, cleaners, social workers

“Each one should remain in the calling he was in when he was called.” (1 Corinthians 7:20)

Yet whatever your role, when you serve in God’s economy, you are participating in the eternal household of God.

God’s economy focuses on people while the world focuses on profits.

People are always more important than profits, and should be the focus of each calling. Calling means duty and our duty is towards people first,

CAIN AND ABEL: TWO ECONOMIES

Attribute	Cain	Abel
Labour	Agriculture, sweat of the brow	Shepherding, dependency on grace
City	Built walls, feared vengeance	Wandered with God’s presence
Offering	Fruits of the ground (curse)	Firstborn of the flock (faith)
Outcome	Rejected, built a civilisation	Accepted, became a prototype of Christ

Cain’s way builds economies of control. Abel’s way builds kingdoms of trust.

EXAMPLES FROM GOD’S FAMILY BUSINESS

• Joseph fed a nation during famine—not through hoarding, but wisdom.
• Boaz redeemed Ruth’s family line—not through ambition, but mercy.
• Jesus washed feet, healed the sick, broke bread—modeling a life not of profit, but presence.
• The widow poured her oil—as she obeyed, provision flowed. (2 Kings 4)

And perhaps most poignantly:

“Job prayed for his friends… and the LORD restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before.” (Job 42:10)

IN GOD’S HOUSEHOLD

In the world’s economy, you are paid for what you produce.
In God’s economy, you are rewarded for who you serve.

This is the great reversal of kingdom logic.

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.” (Colossians 3:23)

In God’s household, the emphasis is not on climbing ladders or hitting quotas. It is about obedience to the assignments of Heaven, not the appetites of Mammon. He is not looking for performance—He is looking for faithfulness.

• So don’t conform to this world’s mould.
• You were not made to be a cog in someone else’s meat grinder empire.
• You were born of the Spirit, not hired by the system.

Whether you are a janitor or a judge, if God assigned it, it is sacred work. And your reward is secure—not because of output, but because of alignment, not based on performance, but because of obedience.

“Well done, good and faithful servant.” (Matthew 25:23)

The economy of Heaven does not reward hustle. It honours trust.

So stop asking, “What pays best?”
Start asking, “Lord, what have You called me to do?”

Because in the Kingdom, the highest wage is not money—but meaning. But the benefits of His household kingdom far outstrips anything this world offers.

GOD’S ABUNDANCE DEMANDS OUR CONSECRATION

The question has never been whether there is enough. “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it” (Psalm 24:1). “The silver is mine and the gold is mine,” says the Lord Almighty (Haggai 2:8). Heaven is not in recession. The storehouses of God are not empty. The issue is never scarcity in heaven—but surrender on earth.

In every generation, God does not ask, “How much do you have?” He asks, “Who is willing to consecrate themselves to the Lord today?” (1 Chronicles 29:5). Because God funds what He authors. He multiplies what is given into His hands. The five loaves, the widow’s oil, the temple offerings—they were never about amount, but alignment.

You are not the source. You are the vessel. And the flow of heaven moves through vessels that are yielded (aligned).

As Paul wrote, “If a man cleanses himself… he will be an instrument for noble purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work” (2 Timothy 2:21).

So the call is clear: Will you consecrate what you have and who you are? Because the glory of this house will be greater than the last (Haggai 2:9)—but only if it is built by consecrated hands.

A CALL TO MIGRATION

Concider 1 Chronicles 29:11-12,

“Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, Lord, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all. Wealth and honor come from you; you are the ruler of all things. In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all.”

and 1 Chronicles 22:14-16,

“I have taken great pains to provide for the temple of the Lord a hundred thousand talents of gold, a million talents of silver, and so much bronze and iron that they cannot be weighed. I have provided all these materials in large quantities, and you have many workmen: stone-cutters, masons, carpenters, and all kinds of craftsmen, skilled in every kind of work. In addition, there are gold and silver, bronze and iron, plentiful as the sand of the sea. Now begin the work, and the Lord be with you.”

The world’s economy offers riches and status—at the cost of your soul—you must save yourself and die trying. God’s economy, on the other hand, offers meaning, rest, joy, and more than you can ask or imagine—at the cost of your simple surrender to Gods salvation.

If you can get your freedom—take it.

“Were you a slave when you were called? Do not let it trouble you… But if you can gain your freedom, do so.” (1 Corinthians 7:21)

You are not a cog. You are not a consumer. You are not a resume. You are a child in the Father’s house, and you are invited into the family business.

DEVOTIONAL PRAYER

Father, deliver me from the invisible yoke. Help me gain my freedom and become independent from the world’s economy.
Break the spell of scarcity and awaken me to the abundance of Your household.
Teach me to walk in step with Your Spirit, to steward what I have been given with joy and purpose.
I renounce fear, toil, and servitude to systems that do not honour You.
Make me a builder of Your kingdom—where mercy flows, and love labours, and no one is left behind.
Amen.

FIVE QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. In what ways have I been conforming to the world’s economy at the cost of my spiritual identity?
2. What is my true calling or vocation within God’s household?
3. How can I begin transitioning from striving for provision to trusting God’s provision?
4. What does it mean for me personally to be part of the “family business” of God?
5. Where in my life do I need to exchange control for kingdom alignment?

MEMORY VERSE

“Were you a slave when you were called? Do not let it trouble you… But if you can gain your freedom, do so.” (1 Corinthians 7:21)