Labor Should Have Its Rewards

I received the following in an email from a friend this morning. I'd seen it before and again today I thought about the important truths set forth within it. At first glance, it may seem cruel to some, but I ask you take the time to read and ponder each point. Try your best to put yourself in both the place of the giver and the receiver. Punishing success and rewarding failure is a certain road to disaster.

• You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the industrious out of it. 
• You don't multiply wealth by dividing it. 
• Government cannot give anything to anybody that it doesn't first take from somebody else. 
• Whenever somebody receives something without working for it, somebody else has to work for it without receiving. 
• The worst thing that can happen to a nation is for half of the people to get the idea they don't have to work because somebody else will work for them, and the other half to get the idea that it does no good to work because they don't get to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

~ Dr. Adrian Rogers

Wikipedia says this about Dr. Rogers: This quote appears frequently on the Internet and is often attributed to Dr. Rogers with an incorrect date of 1931. In fact, the quotation is part of a longer sermon delivered by Dr. Rogers in a larger series titled God's Way to Health, Wealth and Wisdom, but it also appears as a passage in Dr. Rogers' 1996 work Ten Secrets for a Successful Family which complains that our young people do not know either the importance or value of honest labor.