Sherlock:
I think you’ve already received good answers here, but I would add, along the lines of what Anima Christi (one of my favorite prayers, by the way) was saying, that some Protestants teach the “Gospel of prosperity”. I believe that this is largely the result of Calvin’s teaching. Basically, the way one can know if one is a member of the “elect” (those destined for heaven) is one’s prosperity in this life. By this reasoning, no poor person is going to heaven at all, as clearly God didn’t favor them with prosperity. It’s a loathesome, false doctrine, though it may explain the so-called “Protestant work ethic”.
The “Protestant work ethic” is not based on the “prosperity gospel”, but on something much older - on the belief that God does not wish man to be idle, but to work gainfully, and, above all, in a way that brings honour to the God Who is man’s Creator. And work is not based on sin - because Adam worked before the Fall. So it seems that the instinct to work is an element in human nature, and one which God designs us to have.
The idea presupposes a high view of work, as something God our Father wishes us to do as a way of being obedient to Him - and there is no kind of work by which we cannot honour God: this something open to all Christians - not surprisingly, if all Christians are the adopted children of the Father.
So it has strong roots in the Biblical theology of creation and vocation: work is something to which we are called -the Christian postman, Christian chef or Christian janitor has as true a vocation, as a minister of religion. For those also are means of ministerium, diakonia, service: and they all build up the Body of Christ. Chefs, postmen, electricians, if Christian, are working to a purpose: they are serving God by doing their jobs. Which is a good reason to be honest and to do the work one is paid to do: it also gives the Christian a motive to work - because he is serving Christ, Who Himself worked, and ennobled work by His example
So it is a Christian vision of the value of work. Like all things, it can be spoiled: but it is derived from revelation. Don’t confuse it with bastardised forms of the idea, which exaggerate one element in it, and ignore everything else.
Some such theological vision of work might do a great deal to reform and purify how we work, and how spend our time: because mere production of “things” on a great scale so as to increase profits, is a very different vision of work: its Achilles’ heel is that it ignores God and treats man as a mere economic unit. This other work ethic starts from God, so it is far more hopeful. And far more inspiring.
The “prosperity Gospel” leaves out most of Calvin’s ideas, and keeps just one or two elements of his thinking, so falsifying it entirely. It has nothing to say about human responsibility or Christian holiness, for a start - he said much on both subjects.
Many Calvinists were and are poor in the eyes of the world - why should this saddle Calvin with the idea that election presupposes wordly prosperity ? Such an idea turns what he thought on its head. It is a caricature of his thinking; if we complain of Protestant caricatures of our beliefs, we can hardly caricature Protestant beliefs. Calvin deserves better than to be caricatured. BTW: election is in the Bible - see Romans 8 & Ephesians 1, for starters. ##
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