And this dogmatic insistence that if a person ever accepts wages for a job that precludes them from ever again voluntarily doing something just out of love is totally without merit.
This is another of those double minded areas. Obadiah talks about "accepting" a wage, as though it's some kind of gift being offered. People don't "accept" wages. They demand them. That's the whole purpose of money. If someone doesn't pay, they don't get the service.
Here, Obadiah explains it very well: "Even churches that are struggling don't expect utility companies to deliver utilities for free or constructions companies to repair their buildings for free". There is no expectation because they know that working for money is not about love. It's about getting money. No money no love. Otherwise money becomes pointless.
Obadiah understands that wages are not "accepted". They are demanded, but because he depends on money as his source of life he needs a way to make the two conform. This is why he talks about "accepting" wages. It sounds so much more pleasant than demanding, but it's just word games.
It's a very telling thing that with all this talk of working "for love" and not for money, I still see absolutely no workable advice given on how to do that
But Obadiah, you give a workable solution in your own post. You say,
Maybe skilled members will chip in and do it for free, but that's more like dad and son putting a new roof on their house themselves rather than hiring a company.
What you've described here is called sharing. That's what the kingdom of Heaven is all about. It's really quite simple. The reason you do not see it as a workable solution is because you do not want to see it (John 3:3). Your loyalty is to the systems of man so the values of Heaven look unworkable. An invisible God who is able to meet our needs if we seek his kingdom first (Matthew 6:33) sounds unworkable to you because your perspective is that of a world where people will not help one another for love and therefore, in order to survive, you also must conform to that standard. This is what being "born again" is all about. You die to that old standard and you are "born again" into a completely new set of values. Until you do that, like Nicodemus, you won't be able to see and you'll forever cynically ask, "yeah but how does it work".
An example of this are you comments about how working for money makes people civilized. The ability for people to be civil to one another comes as a result of demanding payment and not as a result of a genuine, inner desire to love one another. For the average person sharing is nice once is a while but as a way of life it's simply impractical because they believe people will not be civil unless they are paid to be civil. If the world demands payment then what other choice do Christians have but to go along with what the world wants?
Courage? Character? Integrity? Backbone? Faith? Nope, what the world wants, the world gets. And very soon the world will demand a "Mark" which will be used to control all buying and selling. It will look like just another ordinary advance in monetary technology. Despite conforming exactly to the description of the prophecy most Christians in the world will be too busy justifying their dependence on buying/selling to even care.