Made to work, called to work

In recent comments on advances in artificial intelligence and robotics, Elon Musk anticipates that work will become optional in the future. He foresees a time when work will be like gardening, or playing sports, or a video game. This idea, however, is in opposition to his own life experience.

Walter Isaacson’s biography of this ambitious visionary and innovator details Musk’s relentless approach to solving world-shaping problems. He presents Musk’s view on work not as a means to success but as the domain where meaning, purpose, and identity are created. Isaacson describes Musk’s work as arising not out of obligation nor as a pastime. Rather, Musk’s life demonstrates that work gives meaningful purpose.

In his 2024 book Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life, David Bahnsen argues that viewing work as a burden or a means to an end is misguided. Rather, Bahnsen presents work as a source of purpose, identity, and flourishing. According to Bahnsen:

Activity and achievement are very much a part of our identity. … The material prosperity that flows from one’s career is not the core of one’s identity. But how one works, whatever the outcome, is an important part of one’s identity—one’s passion, discipline, service, and purpose.

Just before the recent holidays, Elon Musk received multiple gifts that more than doubled his net worth. In November, the Tesla stakeholders approved a massive compensation plan for their CEO. Then in December, his previously suspended 2018 pay package was restored. Additionally, reports emerged that his SpaceX company could go public in 2026. In this swarm of events culminating just before Christmas, Elon Musk became the first person to surpass a net worth of $700 billion—more than double his net worth at the beginning of 2025 and nearly triple that of the next contender. He is clearly the frontrunner to become the first trillionaire in history.

Despite critiques of Tesla’s recent executive compensation package, the shareholders value performance, and they want Musk to lead Tesla for the next decade. Shortly before Tesla’s November stockholders’ meeting, Musk gave perspective on the then-proposed compensation plan. He declared that he does not plan to spend all this money. Rather, he links the compensation plan to his influence and leadership of the company.

In a broadcast, Bahnsen quipped that some people may be concerned about Musk’s work-life balance. Playing on his book title and theme, Bahnsen said that Musk works “Full-Time.” Bahnsen pushes back on the idea of a work-life balance in a similar way that others, including many Christian reformers, have pushed back on the sacred-secular divide.

“Our work is not set against our life, and our life is not in competition with our work,” Bahnsen writes in Full-Time. “This binary is conceptually wrong because it is theologically errant.”

Rather, Bahnsen argues theologically that “we work because God worked” and that “we work because we were created to do so.” Bahnsen connects work with our created purpose and calling: “Our God-created purpose since the Garden of Eden is production. Work drives purpose, meaning, and wealth in a nation and society.”

He contends that because mankind is made in the image of God, we were made to be workers and producers. The pre-fall creation mandate is to cultivate the potential of creation from its raw materials. Similar to the theologians who argued against the secular-sacred divide, Bahnsen states that “our work is quite literally worship—actual service—to God.”

Despite current or future technological advances, work is not a pastime and never will be. Technology may change careers. It will change how some work is performed. New ventures will most likely emerge. Some means of work may no longer be performed by humans as it was in the past. However, God created mankind to work. The opening two chapters of Genesis make clear the goodness of work before sin resulted in the curse and difficulty of man’s labor. Work will never cease because we were made to work.