Jerry Bowyer: Reviving the Protestant work ethic

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Tuesday, May 21st. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next: WORLD Opinions commentator Jerry Bowyer on recognizing God’s wisdom in the gift of work.

JERRY BOWYER: The long-term prospects for the American economy are not mainly dependent on this year’s election. Rather, they’re mainly dependent on a shift in culture, because culture is more important than policy. For instance, the “Great Takeoff” was an economic boom that occurred shortly after the American founding. It wasn’t based on getting tax rates exactly right so much as getting human nature and prudential virtue right. It followed a theological shift towards the virtue of commerce among Puritan thinkers slightly before the founding.

Since then, however, the idea that hard work is morally praiseworthy has fallen on hard times.

That loss is real, and its effects are behind the weird distortions we’re seeing in the labor market. There’s The Great Resignation, in which masses of people quit their jobs and don’t come back, and “quiet quitting” in which employees quit working without actually quitting their jobs.

It’s true that female work participation is back to pre-COVID levels as of this month. But males are at half their pre-COVID levels. That illustrates the bigger point–Americans are entering the labor force later, putting in fewer hours, spending less work time at work, and retiring earlier. In short, we’re lazy. And laziness is a sin. If that assessment grates on modern ears, then that just illustrates the problem.

Financial advisor David Bahnsen’s new book just might be what we need. Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Your Life is a manifesto in favor of regaining our Biblical view of work, what used to be known as the Protestant work ethic. Bahnsen bewails the common Christian tendency to put work in competition with worship or family. He also criticizes those who see work as worthy of Christian approval only when it has a “spiritual” side effect such as evangelism.

But work is worthy because mankind was created for it. The God of the Bible commands us, “Fill the earth and subdue it.” He also calls us to follow His pattern of work and rest: “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh is a Sabbath…” Note the proportions, six to one. How’s that for work/life balance? Work, worship, family … these things are life, not something to be balanced against it.

Have you ever heard a sermon against laziness? Therein is the problem. Pulpits are the conscience of the Church, and the Church is the conscience of the nation. Too often, the Church’s only references to work are admonitions to never, ever let work interfere with a little league game or Wednesday night Bible study. The message we’re sending is that work just really isn’t that important.

The greater the welfare benefits, the more we need an internal moral compass. COVID stimulus plans, Obamacare, and other government programs helped a generation of young men wrongly channel their God-given ambition into video-games. Social Security did the same for the other end of the demographic curve. That means that work has become financially optional for many. But work is not morally optional. It is a command and sluggardly behavior is disobedience. Apparently, a lot of folks need to be reminded of that fact.

I’m Jerry Bowyer.

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