Idleness and Idolatry: The Changing Pattern of Work in The Modern Age
Generational Differences In Workplace Attitudes and Identity Formation
Jason Dees | Est. 5 minutes
Work in the Modern Age
“I just feel like there is too much emphasis on work,” said a young woman during her exit interview. She went on, “When I joined a church staff, I imagined that we would spend more time in prayer and Bible study and less time working, that we would work more at the pace of Jesus and less at the pace of the world.”
My experience is all too common in our current moment where people’s attitude towards work is really changing, especially as modernity gives way to late-modernity or post-modernity. If the modern era was an era of human achievement, post-modernity is an age of human experience. The norms of achievement and the maxim of “survival of the fittest” have been giving way to the norms of human experience and self-care and the maxims of “you do you” and “live your truth.” Work, being so practical, has lagged other areas in the late modern to post-modern shift, but is changing in recent years — catalyzed by Covid-19.
Noreen Malone recently wrote that on one side of the American work culture, people have been working too much and are experiencing burnout, but on the other side, people have experienced a great disillusionment with work. “It didn’t help that, early in the pandemic, all jobs were pointedly rebranded: essential or nonessential… This thing we filled at least eight to ten hours of the day with, five days a week, for years and decades, missed family dinners for ... was it just busy work?”[1]
In light of this disillusionment, people have been identifying with their leisure activities or aspirations more than their actual employment. I have personally had many interactions with people saying things like, “I am a rock climber,” when they actually worked for a restaurant, or “I am a musician,” when they were really an Uber Driver. In a modern world, a world of human achievement, a world of the survival of the fittest, people were hyper-identified with their work, but in a post-modern world, a world of human experience and self-care, our understanding of work has really changed. It seems that we are moving from an age of work as an idol to an age of being idle.
Generational Markers
Neither the idolatry of work nor idleness are God’s design for humanity, yet both errors can be wrongly reinforced by modern Christian theology. Among a generation of work-focused baby-boomers, Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People can be rewritten as John Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership with a Christian twist — both are bestsellers. In each case, the reader can feel pushed toward being more effective or having a higher lid or being more influential. There are certainly some biblical principles in these resources, but the underlying assumption is you should be doing more, gaining more success, and working harder in life, reinforcing the survival of the fittest mantra of modernity.
Compare this with Christian resources from the Millennial Generation. John Mark Comer has gained broad success recently with his book The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. While there are some helpful ideas in the book that are rooted in scripture, there is an underlying assumption in the book that you should be doing less. This, of course, feeds into a culture of self-care that is predominant in our modern secular and humanistic culture. People have become more concerned with their own self-actualized experience than they are with their community or sense of duty to the world at large. All of this to say, if the Silent Generation and Baby Boomers tended to idolize work and overworking, Millennials and Gen Z could have a tendency towards idleness and a secular form of self-care.
The answer to understanding a Christian work ethic and not falling into a pattern of idleness or idolatry is looking to Jesus who lived out God’s design in a pattern of work and rest. When he worked, he worked hard, and when he rested, he rested in the Lord. He was busy; his life was full. John tells us that if everything that he did was written down, “the whole world could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25 NLT). In Luke 7, when the disciples of John the Baptist went to visit Jesus, we are told, “In that hour he healed many people of diseases and plagues and evil spirits, and on many who were blind he bestowed sight” (John 7:21 ESV). This is one hour of Jesus’ life. Our Lord was gritty; he was tough; he was busy; he entered complex situations with real people, and he entered deep into the pain and miseries of this life. On the other hand, Jesus understood that work was never meant to satisfy humanity and that only communion with his Father would bring him lasting joy and peace. Throughout the life and ministry of Jesus, there is also a pattern of rest and withdrawal from his ministry to spend time with his Father (Matthew 14:13, Mark 1:35, Mark 6:46, Luke 5:16, Luke 6:12). It was the rest and solitude of Jesus that kept him focused on his Father’s will and purpose, and that restored his soul and fueled his incredible work ethic.
A Better Source
When a Christian finds their identity in their work, that may produce results, but there will be no fruit of the Spirit. Love for God and others will be shielded by a love for self. Joy will turn to angst, peace will turn to fear, patience will turn to irritability, kindness will turn to sharpness, goodness will turn to manipulation, faithfulness will turn into entitlement, gentleness will turn into bullying, and self-control will turn into self-protection.
Christians can look to Jesus both as a model for a Christian ethic of work and rest but also for justification in our own work and rest. John tells us in John 1:4 “In him (In Jesus) was life.” The word for life in John 1 is the Greek word Zoe or “source.” We can understand that John is saying that in Jesus is purpose, meaning, identity, or peace. If a person goes to work to get a life or a Zoe, that person will always have to be working, will struggle to rest, will always need praise, and will always want to win because work is his or her source. If a person goes to rest or leisure for a life or for Zoe, then that person will be lazy, entitled, and will always be looking for the next great experience to make them feel whole. Ultimately, human beings cannot be justified by their work; they all fail; their work is always imperfect. Humanity also cannot be justified by rest because the rest of humanity is never fully in the Lord but always in lesser things like money, success, acclaim, and other human institutions.
The good news is that when a person believes the gospel and believes that Jesus is life, then that person will be able to work and rest rightly not looking for a source but with a source. That person will be able to rightly look to Jesus as a model of work and rest. That person will be able to work hard as unto the Lord and hard as the Lord Jesus worked hard. That person will be able to rest and rest unto the Lord as Jesus rested trusting in his Father, abiding in his will. In an age of lost identity, Jesus is the source that provides both grit for the work at hand and rest for the weary soul.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/15/magazine/anti-ambition-age.html In a February 2022 article in The New York Times Magazine, called“The Age of Anti-Ambition,”
Jason Dees is the pastor of Christ Covenant in Atlanta, Ga. He and his wife Paige have three children. Jason grew up in Alabama and is a graduate of Auburn University and Southern Seminary (MDiv, PhD). Jason first presented research for this article in a paper at the 2023 Evangelical Theological Society.
