“You can be anything you want, but you cannot be a loser.”
Harsh? Perhaps. My dad told me this when I was in high school and contemplating my future. What was a loser for him? It wasn’t someone with the least points at the end of the game. It was someone who didn’t work hard, who moped around, who didn’t sweat (metaphorically or otherwise). It was about effort.
I wasn’t surprised when he said this. He was a basketball coach, and I was a mediocre basketball player. The time I sensed he was most proud of me was when I won the “Hustle Award” at a basketball summer camp. It wasn’t my fault I was slow and five foot nine, but it was my fault if others were working harder than me.
If he wanted to be more biblical, he might have said, “You can be anything you want, but you cannot be a sluggard.” In Scripture, hard work is a good thing and sloth refers to the avoidance or resentment of labor. Young men who want to be godly must learn to identify and resist the trap of laziness.
Attitudes Toward Work
Generally, people are either tempted to over work or to under work. Consider when Israel left Egypt after 400 years of slavery; they had trouble keeping the Sabbath. After explicitly being told to observe the Sabbath, “on the seventh day some of the people went out to gather” (Ex. 16:27). They’re reflexive workaholics after working 365 days a year for as long as they can remember.
In an age of abundance, our instinct is generally the opposite. The need to work hard isn’t what it once was. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows private-sector employees averaged 34.5 hours per week in 2023–24, down from 61 hours per week in the mid-19th century (Robert Whaples, 1990). The wealthier a culture, the less pressure there is to work long-and-hard as survival can be safely assumed.
The Sabbath command cuts us in a different direction: Six days you shall work—not five, or four, or three half days.
Too often, we long to escape work. But while work is cursed by sin, it is a feature, not a bug, in God’s design. Work is why Adam was put in the garden. The first problem we see before the fall is that “there was no man to work the ground” (Gen. 2:5). Man is the answer to the “no workers” problem.
Word from Proverbs
For people in this age of under-working, Proverbs has an important message: Don’t be a sluggard. The inability or unwillingness to work hard is corrosive, lethal, and tempting. Work isn’t a morally neutral zone—laziness and its effects are always waiting to sneak in and make a mess of things. Consider Proverbs 6:6–11:
Go to the ant, O sluggard;
consider her ways, and be wise.
Without having any chief,
officer, or ruler,
she prepares her bread in summer
and gathers her food in harvest.
How long will you lie there, O sluggard?
When will you arise from your sleep?
A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest,
and poverty will come upon you like a robber,
and want like an armed man.
The ant doesn’t need her mother, father, or boss to convince her to work hard; she’s intrinsically motivated. Preparing, gathering, and laboring, the ant marches on through the summer because winter is coming. The folly of sloth is exposed throughout the book of Proverbs:
“Like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to those who send him.” (10:26)
“The hand of the diligent will rule, while the slothful will be put to forced labor.” (12:24)
“The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied.” (13:4)
“The sluggard does not plow in the autumn; he will seek at harvest and have nothing.” (20:4)
“The desire of the sluggard kills him, for his hands refuse to labor.” (21:25)
“Sloth” could be translated as idleness, slowness, or laziness. It’s the difference between walking with a purpose and meandering. The opposite is “diligence,” of which the concrete sense has to do with having been sharpened, dug out, or carved; it’s aggressive, and it has to do with subjugation and dominion. It’s the creative force applied to the unplowed field. It’s “by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread” (Gen. 3:19).
But survival isn’t our only motivator to work. The apostle Paul says, “We are [God’s] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). Our work isn’t merely a means to keep us alive. It’s a means of living into God’s plans for us. God worked in making us able to work good works that he designed for us before the foundation of the earth.
Sloth Is More Than Folly
In Matthew 25:26–30, the parable of the talents, the master assigns different amounts of money to his servants. To the one who did nothing with his master’s investment, he says,
You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Slothfulness isn’t merely a matter of folly but of sin. At this point, everyone will feel convicted. Even those who’ve led lives of driven conscientiousness and gritty, resilient productivity will recognize we’ve never made perfect use of the time. Others who’ve seasonally or even perpetually been slothful will recognize the need for better stewardship of our lives. Some make excellent use of the time but will be tormented with a constant anxious, almost paralyzing sense that they’re never doing enough. Christians do not work for God’s approval, but from it, in the power of the Spirit and in the confidence that comes from having received our adopted status as sons.
Every Young Man’s Battle
Young men in this generation are particularly susceptible to sloth. The opportunities to be entertained are endless; gaming consoles and smartphones feed our dopamine systems like an IV drip. Fake enemies, fake battles, fake sex, fake risks, fake camaraderie, and fake victories beckon at every turn.
I see too many young men (under the age of 40, but especially under 25) who lack grit and ambition and who aren’t walking in the first call assigned to humanity: subdue and exercise dominion. Knead the bread. Plow the field. Yield a harvest. Build a business. Grow a career. Invest in the common good (cf. Gen 1:28; Jer 29:4–7). The creation will not unfold itself; we’re subcontractors under God, and a life of discipline and productivity makes the “best use of the time” (5:16). Obsess not over eliminating hurry; obsess over eliminating sloth, folly, and waste.
The prophet Jeremiah wrote, “It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth” (Lam. 3:27). When you’re a young man, do young man things. Put your back into it. Sweat is to be expected. Work doesn’t just refer to employment or entrepreneurship. It’s about productivity—in occupations, chores, self-development, parenting, and household management. It’s the labor that makes a life.
Work Hard: In Employment and Family
Many young men are afraid of being “workaholics.” They are concerned (rightly) about failing their families because of too many hours in the office. But the answer to this tension isn’t to simply work less in the workplace. It’s to work hard everywhere. Consider Ecclesiastes 9:9–10: “Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might.”
Scripture describes both family life and employment as hard work. Enjoying your family—toil. Working with your hands—also toil. Toil isn’t opposed to enjoyment. At the same time, resisting the form of lifestyle creep in which the time spent playing without purpose encroaches on God’s design for work will feel countercultural.
Do Your Chores
We’re in the Father’s house, beloved and blessed, by sheer grace. But membership in the household comes with chores.We work not to earn God’s favor but because the Father desires our participation and it pleases him when we live into our design as sons.
Young men: In a culture of luxury, abundance, and entitlement, it’s worth assuming you’re lazy, not that you’re working too hard. Kill the sluggard inside that tempts you to sloth, keeps you addicted to hobbies and scrolling, and lacks the self-respect to believe that maybe, just maybe, God might do great things through your hard work.
Trust his grace, practice the Sabbath, and then “whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord” (Col. 3:23).
The Gospel Coalition