Do Americans work too much — or too little?

Richard Morrison

December 03, 2024 8 Reactions

On the subject of charitable giving, Bahnsen reminds his co-religionists that while it is certainly good to relieve the suffering of those who are less well-off through generous donations, one must obviously do the work to earn — or create — that wealth first. In other words, production must come before distribution and consumption. There’s certainly no exalted moral status in Bahnsen’s world for people who would presume to distribute someone else’s wealth rather than their own.

This puts someone writing in the tradition of Christian apologetics in surprisingly close proximity to the famously irreligious philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand. In opposition to both Christian and Marxist critics who exalt redistributionism, Rand often emphasised the primacy of productive effort and human achievement. Her admirers agree that there’s something profoundly backwards about awarding moral accolades to those who give away the most food and clothing but greet with contempt those who actually operate the farms and factories that produce it.

Diligence

Bahnsen does strive to stay in the good graces of his fellow believers and the mainstream church institutions of American society. He often prefaces his arguments with reassurances of what he is not saying, lest his readers assume he’s being too extreme, arrogant, or glib.

For a book that’s ostensibly about business ethics and religious life, Full-Time includes a surprisingly large number of first-person interpolations and asides, making it, at times, more of a confessional memoir. Bahnsen clearly seems to have been personally hurt by fellow Christians misinterpreting his arguments in the past. His attempts to avoid such a reaction here are exhaustive.

Unlike a book about, say, public policy or law, he doesn’t have a laundry list of recommended reforms, but he has a small number of potentially significant conclusions. To wit: Americans suffer far more from laziness and lack of ambition than they do from workaholic tendencies. Your work doesn’t have to be altruistic or religiously oriented to be morally valuable. You shouldn’t be working just so you can enjoy the “30-year vacation” of retirement. Older workers shouldn’t be hustled out the door at a certain age, but should be encouraged to stick around the world of work to counsel and inspire younger colleagues.

Most of these points, sympathetically considered, will likely yield Bahnsen many nods of agreement. Yet when it comes to his argument for returning to the standard from the Book of Genesis — that we work six days a week and rest for only one — he’s probably on his own. You can ask Americans to re-evaluate their attitude toward vocation, but don’t try to take away their weekends.

What do you think of Bahnsen's points? Leave a comment below.

Richard Morrison is a Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the host of the weekly podcast Free the Economy.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

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