Works for Me

Why should work be central to our lives?

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What’s the meaning of life? 42? Pizza? The Remnant? David Bahnsen may or may not have the answer, but he’s at least certain of what makes life satisfying: honest, productive work. In his new book, Full-Time, he explores how work can allow us to find purpose and fulfillment. But is all work equally meaningful? Is the market best placed to determine its value? And does David have a higher net worth than Scrooge McDuck?

Show Notes:

– David’s webpage

– David’s new book, Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life

– David: “The Problem with a ‘Work–Life Balance’”

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Comments (90)
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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    This was really good. I’m so glad I got the chance to hear Bahnsen explain his position better and it turned out I agree a lot more with him than I thought I did (and a lot less with some of the folks he criticizes). I think it might make more sense to say that God made us for “production” than for “work” given that most of us think “work” means literally just our day job. I, for one, have always tried to cultivate productive leisure, to use my nonworking time in ways that either produce something or that cause me to learn something (often I use time outside of my job to learn things directly related to my job).

    I’ll admit, I was very turned off by the article in NR, in part because I thought he was unfair to that young woman. When I was in college, career counselors and other adults told us to ask about work life balance in job interviews. If some older adult had sat me down and said, “asking about work life balance comes off as laziness” I wouldn’t have asked about it. I don’t now and wouldn’t in the future. But at the time, I did ask, because I thought that’s what I was supposed to do.

    In my teenage years and early college, I wanted to be industrious and I took pleasure in working hard in whatever job or task I was doing. But some things changed in my life and I got a bad attitude about work, and I think if I’d read Bahnsen’s book back then or made some different life decisions, I wouldn’t have developed that. I’ve always wanted to be productive, but I hated two things: 1. The idea that work was supposed to be just a way of occupying time, rather than a way of accomplishing something (in which case we should just have socialism and dig ditches with spoons), and 2. The feeling that I wasn’t allowed to have any private thoughts or life, that despite my desire to work hard I was to be viewed with suspicion for laziness, that any evidence that I wasn’t working hard enough would be used against me and that there was nothing I could do to change that perception no matter how hard I tried.

    I felt that way in my first job, and while I still think well of my former employer, I left that job after two and half years and changed careers entirely. I guess I also used to think that work was supposed to be drudgery and if you took pleasure in what you were doing you were probably doing it wrong. I don’t think that now. In many ways, I’m a little like that waitress trying to get a shot on Broadway, in that I work in a low-paying job and have aspirations to start a business and work on that in my free time. I was so glad to hear Bahnsen say that he does admire that story, because I felt guilty for giving up on a traditional career. But the truth is that once my business is successful enough to pay my bills, I want that to be my career. And I know I could work longer and harder at it than almost anything else, and produce more, too. I guess if it does succeed, I’d never think about work-life balance, because life and work would be integrated in the way I think Bahnsen is suggesting.

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    1. Frederickwf

      Good luck with your business!

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      1. Avatar photo
        Ben Connelly

        Thanks

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  2. Rodrubert

    Bahnsen does free market capitalism a disservice by laying it at the feet of God's will. Free market capitalism's best feature is that it promotes men to serve other men in spite of Man's tendency to be self serving. I understand that as a creation of God, Man's failings can be owned by God. It seems a step to far to give credit for the fix to he who created the bug.

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  3. Packmd4

    I came in thinking I would be against a lot of this after reading that NR excerpt but listened to the whole episode so I could get a better feel for what Bahnsen is arguing. I actually ended up disagreeing a little bit less than what I anticipated. Bahnsen actually seems to care about helping people as opposed to just a materialistic monetary desire even if I still don't agree. First, Bahnsen clearly doesn't know any teachers because his description is not at all like what it's really like. I think ultimately the free market is really a reflection of the values of the society it is in. An immoral society would have a free market that rewards immorality and vice versa. I don't think teachers and nurses make less because the magical free market works it all out and pays them appropriately, I think that the work that they do is less valued overall by society compared to an athlete and thus the free market pays them less. Now to me, that's an indictment of society and where I think the free market isn't always great at correcting.
    As someone who is probably in the Christian world that he critiques, I kind of get his critique even though I think his theological arguments are not particularly convincing to me. If we lived in a society where pursuit of money was rightly ordered and materialism wasn't rampant I could sort of entertain his argument better. But in the US that's not what we have. I think the parable of the talents is really important here. If you have all this career success ok good, but then what do you do with the material you accumulate via your career? We also see the other side of viewing your career as your identity, look at East Asian culture right now. If you are a teenager and you don't achieve and get into the top schools and then jobs in South Korea you end up completely lost (hence why the suicide rate is so bad there).
    Coming in, the thing I expected to be most annoyed at but he really didn't talk about from the NR excerpt was him attacking the idea of work/life balance. As a millennial I think compared to earlier generations we want a life that has more meaning and direct impact on bettering society than just being happy being a cog in the great GDP machine. I thankfully work in a job that does that but if I didn't I'd much rather spend time with my family, my church, my community than working 80 hours for a megacorporation making a CEO billions. The examples he used I think actually did the right thing, they were upfront with him about wanting that work/life balance instead of springing it on him last minute.
    I had less issues with this interview than I expected but still have heavy disagreement, nevertheless an informative episode!

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    1. Avatar photo
      Ben Connelly

      Teachers and nurses aren’t paid well because we don’t have a free market in education and healthcare and socialism doesn’t work. A government literally owns most schools, so it isn’t the market setting pay rates.

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    Matt Stokes

    Great episode, especially as one who has spent a lot of time in the evangelical world Bahnsen criticizes. I can imagine that if you reject DB's religious presuppositions, this was was frustrating in some ways, but there's been an intense conversation on all of this in evangelical circles for a while now.

    My question was DB's COVID remarks. If he's opposed to vaccine mandates for COVID, is he likewise opposed to mandates for other vaccines - measles, chicken pox, etc.?

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      Kyle Rose

      The measles vaccine actually provides herd immunity. The COVID vaccines don't: they don't even keep you from getting it yourself, multiple times. So there's at least a public policy rationale for a measles vaccine mandate. (I don't know about the chicken pox vaccine since I am too old to have benefited from it, but reducing the number of herpes viruses running around seems like a good thing, mandate or not.)

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    2. Westgroupinc

      I think DB made it clear he is opposed to vaccine mandates, not the vaccines themselves.

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    Kyle Rose

    I had a hard time listening to the whole thing because to a non-religious person too much of it feels like debating the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.

    The tl;dr of this topic for me is: (1) Markets are amoral: wages are set by markets, which do not directly take into account how "virtuous" a job is. (2) The virtue of work should not be judged based on what it involves, but how the worker does it. This applies in both directions on the compensation ladder: street sweeping being menial doesn't make it lowly, and a CEO isn't a bad person just because he gets rewarded by the market to do a job few others can do.

    If you care about the religious aspects, this episode probably has more for you. Frankly, much of it sounds like post-hoc rationalization or motivated reasoning (specifically, choosing the conclusion he wants and then crafting an argument to support it). This sort of thing is probably a large part of why religion does not appeal to me.

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    1. Starryab

      Exactly, this came across as a conclusion looking for a reason. Also, off putting that his description of other professions (teacher, nurse) in a way that indicates he does not understand what they entail. Similarly on work/life balance, if you are a young woman looking to have a career and a family you're gonna need flexibility. That he and others attribute this to laziness is a poor reflection on him.

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  6. Pohl

    Where to begin? This was a good podcast as I’ve always cared a lot about this issue. I think the guest stumbled, though, when asked if he could speak to non-believers. He mentioned telos but doesn’t accept the natural law, which is all about . . . you guessed it—telos. This is the great bridge between faith and reason, or the one that really allows revealed religion to talk to the world on its own terms and vice versa. His approach has caused a lot of unnecessary backlash in the comments.

    I also appreciate Jonah stating what I often state, namely that people are free to advance any argument in the public square they like. I happen to think religious cases are not the most compelling in a pluralistic society. But I don’t mind them, naturally. What Bahnsen said about the biblical command to work is clearly true with or without a belief in Genesis. I have given away copies of Josef Pieper’s “Leisure: The Basis of Culture” [Edited punctuation.] in the past and always recommend this brief gem on the true meaning of work. I’m also glad to hear Bahnsen is acquainted with Pope St John Paul II’s works, which are without equal in the modern papacy.

    I part ways, though, when Bahnsen discusses the remuneration of work. This is where I would endorse a living wage and promote trade unions as the obvious measures to counter a mere market valuation of labor, which is inhuman. It doesn’t have to involve some “dictator for a day.” It only requires that businesses and laws consider solidarity and the common good. This should be uppermost in the mind of someone who has read Pope St John Paul II. I even support, as part of this idea, that colleagues make more money if they have bigger families. Yes, mind . . . blown! Lol

    Finally, I’d just like to add to the discussion of hospice-care nurses. They are certainly doing the Lord’s work. But, as Jonah often alludes to—for instance, when not lauding the Middle Ages—work is drudgery for most of humanity in all times and places. One thing not discussed here, though, that is extremely important is the value of this ordinary work not because of WHO is working (and the primacy of the person is rightly emphasized by Bahnsen) but from the point of view that any suffering has when united to Jesus’ sufferings. The meaninglessness is transformed into meaningfulness. It can be God-awful to work 10-12 hours making widgets, the pay can be horribly unjust, but the spiritual power of that job can be immense. But I’ve strayed away from the secular treatment. Sorry, commenters. (smile)

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    1. Frederickwf

      I definitely thought about Catholic social teaching and how much more holistic it is than the purely worker-focused approach Bahnsen takes. I’m Protestant myself, but I think the Catholics (as they are wont to do) have put a lot of thought into this stuff and are in a better position to speak to the issue because both sides of equation (worker and employer) and their responsibility are acknowledged (eg, with calls for a living wage). Even if a worker is working for the satisfaction of a job well done and the dignity of work, things like bad pay, understaffing, and demanding long hours all communicate disrespect toward the worker.

      I thought about Pieper, too—I finally pulled the book off my shelf a year or so ago after you recommended it to me. And while I didn’t agree with everything in it, there was a lot of good stuff, and I definitely find that to be a preferable vision of work than Bahnsen’s.

      Edit: and a great point about suffering. Sometimes (a lot of times) life just sucks, work sucks, pay is low and unjust, and the market is wrong—but it’s meaningful not in itself but because we walk the path of the man of sorrows.

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      1. Pohl

        It is refreshing to read a thoughtful and ecumenical comment. And I’m glad you enjoyed my favorite German philosopher. (smile) I have not read Bahnsen, so I’m only reacting to this pod and am curious if a sequel would elaborate on the reciprocal relationship you mention. Shooting down a prosperity gospel is just the easy preliminary work before establishing the true conditions for social justice. My first impression is that the worker is still being treated in isolation by Bahnsen. But I would like to be wrong. Cheers.

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        1. Packmd4

          I can't love this comment thread enough. As someone raised Evangelical (now in the PCA) one thing that I think Catholics really have that we don't is a coherent social philosophy. Evangelicals kind of have a tendency to latch on to whatever the culture they are believes. I appreciate the holistic way Catholics think about economics and culture so much. It also filters down into how abortion is approached but that's another topic.

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          1. Pohl

            Yes, Catholic social teaching is an undervalued resource and offers a lot of guidance on modern questions. And it’s not dependent on “Roma locuta est,” though it’s often dismissed as so much gobbledygook from economic naifs in the Vatican. It’s actually very rich, draws on ancient sources, and was carried forward by some of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century. And it’s very open to different political manifestations.

            Needless to say, and especially aside from abortion and life issues in general, its principles are more to be found among the left, but it’s a close-run thing. The right effortlessly supports, for example, subsidiarity, under the name of limited government, but more in theory today. Relatedly, they allow more scope for private initiative and economic liberty in a very broad sense. The left, traditionally, is WAY more cognizant of the common good and what the Church calls a “preferential option for the poor.” TD, as to be expected given its NR roots, is pretty good at the low-hanging fruit of starving the federal leviathan. It’s much less my cup of tea when it comes to a grander vision, which always seems to boil down to Live and Let Live and, then, this will become The Best of All Possible Worlds. Meh.

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  7. Avatar photo
    Dusty

    As a proud member of The Dispatch’s David Bahnsen Fan Club (consisting, as far as I’m aware, of me and Cynthia) I’ve been eagerly awaiting this episode as I assumed Jonah would be having David on to discuss this book. My pre-ordered copy arrived in the mail today and I’m looking forward to reading it.

    As for this conversation, a few observations. First off, I think David wrote a theological book and so Jonah’s question of “give me the non-theological answer” was a bit unfair and is leading to some of the bizarre angst in the comment section. I think David probably could’ve answered the question a bit more straightforward with a “I’m a Christian using Christian arguments for a primarily Christian audience,” but I don’t think his answer is wrong as even in that scenario Christians still believe that the answers apply to everybody. Which, I think he was alluding to when he basically said “this is the worldview I’m coming from and how I see the world.”

    (And no, I haven’t yet read the book. But I feel comfortable making that argument because I listened to the podcast series associated with the book and every guest is a pastor and/or theologian. I’ve also listened to David’s interviews on other, primarily Christian podcasts about the book where the conversation revolves mostly around his thesis here and what it means for the Church and Christians).

    As for the theological arguments presented here, I get some of them but think David has the much stronger argument. I also want to point out that it’s not necessarily an original argument as it parallels quite nicely with Luther’s teaching on vocation – which is precisely the word I think Jonah and David were looking for when they talked about not liking the word “identity.” Being a father, husband, factory worker, veteran and whatever else are different vocations that together form an identity, with obviously one’s profession being a big part of that.

    Finally, there’s been a few comments of people accusing David of being a “condescending hedge fund guy.” I just want to say that it’s true that David manages about $5 billion on Wall Street, primarily from high net worth and ultra-high net worth clients. I am not one of those clients (though I’ll point out that there’s now a TBG ETF). I realistically don’t have a chance of becoming one of those clients for a long, long time following many years of compounding. I’m a middle class, suburban dad who works in a factory.

    And yet, I’ve written David multiple times asking questions about investing and economics. You know what? He’s answered every single time. Every. Single. Time. It’s been through email, over Facebook, or in his Dividend Café newsletter. He’s taken the time to answer my questions quite thoroughly every single time I’ve asked, despite having nothing to gain from me except for maybe a single book sale. So maybe he’s a “hedge fund guy” (though I don’t even think that’s technically accurate), but he is about as humble and genuine as any quasi-public personality I’ve come across.Expand full commentExpand full commentShow less

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    1. Brian Collins

      Really appreciate this comment--and the episode.

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  8. Avatar photo
    Mudskipper

    I found this to be a frustrating listen. On the one hand, I do agree with some of the basic points being made. Work, in its broadest definition, is important. What we do matters, both to society and to our own sense of significance and purpose. And the importance of work, and the worker, to society should not be measured by what the market pays for that work.

    However, I found it frustrating because both Jonah and Bahnsen seemed to think that the onus was entirely on the worker to find dignity and satisfaction in her work. Yet the truth is that many jobs afford normal human beings precious little of either.

    Banhsen kept talking about what humans were made for. I'm pretty sure that humans were not made--either by God or by nature--for standing in one place for hours, performing the same motion over and over, unable to move about freely, to take a rest when muscles start to ache, to relieve themselves when nature calls, or to chat easily or freely with their fellow human beings standing right next to them. This is a worker essentially reduced to a machine part. No doubt Bahnson would, from the point-of-view of his second religion, look upon this and call it good. But I'm not sure why he would claim that the worker should call it good. It seems to me that looking upon it as nothing more than a paycheck is quite reasonable and Bahnson's exhortation that she should see it as more than that is unreasonable and, to a large degree, self-serving.

    Then there is the fact that many jobs are simply frustrating to the virtuous worker who wants to do a good job. Let's take Jonah's example of a hospice worker. Staffing levels--something completely out of her control--are going to be a huge determinate of what she can actually do for a patient. From everything I've read lately, the takeover of hospices by private equity firms has meant a reduction in staffing. I'm pretty sure that if you were to talk many of these hospice workers, you'd get an earful on how they simply don't have the time to tend to patients adequately and how they feel they are personally failing their patients. That must be debilitating and discouraging to the virtuous, caring worker. And it isn't just low-paid hospice workers that find themselves in this bind: talk to some doctors and you'll get an earful from them as well.

    Everything I've read about work and workers suggest that money is NOT the key issue for job satisfaction. A sense of control and efficacy is much more important. I think there is more than a little blindness going on in this discussion here.

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    1. Packmd4

      Private equity and MBA's taking over healthcare over the last few decades (which I'm sure Bahnson loves) is setting up an impending disaster for our system. All the incentives in the system reward high paying specialists while also downsizing support staff. Now we have huge support staff shortages (hospital CEO's going crazy hiring temp staff while laying off long time staff is one of the stupidest things I've ever seen) that is starting to impact patient care. Physicians are starting to leave in droves because the CEO needs more and more volume/income. I'm scared to think what the next 10 years holds for healthcare in this country.

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  9. Grantefletcher

    I’m a free marketer. I’m also someone who was raised Catholic and am broadly sympathetic to the Christian worldview (with my own set of questions and doubts that aren’t worth getting in to here). I’m also willing to accept that Mr. Bahnsen is advancing his views in good faith as best he feels they should be advanced.

    His waving off of questions about pay adequacy for certain more socially beneficial jobs vs. other less socially beneficial jobs by saying that, as bad as that is, it’s worse to play God, felt gross in a way that I can’t fully build out rigorously. I just know it left a bad taste in my mouth.

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    1. Brian Collins

      I appreciated the podcast but also was less than satisfied with Bahnsen's answer on this point. I think he's right that letting someone (the government) play God and set wages probably would be worse off that using the market mechanism. However, I wouldn't conclude from that that the market is setting the right wage levels. The market is an aggregate reflection of values. When a society's values are wrong, the market outcomes will be wrong. I think in a whole host of areas our society's values are wrong.

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    2. Clock19

      Agree. I used to be a teacher but left because the pay could not support me and my family.

      My state now has a major teacher shortage. The state still is not paying enough to get me to go back into the schools -- I liked the work, the kids were great. But the kids I left behind are now being placed into classrooms that get more crowded, with teachers who are too overwhelmed to fully do the job society needs them to do. And yet the pay remains low because teachers do not increase the bottom line of a company. What they do does not pay dividends until a decade or two after they do it. And by that time, the damage will have been done.

      My state is not the only one with a teacher shortage. Most of the states in the U.S. are going through the same thing. And yet the pay is not going to match the need because, like social security shortfalls, the problem won't be fully visible and painful until a decade or two in the future.

      Bahnson essentially said that 3rd grade teachers are widely available, and this is why they do not get paid as much as you'd think a teacher ought to be paid. That was true 8 years ago. Now, it is much less true, and the market is not responding.

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      1. Packmd4

        I think the free market is very beneficial in a lot of areas that are quickly responsive to short term needs in society. It is much less helpful in areas that are more long term investments. The sad fact of the matter is that by and large our society just doesn't put a high value on kids. That's why most every profession that focuses on kids pays far less than a comparable job focusing on adults, this is true all the way from teaching, childcare to physicians. The same goes for a lot of other professions that exist to help people who are less "valued" by society as they aren't the hyper productive workers our society idolizes. Of course long term you see where this harms society in so many ways (teacher shortage, healthcare worker shortages etc.). But sadly we won't do anything about it until the car has already left the cliff and the fix ends up being so much more painful than prevention would have been.

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        1. Frederickwf

          Yes, exactly. I think research universities are a good example of this. Probably most of what research profs are tinkering with isn’t going to have any ROI for a long time if ever, but expanding the field of knowledge is tremendously valuable and can even have serious ROI a long, long time later, a longer time horizon than an R&D dept would be able to justify. That’s why the university, a holdover from pre-capitalism, is still so valuable and should be insulated from the market’s short-termism

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    Citizen60

    “Puritan work ethic” anybody?

    “your diligent hard work will prove to the world you aren’t one predestined to go to Hell.”

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