Work as Worship: Reclaiming the Virtue of God’s Original Mandate
Brant Nyhart, Head of School, August 27, 2026

The Western world finds itself in a unique moment in which the long-held virtue of hard work is systemically disputed at all levels. While a recent New York Times headline declared, “Gen Z Fell Out of Love with Work,” major initiatives like a universal basic income draw support from both sides of the political aisle.¹ A superficial review of social media feeds unveils influencers who peddle leisure as man’s highest aim, while job, work, and effort become bywords for displeasure. One might hope that artificial intelligence is the panacea that will finally free mankind to pursue the finer things of life, while the proliferation of prediction markets like Kalshi have groomed a generation to believe that easy money comes with very little effort. But what have we lost in the process?

While the dynamics have evolved, an aversion to work is not entirely new. In Dante’s allegorical masterpiece The Divine Comedy, the pilgrim-poet finds the slothful in the fifth circle of hell amongst the wrathful and sullen.² Later, the slothful are made fit for paradise by non-stop running around the fourth terrace of Mount Purgatory.³ Even so, Dante’s understanding of laziness transcends the modern tendency to equate it to a simple lack of activity. For Dante, sloth is fundamentally a disordered love that fails to pursue and appreciate with enthusiasm the things of God. In that sense, it becomes what Cornelis Venema calls “self-destructive inactivity.”⁴ It is ultimately destructive because it forsakes God’s established order.

It seems, then, that the antidote to societal sloth is to once again embrace work as a virtue, that is to say, as a good gift from God. And like anything that is given us by God, it represents an opportunity for the created to render worship unto the Creator. While Christian lore has at times erroneously linked the requirement to work with the fall of Adam and Eve, a return to Genesis reminds us that the first humans were given at least three duties before the first sin: raise their families, exercise dominion over the beasts, and tend to the garden which was given for food (Gen. 1:28–30; 2:15).

That brings us to the spiritual theme for the year, drawn from Colossians 3:23–24: “Work Heartily Unto the Lord.” The Apostle Paul tells us, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ” (Col. 3:23–24 ESV).

As the students learned in chapels last week, working heartily to the Lord is a mandate no matter one’s current station in life. While the parent can pursue heartily their daily vocations, be it work or parenting, the student can likewise honor God through his or her commitment to schoolwork, chores, and other relevant activities.

Yet one important objection persists, more often heard as students progress to the upper levels of schooling: This doesn’t really matter for my future. It might take various forms such as questioning the relevance of calculus for the future homemaker or the importance of Latin for an engineer, but the underlying sentiment is the same: I’ll never use this again when I leave school. And, if we’re all honest, we can just as easily fall into the same trap, thinking “When I retire, I will have more time to serve the Lord,” or “When I get into my real career, I will work heartily for God.”

Nearly ninety years ago, the Christian author and apologist C. S. Lewis confronted a most similar doubt. Britain had declared war on Nazi Germany, and Parliament passed the National Service Act, paving the way for students to be drafted to serve in His Majesty’s Armed Forces.

It was in this context that Lewis offered a sermon at Oxford’s University Church of St. Mary the Virgin addressing the question that was undoubtedly on every student’s mind: What is the point of any of our studies?⁵

And while Lewis did not discount the magnitude of global affairs, he offered his students a simple answer: “The learned life then is, for some, a duty. At the moment it looks as if it were your duty.”⁶ While students could engage in a litany of “what-ifs,” the answers to which all lie outside their immediate control, the most appropriate use of their time was to commit to the duty of their studies, working heartily in all they do – even if there were more pressing issues to confront outside the medieval walls of Oxford.

Over the course of the year, it is the prayer of PVCP’s administration that students would come more fully to grasp that work is a blessing from God, and that we can glorify God when working heartily — with energy and joy — for the Lord. As we do so, may God tear down the false dichotomy between sacred and secular, teaching us that our daily life can be a living sacrifice to God. May we remember, with Lewis, that “Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment ‘as to the Lord.'”⁷

Notes

  1. Emi Nietfeld, “Gen Z Fell Out of Love With Work. I Don’t Blame Them.,” New York Times, July 23, 2026.
  2. Dante Alighieri, Inferno, canto 7, lines 100–130.
  3. Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, canto 18, lines 88–105.
  4. Cornelis P. Venema, “Dante on Virtue and Vice,” Tabletalk, May 1, 2008, https://learn.ligonier.org/articles/dante-virtue-and-vice.
  5. C. S. Lewis, “Learning in War-Time,” in Learning the Good Life: Wisdom from the Great Hearts and Minds That Came Before, ed. Jessica Hooten Wilson and Jacob Stratman (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2022), chap. 35. The sermon was preached at the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford, on October 22, 1939, and first collected in Lewis’s The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses.
  6. Lewis, “Learning in War-Time,” chap. 35.
  7. Lewis, “Learning in War-Time,” chap. 35.
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