Full-Time Quotes

“We talk about loneliness as if it were simply the lack of a friend or a spouse, when I believe it should be wholly understood as the lack of a purpose.”
― David L. Bahnsen, Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life

“The infantilization of young adult men, in particular, is so well-known that it has become the stuff of memes, skits, sitcoms, and movies. It is a theological choice by pastors to preach endlessly about the dangers of work, career, and professional ambitions when video game obsessions are a deeper cultural reality.”
― David L. Bahnsen, Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life

“It turns out that ergois agathois (ἔργοις ἀγαθοῖς) is an important choice of words in this Ephesians passage. The good work we are created to do, according to Paul, is indistinguishable from vocational work in translation.”
― David L. Bahnsen, Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life

“A recasting of purpose as a fundamental driver of work will do more for the social inequalities of various professional choices than economic interventions by the state. A society that rediscovers and reappreciates purpose in work and the concept of service in finding existential benefit no longer has to presuppose a hierarchy that elevates certain white-collar professions above blue-collar professions. Market forces may price the work of a lawyer or professor differently than that of a waitress or plumber in a monetary sense (dependent on subjective values embedded in supply and demand), and certain professions may require greater use of the mind than others and some greater use of the hands than others. But income, skill, intellect, and education are all disintermediated when it comes to the appreciation of purpose. A truck driver and a bond trader are on an even playing field in that important category. The way that we formulate our own hierarchies of one’s importance should never have become based on income level or social strata, yet the surest way to reverse this unhealthy trend is to reframe our understanding of work as a productive act of purposeful service, not merely an act of economic climbing.”
― David L. Bahnsen, Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life

“Career ambition” does not automatically entail “low view of family,” nor does high value of family compel a low view of career.”
― David L. Bahnsen, Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life

“God is not served by technical incompetence; and incompetence and untruth always result when the secular vocation is treated as a thing alien to religion.”
― David L. Bahnsen, Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life