When Does it Make Sense to Work Hard?

To work hard or not to work hard? This question seems a lot less straightforward than we think.

Some people grew up with the old-school mindset that hard work is good almost by definition. You work hard because that is what decent people do. You show up early, stay late, grind through it, and there is something honorable about the suffering itself. Whether it actually leads anywhere sometimes feels secondary.

Then there are people who look around and think the whole thing is kind of a scam. You work harder, your employer gets richer, and you just get more responsibilities piled onto you. They see people grinding themselves into exhaustion and wonder what exactly the point is. While there is some truth to that criticism, it is unfortunate that this mindset seems increasingly common among younger people. #quietquitting #yolo #eattherich. Cynicism, while it may protect people from exploitation, can also squander one’s potential. It breeds detachment and distrust, which in turn dampen the spirit and outlook of society itself.

Others take a more calculated approach. They are willing to work very hard, but only when the payoff makes sense. If the rewards are there – money, opportunity, ownership, freedom, something meaningful – then they will go all in. But they are not interested in blind effort for its own sake. Everything is optimization.

My own view is a little different. I do believe in hard work, but I think definitions get muddy here. A lot of what people call “hard work” is really just mindless grinding. Repeating the same thing over and over because that is what you are “supposed” to do.

To me, stepping back and rethinking the process can be the harder thing. Thinking is hard. Admitting the current approach is not working. Questioning assumptions. Changing strategy. Trying something smarter instead of just pushing harder. That takes honesty, humility, and courage. I would advocate for that version of hard work every time.

But there is another question here: what if the world does not reward your hard work? What if we give our best and still get ignored, passed over, underpaid, or cheated? Should we then pull back and take the lowest-effort approach possible? Should we “quietly quit”?

Personally, I would not. Because I am a Christian.

In 1 Corinthians 6:7b, Paul says, “Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?” That is a difficult mindset in a world where people are constantly calculating outcomes and protecting themselves.

I also think about Joseph in the Old Testament. Whether he was in slavery, in prison, or elsewhere, he consistently gave his very best. I doubt he spent every moment mentally optimizing, calculating whether the immediate outcome justified the effort. He simply worked faithfully wherever he was placed. And Colossians 3:22–23 instructs us to work wholeheartedly, not just when people are watching, but as unto the Lord.

There is honor in giving your best even when the rewards are uncertain. Not because the world always rewards it fairly. A lot of times it does not. Sometimes the lazy person gets ahead. Sometimes the manipulative person wins. Sometimes the person who cuts corners and flatters gets promoted while the conscientious one gets ignored. We all have seen that.

But if my standard for effort becomes “only do my best when the outcome benefits me,” then eventually everything becomes transactional. Every act of effort becomes a negotiation. Every situation becomes a calculation of whether people around me “deserve” my best. I do not think that is a good way to live.
At the same time, I also do not admire blind grinding. A person can waste years exhausting themselves on a bad strategy simply because they are too stubborn or too prideful to rethink it. There are people who confuse burnout with virtue.

To me, the better approach is this: work sincerely, work intelligently, and detach our sense of honor from immediate outcomes. Give our best because it shapes us into a certain kind of person. A dependable one. A thoughtful one. A disciplined one. Even if nobody notices. And if we realize the current path is foolish, inefficient, or pointless, then changing course is not laziness. Sometimes that is the harder move. Sometimes wisdom looks less dramatic than grinding, but requires far more honesty.

I think Christians especially should understand this distinction. Faithfulness is not the same thing as mindless self-destruction. Joseph served faithfully wherever he was placed, but he was also perceptive, adaptive, and wise. He did not confuse suffering itself with righteousness.

So let’s work hard. But discerningly. And may God bless our good work.

Jesus Tricked Us

 In His final meal, Jesus said, 

“Truly, I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” (Mark 14:25)

What does He mean by that? “I will not eat nor drink again until …” is what people in this culture say to express their utmost determination. E.g. “I will not eat nor drink again until I get back the 20 bucks from Timmy!” So by saying what He said, Jesus basically said, “I’m never gonna give you up.”

Jesus Rickrolled us.

The Doors Aren’t Locked from the Outside: My Thoughts on Universalism

 

I see my loved ones becoming universalists one after another. Universalism is one of those doctrines that keeps coming back around, partly because it offers a kind of moral relief. The idea is that in the end, God will save everyone, believers and non-believers alike, because His love will not allow anyone to be lost forever. I understand the impulse. I am tempted by it. If you care about God’s goodness, if you’ve sat with the brutal realities of human suffering and human blindness, it is not hard to see why many would want this so much to be true.

But when I try to approach this by turning to the Scripture and focusing on its narrative logic, I keep running into a different theme. The Bible does not merely portray sin as a mistake that eventually gets corrected. It portrays sin as a posture: a self-exalting refusal to worship God. And it portrays judgment, often, as God confirming what a person has chosen to become. In C.S. Lewis’s book The Problem of Pain he wrote, “the doors of hell are locked on the inside.” It isn’t a throwaway image. It is a moral diagnosis.

 

Our temptation to soften warnings

Genesis is not subtle about what disobedience means: “in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:17). Then comes the serpent, and his first move is to make God’s warning feel inflated: “You will not surely die” (Gen. 3:4). That’s the shape of temptation at the beginning of Scripture: minimizing the seriousness of rebellion, treating God’s word as rhetorical, and making autonomy look safe. Adam and Eve do not drop dead on the spot, but the entire story of Scripture unfolds under the shadow of what entered that day: the alienation from God, exile, corruption, and the slow certainty of death.

For that reason, I can’t help hearing an echo of Genesis when a theology reassures us that, ultimately, no one will finally perish. I am not claiming universalists are intentionally repeating the serpent. I am saying something more basic: the Bible teaches us to be suspicious of any message that deflates divine warnings into something temporary or illusory. If the first lie was, “God doesn’t really mean it,” then the burden is on the universalist to show that the Bible itself forces us to read its warnings that way rather than our moral discomfort doing the forcing.

Pride as the lock

If I had to name the spiritual root, I would name pride. Not pride as mere arrogance, but pride as the deeper refusal to worship. Pride says, “I will not bow; I will not be dependent; I will not repent; I will decide what good is.” That is why Scripture describes the human problem as not merely ignorance but rebellion. People “did not honor him as God” (Rom. 1:21). When pride is established, sin becomes more than isolated acts. It becomes a center of gravity. Over time, it produces a person who doesn’t merely do wrong things but who increasingly cannot stand the very conditions of repentance: humility, confession, surrender.

“Locked from the inside” doesn’t mean God is absent, or that God doesn’t judge. It means the posture of the soul is itself a refusal of the only door that leads into life with God. If heaven is worship, then pride will experience heaven as an assault. It is not a neutral preference. It is a contradiction.

 

Pharaoh’s hardened heart

Pharaoh is one of the clearest biblical portraits of how refusal can harden into something like spiritual fixedness. The story is not simply, “Pharaoh made a bad decision and then regretted it.” It is a long sequence of repeated encounters with God’s word and repeated acts of resistance. Exodus speaks in both directions: Pharaoh hardens his heart, and God hardens Pharaoh’s heart (Exo. 7-11). People debate the theology of that, but the narrative effect is difficult to avoid. Pharaoh becomes, through repeated refusal, a man who refuses more reflexively, more intensely, with less capacity to yield. The “no” becomes not merely a choice but a character.

What matters for the universalism question is this: time does not necessarily soften pride. It can do the opposite. The Bible’s language of hardening is not a minor detail but one of Scripture’s recurring warnings. Hebrews takes the Pharaoh logic and turns it directly toward ordinary people: “Do not harden your hearts” (Heb. 3:8,15). The assumption is clear: hardening is possible, progressive, and spiritually perilous. Universalism often assumes that if God continues to pursue, every person will eventually relent. Pharaoh is a cautionary counter-example: repeated exposure to truth does not guarantee surrender. Sometimes it produces deeper self-justification and deeper resistance.

 

The problem with guaranteed outcomes

I would keep coming back to the way Jesus speaks. Whatever interpretive flexibility someone wants to use in Paul, Jesus’s warnings consistently land with urgency and gravity. “People loved the darkness rather than the light” (John 3:19) isn’t mere lack of information. It is “love”. It is strong preference. It is moral orientation. And Jesus’s ministry is full of encounters where the dividing line is not intellectual ability but willingness to yield, particularly among the proud, the self-justifying, the ones who cannot bear to be exposed.

Universalism needs the final “yes” to be guaranteed. It needs the claim that grace will always cure pride, always, for every person, eventually. But at that point I start to wonder what “resistance” actually means. If the outcome is guaranteed regardless of the person’s settled refusal - a hardened heart - then the final “no” is never truly allowed to stand. And I understand the universalist answer: God heals without coercing. Yet there is a point where “inevitable healing” begins to look like either coercion (the will is overcome) or replacement (the person who says “no” is remade into someone else). The logic pushes in that direction unless we can explain, plainly, how a guaranteed “yes” preserves the moral seriousness of a “no.”

 

Judgment as “handing over”

My take is also different from the common argument that universalism is required for God’s victory. God does not lose if He judges rebellion. He does not lose if He respects a refusal. God is not running for office. He is not insecure. He offers real grace, real invitation, real warning, and He commands repentance sincerely. But love is not the same thing as compulsion, and worship cannot be manufactured without becoming something other than worship. If a person insists on self-rule (i.e. pride) then God may judge by confirming that choice. That does not make God weak. It makes God just.

Romans 1 provides likely affirmations of what C. S. Lewis wrote. The chapter describes judgment as God confirming what people insist on, including “God gave them up” and “God gave them over” (Rom. 1:24, 26, 28). Far from meaning God is defeated, this is about His judgement. And the form of the judgment is not always dramatic punishment; it is sometimes permission - in the frightening sense! - that God stops restraining and allows a person to inhabit the world his desires are building. He takes human moral agency seriously enough to allow people, eventually, to receive the end of what they have chosen.

 

A closing thought

When I read the passages that sound most sweeping, God saving “all,” Christ drawing “all,” reconciling “all things”, I keep noticing that they are are not written as unconditional guarantees detached from response. Over and over, Scripture frames the promise in terms of belonging: the “all” who are His sheep, His people, those who are in Christ, those who come to the light and receive Him. The universality is real, but it is the universality of God’s invitation and of Christ’s sufficiency, not a promise that every person is saved regardless of repentance and faith.

If universalism were plainly taught, I would submit to it. I’m not interested in keeping a harsh doctrine for its own sake. But when the “God saves all” verses are conditional salvation, and all the warnings remain warnings, letting hardening remain real, letting refusal remain refusal, I find myself unable to treat final judgment as only temporary. The Bible’s story begins with humans being lied to about minimized consequences and ends with a sober call to repentance and worship. Pride is the recurring villain in between. And pride, left unrepented, does not simply need time. It needs surrender. The tragedy is that surrender is the one thing pride most refuses to give. I pray that I am wrong.

Terrible Song, But Rejoice Anyway?

 

I went to church. The worship leader smiled and said, “Today we’ll teach you a new song!” Here we go again.

“HALLE!” A pause. “LUJAH!” What a terrible song.

Then the song continued as a remix of Amazing Grace. Now it felt insulting.

Are we, as Christians, supposed to enjoy a worship service no matter what?

The people in the front row were just jamming it out. Was that what I was supposed to do?

We hear about Christians with abundant joy in their hearts and on their faces, made possible by their strong faith in Christ. Is that what this is about – to be a strong believer is to rejoice in any worship song, Philippians 1:18 style?

I think it’s objectively true that some songs are “better” than others. To go one step further, some genres are more suitable for certain purposes than others. The most popular song at a rave is probably not going to be well received at a funeral. At what point do we decide that a worship song is “not good enough”?

Language is probably the low-hanging fruit: it’s easy to detect vulgar language. It’s a bit harder to detect unbiblical content. As a result, many contemporary worship songs feel generic, vague, and “safe.”

“God is good!”

“I am saved!”

“Praise God!”

“Hallelujah!”

Now spice them up in twenty different ways and we’re good to go.

I struggle with worship songs that I find terrible. Am I offended by the low quality, the low effort of what we are offering to God? Or am I acting like a Pharisee, gatekeeping people from worshiping with different tastes and scorning new and creative approaches?

Perhaps, when everything is said and done, there are different spaces for worship. One for modern, contemporary performances. Another for death metal rock fans. Yet another for rap and hip hop. And I’ll find my little corner of traditional, classically performed, beloved hymns. And God would see that it’s all very good.

I Take God for Granted, Because I Can

 

I take God for granted
Because I can
I’ve done no deed
No righteous plan
To deserve Him
To earn His gaze
Not the slightest
Totally depraved
Yet still He saves
With His irresistible grace
He takes me in all the same
He loves me for who I am
He loves me despite my sinful shame.

I take nothing for granted
Not my family, nor friends I hold
Not my money, nor things,
Not even myself, truth be told
For I am not my own.

Yet I take God for granted still
Unconditional: this election
For I can’t choose what bends my will
As I am nothing but His sheep
As I am nothing but His son.

So I take God for granted
Along with His comfort,
His unbinding love,
And His boundless mercy
Forever preserved
And granted to me.

2 and 70 in The Bible

 

Some numbers hold special meanings in the Bible. I have never really paid attention to numbers 2 and 70 which are quite fascinating.

The number 2 in the Bible represents union, division, and the verification of facts through witnesses. It symbolizes the unity of a man and woman in marriage (Gen. 2:23-24) and the union between Christ and the church. The number 2 also signifies the division of God’s testimony into the Old and New Testaments.
The number 70 has a sacred meaning, made up of the factors of two perfect numbers, 7 (representing perfection) and 10 (representing completeness and God’s law). As such, it symbolizes perfect spiritual order carried out with all power.

What is cool about 2 and 70 is that these two numbers are paired in significant moments. At the beginning of humanity, there were 2 people: Adam and Eve. By the time humanity was scattered, there were 70 nations scattered from the tower of Babel.

The Jews started out with Abraham and Sarah. At the end of Genesis when all of their descendants traveled to Egypt to live, there were exactly 70 family members in Jacob’s house.

During Jesus’ ministry, He would send His disciples to go out in pairs, two by two (Mark 6:7). Then later on, Jesus appointed 70 disciples and sent them out to spread the gospel.

The pairing of 2 and 70, therefore, can be seen in all humanity, in God-chosen Israelite people, and in the church.

Not a Miracle Comes Out of Nowhere

 

During the very first Passover, Egyptian firstborn sons were all killed. We tend to focus on how terrible this curse was. Christians would say that Pharaoh was so stubborn (“having a ‘hardened’ heart”) that only a treatment this severe can affect him (for a short while anyway). Non-Christians would say God was a moral monster. 

Little did we see: God’s own firstborn son was killed that same day, 2,000 years later. We are quick to criticize God and often not realize that God is the one who makes the greatest sacrifice.

In the first Passover, the Israelites were spared and protected. But it wasn’t just a simple miracle that came out of nowhere. They didn’t know it, but God was paying the price. God’s sacrifice was the miracle. It wasn’t a gnostic recipe of “blood of a lamb on door is affective in repelling Grim Reaper”.

Every single blessing we receive in life, big or small, especially our salvations, were made happen because of Jesus’ crucifixion. He paid the price.

Every Knee will Bow, Every Tongue will Confess

 

This is a story about me serving God. By telling such a story, one cannot help bragging about himself. How can he not, for serving God feels so honorable and glorious, yet utterly humbling knowing that the honor and the glory are all His.

9gag is an Internet forum where I occasionally visit for funny memes and short videos. There was a video where Mohamed Ali, Mike Tyson, and two other black men (who are probably also accomplished boxers) are having a friendly chat on stage. The highlight of the video is when asked if Ali and Tyson would have a match when both are in their prime, who would win, Tyson responds:

- Hey, I know that I am vain, but even I know this: every head must bow, every tongue must confess: this is the greatest of all time! (gesturing at Ali).

Then someone nicknamed Yeahy posts a comment:

Did Mike Tyson really come up with those lines? “Every head must bow, everything must confess. This is the greatest of all time”

I hardly ever write comments. The Internet is filled with terrible people, and engaging in random conversations only invite needless conflicts and ill feelings. But this time I decide to respond to Yeahy’s question:

“Every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” is an expression in the Bible, specifically Roman 14:11 and Philippians 2:11. Over time it becomes a known expression and here Tyson added that Ali is GOAT. Regardless, it shows Tyson’s humility and respect toward Ali which is quite commendable of him. I hope that helps.

To my surprise, Yeahy responds:

Thanks Cap. I should start reading the bible. They got some fire one liners in there

“Cap” is “captain”, someone who provides good answers, but that isn’t the reason why I am surprised. In the least expected situation, I have just made someone feel intrigued about the Bible and consider reading it. What?! This is incredible! Who would have thought that “fire one liners” can be a reason for someone to want to read the Bible? Not me in a million years. But hey, if wonderful quotes that have become common expressions is what it takes, then I may be of service for a bit more. So I say:

Glad to help! Since we are at it, another fun fact is “an eye for an eye.” The way to do things in many cultures back then was: if you wrong me, I’ll destroy your entire village.” Then the Torah came out (aka the first 6 books of the Old Testaments. OT is the part of the Bible before Jesus). The OT sets a limit to that norm: “an eye for an eye” (Leviticus 24:17-22) i.e. if someone hurts you, you can at most do the same damage to him (and not more). So the Jews start doing that. Then Jesus arrives and teaches: let’s up the ante: if someone wrongs you, just let it go (“turn the other cheek”. (Matthew 5:38)) If you pick just one book in the Bible to read for fun, I recommend Matthew.

What I have done here are sharing with Yeahy that two other common expressions are also from the Bible. More importantly, by doing that, I explain to him how the Mosaic laws and Jesus’ teachings both have radical changed the moral standards of their times, and more implicitly, how what we consider common sense now mostly comes from such teaching and was once extremely counter-cultural.

Yeahy “likes” my responses so far and continues asking:

Does all the chapter connects to each other or some of them are just filler stories before revelation?

What an unintentionally challenging question. How can I answer “yes” or “no” without providing an elaborate clarification? What should I say and what to omit for the sake of brevity? How should I say it? Am I good enough to answer such question? I feel like Ransom in C. S. Lewis’ Perelandra who is put in such a high-stake situation whose outcomes seem to depend on his hopelessly limited capability. So I try my best and say:

By chapters you probably mean books. The Bible is very longg book although they print it like it’s small. It takes a year of dedication to go through the Bible (whereas I finished Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in an afternoon). There are 66 books in the Bible, and each book is broken down to chapters and verses (individual sentences) so that any detail can be easily referenced (like I did) so when someone says that the Bible says something, you can verify it yourself. So, do the books connect or are there fillers? The answer is, sorry, both. The reason is that the Bible is supposed to be the word of God Himself to humankind so that we could know about Him. That’s the main purpose, not “a series of moral teachings so if we follow we’ll reach enlightenment”, nor “an intriguing epic story”, nor “a historical record”, although it can very well serve all that. So if you start with the very first book, Genesis, and just keep going to the end, what you will get is: a series of events, then God gave Moses the laws, then a bunch of laws, then the events continue, then some spin-off stories, then all seems hopeless, and a series of prophecies about a savior that will come, then the first part (the Old Testaments) ends. Then Jesus arrives (the New Testaments start). You will see the story about Jesus told by four different perspectives (“the Gospels” i.e. “good news”) then the events continue in the next book of Acts. Then a bunch of letters from church leaders to different churches, then Revelation that tells the ultimate end.

This is where this story ends. What happens next to Yeahy I know not. I pray that I did good and according to God’s will. I pray that Yeahy would indeed pick up the Bible, maybe for the very first time, and truly learn about God while discovering more fire one liners. I pray that Yeahy will be saved. If that is the case, then Mike Tyson and I got to be part of his salvation. I need to let Tyson know.