Virtue Focus: Industriousness
Objective: Define industriousness as diligent, purposeful work, and commit to one practice of it this week.
Industriousness is the habit of steady, diligent, purposeful work — doing what needs doing, and doing it well, without being nagged. The colonists who survived a wilderness depended on it: a lazy colony starved (early Jamestown nearly did), while hard work built homes, farms, and towns out of forest. Its opposite vice is sloth — not just laziness but a kind of spiritual sluggishness that avoids effort and the good. Scripture honors work: God himself 'worked' in creating and then 'rested,' giving work a holy dignity; St. Paul taught, 'If anyone will not work, let him not eat' (2 Thessalonians 3:10), and Proverbs praises the industrious: 'Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise' (Proverbs 6:6). But industriousness is a virtue only when ordered toward the good — workaholism for greed or pride is not holiness. In the Christian view, ordinary work, done well and offered to God, is itself a form of prayer. Lent is a fine time to fight sloth with cheerful diligence.
Discussion Questions
- 1How is sloth more than just 'being tired'?
- 2How can ordinary work be a form of prayer?
- 3Why does industriousness need to be 'ordered toward the good' to be a virtue?
Write 'This week I will work with cheerful diligence by ___' and name one task you usually avoid or do half-heartedly that you will do fully and well.
Vocabulary
- industriousness
- the virtue of steady, diligent, purposeful work
- sloth
- the vice of avoiding effort and the good; spiritual as well as physical laziness
'Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.' — Proverbs 6:6