“Hustle culture” has become the shiny buzzword everywhere from TikTok to LinkedIn to that one cousin who is always “between business launches.” And honestly? Adventists get the appeal. Hard work is baked into our DNA.
Our pioneers were the original entrepreneurial overachievers: young, under-resourced, wildly determined, working six days like their lives depended on it, and somehow building institutions out of thin air — with every success credited to divine leading.
Because that’s the real Adventist twist. Yes, our pioneers hustled — but they never claimed it was grit alone. They constantly acknowledged God guiding every small success, every door that opened, every improbable achievement. Adventists don’t do “self-made.” We do “God-led effort.”
Then there’s the temperance principle, our polite theological way of saying, “Calm down, bro.” Hustle culture preaches sleep when you’re dead. Adventists preach you’ll be dead sooner if you do that. Hustle culture idolizes the grind. Adventists take one look at the fourth commandment and say, “Actually, we’re taking a 24-hour, divinely mandated nap-with-potluck break.”
Sabbath is holy anti-hustle. God literally scheduled a weekly shutdown so we don’t turn into overcaffeinated, overworked gremlins.
Now let’s be real: some Adventist institutions lean a little… complacent. Like, “We’ve always done it this way,” followed by a 20-year committee study. A bit of righteous jet fuel wouldn’t hurt.
But it can’t be hustle culture as preached by the internet. It has to be Adventist hustle:
Work hard? Yes.
Innovate? Absolutely.
Build meaningful things? Go for it.
Burn out, brag about being exhausted, worship the grind? Hard pass.
Adventist hustle is striving with God, not striving instead of God.
So should Adventists embrace hustle culture?
Maybe not the secular version.
But the holy-hustle version — the one powered by effort, guided by divine leading, and interrupted by Sabbath — that might just be exactly what we need.
Because in the end, we don’t grind harder to get ahead.
We work faithfully because God is guiding.
