"Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you"
About this Quote
A neat, almost ruthless piece of spiritual psychology: Augustine refuses to let believers hide in either mysticism or hustle. The line works because it splits devotion into two equal, non-negotiable postures, then dares you to hold them at the same time. Pray like the outcome is utterly out of your hands; work like there will be no rescue. That tension is the point.
In Augustine's world, "depend on God" isn’t a cozy platitude. It’s a direct shot at pride, the sin he treated as the engine of human self-deception. Prayer becomes an admission of limits: you are contingent, fallible, easily seduced by your own story about control. But the second clause is just as aggressive. "Work as though everything depended on you" targets the opposite escape hatch: spiritual fatalism, the habit of outsourcing responsibility to Providence and calling it faith.
The subtext is a doctrine with sharp edges: grace and agency are not rivals. Augustine spent much of his career arguing against views (notably Pelagian optimism about human moral capacity) that flattened the problem either into self-salvation or passive waiting. This quote compresses his middle path into a memorable rule of thumb. It also functions as a social ethic. A community built on this line prays without presuming, acts without posturing, and accepts that moral seriousness requires both humility and effort.
Its staying power comes from how modern it feels: it punctures today's twin fantasies of total personal control and total victimhood, insisting on responsibility without the illusion of sovereignty.
In Augustine's world, "depend on God" isn’t a cozy platitude. It’s a direct shot at pride, the sin he treated as the engine of human self-deception. Prayer becomes an admission of limits: you are contingent, fallible, easily seduced by your own story about control. But the second clause is just as aggressive. "Work as though everything depended on you" targets the opposite escape hatch: spiritual fatalism, the habit of outsourcing responsibility to Providence and calling it faith.
The subtext is a doctrine with sharp edges: grace and agency are not rivals. Augustine spent much of his career arguing against views (notably Pelagian optimism about human moral capacity) that flattened the problem either into self-salvation or passive waiting. This quote compresses his middle path into a memorable rule of thumb. It also functions as a social ethic. A community built on this line prays without presuming, acts without posturing, and accepts that moral seriousness requires both humility and effort.
Its staying power comes from how modern it feels: it punctures today's twin fantasies of total personal control and total victimhood, insisting on responsibility without the illusion of sovereignty.
Quote Details
| Topic | Prayer |
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