c/GreatAwakening
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St. Paul cautioned the Thessalonians against idleness... they had a similar mindset. "Well Jesus is coming back anyway so why even work?" Tale as old as time. A.D. time at least.
I was pounding my fist at Christmas saying we needed to make examples of people who sold out our country (Bidens, Fauci, hell, all of the FDA, the list goes on). Mom was on my side, but Dad said "we're too civilized" and my "libertarian" brother said "that's fascism!"
Complete breakdown of rules, law, and order is the literal antithesis of civilization, and if punishing criminals on behalf of the love for my state and my people is fascism, well shit, I'm Adolf fucking Mussolini. Successful, persisting cultures consider filial piety a virtue worth defending.
Couldn't believe the men of my family had it so fucked up. I respect them in many things; this was a shocker.
>And inside the church are some White Christians who want to just sit on their asses, **let evil take over the world**
I think the past 50 years of marching to the Left while the feckless Right cedes ground in order to be "civilized" (i.e., completely idle) has given us a good recent picture of what the ramifications are.
If that doesn't work for you, how about an easy answer from St. James? "Faith without works is dead." Easy because you can extend that to any aspect of life.
"I'm a carpenter."
"Cool! Build me a tool shed."
"Nah."
"Pretty shitty carpenter."
Or from our Lord: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
So there are pretty clear consequences in this life and the next. As to Paul cautioning the Thessalonians specifically - a major point of being Christian is living a disciplined, Christian life in Jesus. Back to the carpenter example - if you're a lazy, whoring, drunken Thessalonian, you're not much of a Christian are you? Nothing changed, and to extend it forward to Christ's example, you're certainly not reaping souls for God.
And there are passages in Proverbs that warn against idleness as well, though they're less forthcoming with the consequences. If Scripture isn't your thing, you can always try being unproductive for long periods for yourself.
As for me, I figure if evil takes over the world, then the world would become Hell, which isn't something I want to pass on to my descendants regardless of Jesus's return. So it's in my interest to work to prevent that. If the world goes to literal Hell (that is, consumed by evil), then Jesus's return would involve very little rapture and very much righteous judgment akin to Sodom and Gomorrah.
But the future explicitly hasn't been revealed to us - the certainty of our requirement to act explicitly has. So the divine reasons as well as the human reasons to secure a good future are what I'm going with.
\* Oh shocker, this wasn't a good faith discussion. Maybe my Advent fast of not commenting on the internet just needs to be a full time fast. Or maybe I'll take a more stoic approach and just be more discerning when I know someone is asking questions in bad faith.