Christian orthodoxy begins with the assertion you cannot ever work hard enough to be made right with God but that your value is imputed by Christ’s death and never once earned.

See also: the imago dei.

What you’re describing is not “Christian values” but the famed “Protestant work ethic,” a product of puritan immigrants fleeing European discrimination. That ethic is Christian in source but when divorced from the knowledge that God makes you worthy—not your productivity— you begin the long slide into hustle culture, greed, and other current miseries.

As Benjamin noted, “Christianity’s history is essentially that of its parasite […] capitalism.”