On Work

Today, both in the secular world and within the church, the idea of hard, constant, difficult, exhausting, gritty work is seen as something to be avoided, or at least meticulously managed and moderated so as to be minimized or even mitigated. In this paradigm, we are cautioned to structure our lives to the end that we might carefully balance our workload in order to make sure don’t “burn out” or get too exhausted or the like. We are also instructed to take protracted periods of time away from work, as often as we can, or as long as we think it will take to recharge our batteries. However, I believe this view of work is at once both a source and symptom of a lethargic theology of work and an overzealous theology of rest.

hear me out

Ok, here’s the disclaimer that I know I need lest I fall prey to the “so you’re saying” crowd: I think rest is important. I am fully aware that Jesus took time to get away to a solitary place for a few hours to a day on a regular basis. I am aware that there were many mandated feasts and festivals in which rest was not only prescribed, but commanded. I am also aware that God “rested” on the Sabbath; that is, that He stopped doing what He was doing, and His creative labors came to a halt on that seventh day (notably, one that does not have an end in the Genesis account, but that’s for another day).

But all of these rests in the Bible actually serve to support my greater point: rest was a pointed pause, a punctuation at the end of the week, not a protracted prolongation, a pseudo-paradise to be pursued. Because while rest is important, the Bible presents a different theology of work than the one I’ve described in my opening paragraph. It is one that gratefully embraces the responsibilities and difficulties of continual, hard, even grueling work and is genuinely thankful for the meaningful toil. One that truly, deeply rests on the Sabbath and then rises to the noble, daunting challenges of life and vocation all day, every day besides. One that finds sincere joy and fulfillment in the sweat of one’s brow. It is one of stern stuff, stubborn grit, and steadfast spirit.

But this doesn’t describe the attitude toward work that we often see today in either the pew or the pulpit. Instead, what we’re seeing (maybe in the mirror!) is burned out, miserable, exhausted people who are overwhelmed and drowning in work and just can’t wait until the next time they don’t have to work, whether it’s a weekend or a week or preferably longer.

But it wasn’t supposed to be this way

From the beginning, well before Eve and the Serpent tangoed their way to East of Eden, the Bible presented work not as a curse, but as a divine vouchsafement of the highest order, one in which we may find the most purpose, pleasure, and peace. So read my lips (or my prose, in this case): While I’m not against a vacation or a getaway once in a while, I’m staunchly — more than ever, as we see the day approaching — opposed to the contemporary chase of placation, elation, relaxation, and vacation, especially at the expense of abdication, no matter how well we can dress it up in churchy words and inveigled justifications. Because it was never supposed to be this way.

In fact, one might say that work was the original blessing in the Garden. To this point, I submit to you that the curse is seen not in work, but instead in our desire for work to cease. So while I’m not at all surprised to see a blinded and lost world flail and flounder about while fiercely fighting for furloughs, I don’t believe Christians should be racing for respite in the same way. We weren’t made to. We’re not supposed to be wired that way. We’re wired to work. To wit, while Eden was clearly a place of rest and enjoyment, it wasn’t a place devoid of work. The New Kingdom, the Eternal State, will be a place of work: meaningful, constant, fulfilling work.

Apropos, we don’t see a Biblical pattern for this hunt for hiatuses: Jesus only took brief respites — which I believe are required and right and should be regular — and Paul’s only vacations were in the stocks and chains (I’ll make a note here that the pastors in the Bible all seem to have had full-time occupations in addition to their roles in the church, yet we don’t see them striving for sabbaticals and siestas, but I won’t delve into that here, as I already touched on it very briefly in my podcast here). So I think I’m well-founded in suggesting that the quest to quietly quell and quash constant, unending, hard labor is actually not as noble or spiritual as it’s often presented.

So what you’re saying is…

What I’m saying is that a Biblical theology of rest isn’t as much a cessation from labor, but rather a flourishing within it. However, the reality remains in full view: more people, pastors, and parishioners are passionately pursuing plentiful periods of repose like never before. Why? Are they lazy? Are they mooches? Sure, in some cases. But that’s not the case with all or even most of them. So what gives? Why the chase for comfort and cessation of work?

I think there’s a few reasons (five, to be exact), and I’m going to list them in order of their prevalence. That is, by the time we get to the last item in this list, we’ll be at what I think is the largest cause of what often amounts to a deleterious display of dereliction of duty. So — on with the first reason as follows:

1. MINIMAL SUPPORT

It’s no secret that many people (and as a pastor of over a decade, I’ve seen it enough in my case to add “pastors” here) don’t have appropriate supports in their lives. Worse, we’ve filled the vacuum of supports with false fellowship such as television, social media, and other amenities, but we’ll get there in a minute. For now, though, I’m suggesting that the lack of community, family, and social structures (and, in the case of leadership, the lack of proper delegation or people to whom we can delegate) can and will be draining and taxing in ways we were never meant to experience.

Moses was quite the leader, and he absolutely loved the flock to which he was called, but even he needed supports (Aaron, Hur, Jethro, the Levites, and more) and even then he was still known to flip out once in a while. People need supports. Who is holding up your arms? Who is giving you needed counsel? We need real, actual people to help us. God made us this way. No one flies solo.

This, by the way, is why the Scriptures never, ever, ever show a church in the Bible with just one pastor. Besides the obvious and near-inevitable descent into tyranny (even friendly tyranny), the reasons for multiple eldership in a church absolutely include support for each pastor.

2. OVERCORRECTION to the past

Maybe you heard it growing up — “you work hard and take care of God’s house and God’ll take care of your family.” Yuck. That dreck was what passed for sagacious pastoral advice in my father and grandfather’s time, and it couldn’t be more unbiblical. The non-pastoral alternative is similar: “just keep your hand to the plow and work and don’t ever stop. God will hold you up.” Meh. That’s a half-truth. We do need to keep our hand to the plow, yes. But we also need to keep to God’s prescription and pause to rest weekly. More on this in a second, but suffice to say for now that the generation before my own generation may very well have dropped the ball when it came to this.

Oftentimes, people worked themselves to the bone without taking any time to rest, and hurt themselves, their families, and their churches and communities in the process. And they were proud of it. But this isn’t healthy. And I think we know that now. We know we need to rest. But I think we’ve overreacted and overcorrected here. In our desire to bring the pendulum back to a “it’s right and required to have regular rest” position, we’ve allowed it to swing too far in the “hey, we need a robust theology of rest so please don’t work too much and if you do please take a ton of time off” direction, often to the abandonment of those who are relying on us, and certainly to the detriment of our own flourishing and productivity.

3. Distractions and drainers

I mentioned above that social media and television are false fellowships — that is, they masquerade as relief and respite, but only tax us more with each minute. They are certified exhausters, drainers, takers, and they excel at withering and emaciating the life-force of those who gaze into their pixelated portraits.

And this isn’t a secret. Sources abound everywhere (here, there, and yon) that confirm the obvious and yet not-so-obvious reality that our distractions are not contributors; rather, they are thieves. They come promising everything from a quick mental getaway to wanton pleasure and provide none of it in the long run. It’s all dopamine and serotonin, baby. And they know exactly what they’re doing: creating drug-addled brains and keeping them coming back for more.

Dearest reader, I could not be more emphatic about this — we are experiencing digital schizophrenia¹ like never before. We were not made to hear this many voices. We potentially expose ourselves to a sea of other voices whenever we open our social media app or turn on the news. Sometimes it’s just too much, especially when it’s added to the voices that are already present in our lives in our homes, churches, and workplaces.

Similarly, we were not made to bear this many burdens. That child with cancer that you don’t know personally but just popped up on the GoFundMe post on your social media — that is heartbreaking. You were not meant to bear all the heartbreak from all the communities in all the world. You just weren’t. I don’t know what this says about some of these fundraisers. I’m not trying to say they’re good or bad. But I’m trying to say that you can’t take all of this stuff in and not be depleted in some way. It’s wearying and wrecking to our spirits.

4. Not THE BEST KIND OF REST

In case I haven’t mentioned it yet (pause to remove tongue from cheek), we need rest. Rest is good. That’s why God clearly gave us one day at the end of each week to take it easy. To truly, deeply, fully, actually rest each week. To pause completely. To cease from our labors. This is the best kind of rest. But so often we do not do this — we work right through Saturday (or Sunday, if you’re one of those guys) and then before you know it, Monday arrives, and we wonder why we’re so burnt out. It’s almost as if our Designer knows what’s best and has appointed a weekly rest because it we don’t get it, we’re going to make up for that lost rest time, often in a way that isn’t best, despite our best-laid plans and best intentions.

Another way we don’t rest in the best way is what I’ve already introduced earlier in this post: we often don’t rest in our labors — we seem to often only want to rest from them. Now, while there’s definitely a place to rest from our labors (see above paragraph), the main idea is that we find rest in our labors as Christ offers, and as we see the earliest Christians do. I am convinced that because we do not rest appropriately during the week in our labors, and then we do not rest at the end of the week from our labors, we find ourselves miserable and depleted, like shriveled, hollowed-out husks until we can take some serious time off to recharge our batteries.

5. Poor Work Ethic

I know, this one sounds mean. And because I listed it last of all, it means I think this is the biggest reason why there’s such an aversion to difficult, continual, cripplingly-hard work. But let me explain, please: One of the main characteristics of the modern West is that once you’ve “got it made,” you no longer have to work. Think about it: what do you do when you win the lottery? Early retirement. What do you do when you strike it rich? Get that yacht and work as little as possible. While it’s nice to be able to take a getaway once in awhile, this general desire, this overarching ambition, this yearning to not work is not good. It reflects a poor work ethic.

I’m still in the process of making plenty of mistakes as a parent. One of them that I’m still making is that I’m not really driving a good work ethic into my kids. It’s not too late in the game to fix this, so I’m desperately and creatively trying to correct this, but I’ve still got a ways to go. Why is this important to me? Because whether you’re flying Boeing or buying plates or watching C-SPAN, you can easily see a staggering lack of work ethic everywhere. People want to do as little as possible and still get by. We want to work smarter, not harder, and if we can’t do that, we just settle for not working harder.

It’s more than inconvenient (and in some relatively trivial cases, much worse); it’s downright harmful to self and all related institutions (home, church, work, community, county, state, country, world). I often ask myself where all the hard workers have gone, and maybe you do, too. I think we don’t need too much convincing that a good work ethic is rapidly vanishing in the West, and our pews and pulpits are far from being an exception to this trend.

So to the point: many times, we crave comfort and cessation of labor because we simply lack a strong work ethic. We just don’t want to work. We want to rest. We’re tired, and doing fun things sounds more fun. Doing work things sounds too work-y. In these cases, we don’t need time off to rest and recoup and recover: we just need more grit. Surely you’ve heard that when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Why is it that now instead of simply “going,” they’re going on vacation?

It’s late (well, early now) and I’m going to bed

In short, if God made us to work with short regular pauses to briefly rest, then we will best flourish in our work while pausing shortly and regularly to briefly rest. Again, I’m not against the occasional vacation. Not at all. But since we don’t often have a good work ethic (see #5) or work His way (see #4), and since we often surround ourselves with distractions (see #3), overcorrect for the past (see #2) and ignore the need for supports (see #1), we find ourselves exhausted and wondering when the next vacation or sabbatical will be, all while missing out on the fulfillment, indispensability, value, and purpose that regular, faithful, continual work brings.

So I encourage you to rest when you need it. And work when you don’t. And have the courage to be honest with yourself, your family, and your workplace (and your flocks, pastors) about when those times actually are. And lastly, I encourage you to have the grit, the fortitude, the faithfulness and the perseverance to press on even when you don’t get to stop for more than a day a week. Even when you don’t get to take that cross-country trip or that sabbatical or that long vacation. Because there’s people counting on you to stick it out and show up and work hard, day in and day out. There’s nothing unhealthy about that.

In fact, since God prescribed it and designed us for it, I’d say it’s the best way of all.

1. My copastor, Kevin Spencer, used the phrase “electronic schizophrenia” last Sunday and I feel like I have to cite him here or he’ll jiu-jitsu me. ↩︎