Day 12: The Sacredness of Rest
#RethinkChurch is doing a 22-day journey for self-reflection based on John Wesley’s 22 questions. I will be composing short blog posts addressing each question. I am using these posts to encourage Christians, especially Progressive and Mainline Christians to reflect deeply on what it means to be Church in a world marred by oppression and violence.
Day 12: Do I get to bed on time and get up on time?
And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation. (Genesis 2:2-3 NRSV)
This question struck me as ridiculous the first time I read it. I’m a graduate student, of course I don’t go to bed on time and get up on time. My sleeping schedule is erratic. Will I go to bed at 10pm? 12:00am? 2:00am? Who knows? Will I wake up at 7:00am? 8:00am? Or 9:45am? I guess I will find out when I stumble out of bed. When I am going through a depressive episode my sleep patterns are even more erratic. Did I go to bed at 10:00pm and wake up at 10:00am and then take a two-hour nap in the afternoon? Maybe.
But this question can be interpreted in such a way as to emphasize the importance of rest and a healthy sleep cycle. Many times, consistent rest is treated as a luxury. We feel so much pressure to work either out of a desire to advance in our careers or simply because we are trying to survive. I can’t tell you how many people I know who have to work multiple jobs in order to barely scrape by. The only consistency they have is being consistently burnt out.
Rest is a necessity that is vital for physical and mental health, but our society treats it as a luxury that only the richest should be able to have (and even then, the rich may not necessarily engage in rest. They may be working to try to maintain their status or they seek ways to make even more money. Regardless of whether or not they actually take extended periods of rest, they are viewed as deserving of one. When the poor or struggling try to take time off they are viewed as lazy). This obsession with busyness wears people down physically and mentally.
This culture of overwork is not unique to the West: In Japan there is a word that specifically refers to death caused by overworking: Karoshi. The reasons for overwork may be traced to different causes, but the culture of overwork is not unique to any one specific country or demographic.
It is easy to try and place the onerous on the individual to take time off. But the reality is that there needs to be societal wide changes where rest is valued and cherished, and where the dignity of each person is upheld. In a society where humanity comes before profit, rest would be prioritized. Living wages would be paid so that people won’t need two, three or four jobs, plus some side hustles to survive.
In a society where human life is treated as sacred, overwork would not be treated as a status symbol. As a graduate student I am used to playing the game, “tired Olympics” where friends and I try to one up each other describing how tired we are. This mindset is unhealthy and it normalizes the idea of working for little to no compensation.
Resistance Church, a new ministry that is seeking new ways of engaging and creating community, lists rests as one of their core pillars. Resistance Church describes rest as an act of resistance because it presents a counternarrative to society’s insistence that that overworking is better.
To be honest, I had never even imagined that rest could be considered an act of resistance. Like society at large, I have bought into the notion that to make any headway in life, one always has to be doing something. This mindset infects not just the business world but academia, nonprofit work, activism, ministry etc. Success is tied to doing as many things as possible. But this constant need to be busy can lead to burnout and to a host of health problems. In some countries, like the United States where universal healthcare is not deemed a human right, forcing people to work until they are ill, makes falling further into poverty a very real danger.
Rest, needs to be considered a vital necessity just like breathing. Individuals need to try and do what they can to get rest, but much more important is for rest to be cherished by society. Rest goes hand in hand with social justice. Everyone deserves to have an opportunity to take a break from the busyness of life to take care of themselves mentally and physically, without worrying about starving or losing their job.
Day 1: Illusions of Perfection
Day 2: The Dangers of Embellishment
Day 3: Loose Lips Sink Ships or Silence Kills?
Day 5: The Oppression of Professionalism
Day 6: Mental Illness and Distorted Thinking
Day 8: Making Sense of the Bible
Day 9: Praying to Cosmic Santa Clause