How To Find Rest In A Stressed Out World

One of the many reasons deconstruction is so important is because early Protestant values are so deeply rooted in the DNA of America, that you will be affected by them regardless of whether you ever went to church or not. Obviously, you will be far more affected by them if you did grow up going to church, but you never had to set foot in a church to hold very Protestant values, even if you are not aware that they are Protestant values.

The problem is that many of these values are actually highly destructive and completely contrary to the actual message of the Bible. One of these values has come to be known as the "Protestant work ethic," which is very much the American work ethic, which is also strongly tied to capitalism. In fact, capitalist fortunes are built on slavery and slavery is still alive and well in America, it's just hidden better and not limited to a single race.

Have you ever tried to relax, but felt guilty about it? Like you should be up doing something? Have you ever felt lazy just for taking a nap or wanting some down time? When you take a vacation, (IF you take a vacation) do you just lay around the house and do nothing or do you feel required to travel, go somewhere and do things? Yeah, that's the indoctrination of the "Protestant work ethic."

Most of us don't make rest a priority because we can't because it completely contradicts our values. Values, I might add, that we didn't actually choose for ourselves, but rather were handed or indoctrinated into. Remember, the last line of the Gandhi quote? Your values become your destiny. When your values include chronic overwork and exhaustion, your destiny is often an early grave.

But like so many other values that are taught as "Biblical" or "Christian" values, "work hard, play hard" is literally the exact opposite of the message of the Bible and of Jesus. In fact, it wasn't even the Protestants that introduced the concept of overwork, nor is it even rooted in Christianity. To me, the Bible is a roughly two thousand year history of man's relationship to God. What I continue to find fascinating about the Bible is that when you step away from the religious interpretations most of us who grew up in churches have been taught, it not only takes on a whole new meaning but reveals a very different God than the one most of us have been brought up believing in.

In American Christianity, “honoring the Sabbath” has become nothing more than an edict to go to church. But going to church literally has nothing to do with what the Sabbath was intended for. The Sabbath was meant to be - and only meant to be - a day of rest. The practice of worship or "going to church" on the Sabbath came later.

One of the things you quickly realize when actually reading the Bible on your own or without the aid of helpful interpretations offered by the same very small handful of male scholars, is that man has a very, very long history of taking what God actually said (or, you know, supposedly said, because we only have man's word for it) and twisting and interpreting it for their own purposes. So, here's what God actually (supposedly) said about the Sabbath.

The concept of Sabbath was first introduced in Exodus 20:8-11, as part of the Ten Commandments. It says:

“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

I just want you to stop and think about this for a minute. This is one of what we most commonly call the ten "commandments" (although they were likely not meant to be commands at all). Regardless of what you call them, however, they were essentially considered by God Itself to be the ten most important principles for a community to live by. If you think of them as commandments, however, it means that God felt it necessary to command people to take one full day of rest out of every seven! What do you think that reveals about our innate nature or proclivity? If people were naturally inclined to rest, do you think God would have felt it necessary to command people to do so? You'll notice that God did not "command" people to work, He/ She commanded them to rest!

Also, do you read anything there about worshipping or going to church? Yeah, me neither. So, how did the Sabbath become synonymous with going to church? Well, Jews honor the Sabbath from sundown on what we call Friday to sundown on what we call Saturday, the same way they have for thousands of years. Just like us, their Sabbath is on what they consider to be the last day of the week. This means that Sunday was actually the first day of the Jewish week, similar to what we now call Monday.

In the first century, People of The Way (as the followers of the teachings of Jesus called themselves then) began to gather organically on the first day of the week (what we now call Sunday) to sing, pray and worship. No one “commanded” them to, they just did it on their own. But this was never what “honoring the Sabbath” was intended to mean.

Learning to rest is a practice, it is a discipline, it is not in our nature to do it, which is why most people (or at least most Americans) find it so hard. Yes, we might go on vacation, but even on vacation, you'll find most people have plans and itineraries and things they want to go do. Travel, just in case you were wondering, is not actually restful for most people. Particularly for women with families.

Just knowing that you are "supposed" to rest (or even that you are allowed to) doesn't magically erase years of conditioning that got us to the point where overwork is considered the norm. You can't just "shut off" the guilt that comes every time you try to rest or relax, but whatever you can become conditioned to feel, you can de-condition yourself from feeling. It just takes time and practice.

If you find yourself struggling with rest (or chronic overwork and exhaustion) I highly recommend Tricia Hersey's Rest is Resistance (paid link) and her online group The Nap Ministry or Alli Worthington's Breaking Busy (paid link).

If you want help creating space for rest or learning how to shut off the voices that tell you you're lazy for wanting to, please reach out for a free consult!

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