Chronic fatigue is the steady state of us moderns. We are always tired. Of what, though? Few of us labor the long hours of our forebears or people in other parts of the world —we’re not baking bricks, we’re all pharaohs now. Entertainment and luxury industries have accelerated the rate at which we have access to leisure goods. We live longer, have more stable health-care systems, and wider access to food and water, generally speaking.
Why does the culture known for binging Netflix, struggle with compounding exhaustion? Why do we, in a very unique way, “burnout”?
Partly our “burnout society” (as Byung-Chul Han describes it) suffers, among other things, from a taxing sloth. We often think of “sloth” only in terms of “laziness”. And while laziness is a kind of sloth, sloth also is at work in certain kinds of work.
At its core sloth despairs of doing the things it ought to do. The sluggard despairs of waking-up and getting things done (Prov. 26:13-16). The workaholic despairs of resting from work and being at peace. Both despair over doing what they ought to do.
We think often of the David-and-Bathsheba story (2 Sam. 11 & 12) as a tale of lust. But while lust plays a role in the story, it is not chiefly the problem. The chief problem is sloth. David despairs of doing what he needs to do. First he despairs of the duties of kingship. At the time of the year in which kings were supposed to go out and lead their people, David abdicates and send Joab his surly surrogate (2 Sam 11:1). It is in not doing what he is supposed to do that he spies Bathsheba.
At each turn of the story David sorrows over doing the thing he ought to do, he tries to cover-up, he tries to get Uriah home, he gets Uriah killed, etc. —he works very hard to avoid doing the thing he ought to do.
Laziness and workaholism are two sides of the same coin of burnout that results from despair. We burn-out because we have not kept our lamps trimmed and burning. We go to sleep and let the lamp of love die, or we burn-out because we do not refill our lamps in our endless toil.
The answer to a burn-out society, is neither “do more” nor “do less”. The antidote is doing that which we ought to be doing —at the heart of which is loving God with all our heart soul mind and strength (Matt. 22:37). When this happens we find ourselves refreshed because the God we love is the Lord of the Sabbath.
What we moderns have done is to turn ourselves, the Self itself, into the place of both work and rest. We “work on ourselves” we “motivate ourselves” we exercise some “self care” and we “let ourselves go” when we grow weary. But there is no sabbath to be found in the Self itself. Sabbath comes from God, as does good labor. Work and rest in Him.