Coincidentally, I heard two podcast episodes about the American need to restore meaningful leisure. I heard the repetition almost like words of truth: close enough together to plant a sense of urgency about it in my own life. And, although neither podcast brought in the story of Scripture, the general revelation of the best way to live, as well as the specific difference that Christ’s death and resurrection make, can help us understand the ways we misunderstand leisure not just as a problem of society, but also as a problem of each of our hearts—one that only Christ can truly solve.
Hustle culture has made Americans into the top overworkers around the world, only behind Japan and South Korea. It seems like in our modern era, monetary value has taken over any consideration about the value of both work and leisure. In England, The Great British Bake Off is full of hobby bakers, people who do something just because they find it a richly rewarding form of leisure. However, in America, every contest only involves professionals or people with a side hustle. The only meaning we see is how much we can monetize the work we do—whether gigging, selling baked goods online, or influencing, just to name a few. We respect ourselves and gain respect from others based on how smart we were about monetizing any skill we have. Even the word “leisurely” gets thrown around more as a way to complain about the pace of other workers. Americans view leisure more as a way to fully relax (most of us imagine things such as reading a mindless book by the pool, or these days, binge-watching a series to relax our bodies and detach our minds from real struggles).
Our culture in America certainly has a hard time incorporating leisure into our lives, and many are calling out the problem. Brigid Schulte, in her book Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life, calls it a social problem of a gender imbalance we just have yet to progress out of. This, to me, doesn’t go deep enough. Cal Newport, in contrast, finds the roots of our tendency to overwork mainly in our technological addiction—to him, the only solution is to intentionally re-shape our time, selecting non-digital pastimes to give us our way from hustle into meaningful, significant existence. All of us can acknowledge that society is very different and even damaged from the increase of addictive technology, but something deeper has been harnessed by technology to addict us. However, neither of these paths toward leisure digs into the deepest, core reason behind our addiction to work and the path to freedom.
Scripture teaches that any unhealth we find in our lives—whether addiction to work, watching too much television, or checking our emails all the time—is actually a product of our sinful desires. Tim Keller (from John Calvin) called our hearts “idol factories” because when we let good things take over the driver’s seat in our lives, like a desire for significance, this is letting it have the place where God should be.
For a Christian, we enter work from a place of rest already; the rest that comes from Christ is a spiritual resting in the fact that he died and rose again. His salvation changes everything. Christians put their trust and significance not in their own work, but in his saving power. Now we can come to the Protestant work ethic with a sense of freedom and joy, rather than just a need to maximize our productivity, that allows us to view our labor differently. Instead of maximizing our productivity, maybe we can give back our days in a spirit of worship. Starting our days reading his Word and talking with God will reframe everything. Instead of a tight hold on our schedule, God will free our hearts to gladly serve others. And he also gives us the space to heighten our existence with experiences of the beauty he created: sitting down at an instrument, picking up a good book, baking, creating something beautiful, helping a plant grow, or growing or making our food. A lot of times these meaningful kinds of hobbies allow us to process our lives at a deeper level.
For a Christian, there is an answer to the hurry of hustle culture. We can’t just muscle through it. Instead, we must face the reasons we are fixated on productivity, realize they are a part of the broken world we’ve lived in ever since Adam’s sin, and hold on to the truth of the Cross. Jesus’ death and resurrection is the only thing that can restore us to a right relationship with our work. Praise be to Him!