13 minute read
Godspeed and the Freedom to Rest
Shawn Pavey, 2020
GODSPEED & THE FREEDOM TO REST
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A reflection on Sabbath keeping in college
Humanity’s relationship with time is broken, and this is especially true for us WashU students. Many of us find our pasts inescapable; others fear the future. Some of us struggle with procrastination, which inescapably leads to mountains of homework crashing down on us at all the wrong times. And even more common at WashU are those of us who are so bent on being productive that we work ourselves dry. Somehow chaos always seems to get the best of us. But does this have to be the case? Is there some optimal formula for succeeding within the busyness of college? Well, I don’t believe there’s a formula, but there might be something even better: a guide. I would like to posit that humans were created to operate and thrive in relationship with God, which includes living at God’s speed, a pace that is simultaneously more restful and productive than we might think. This pace includes a rigorous work ethic, but also a weekly Sabbath’s day of rest. The existential numbering of one’s days, but also the deliberate creation of slow space for prayer. A relentless social activism and care for the marginalized, but also the enjoyment of the goodness of creation as displayed in friendship, family, nature, and even one’s studies. In this reflection, we will explore the concept of a weekly Sabbath rest within the greater context of how Christianity affects one’s relationship with time.
My fascination with the concept of time began when I was quite young. I grew up playing Zelda video games, which introduced me to the joys and logical inconsistencies of time travel and to the necessity of effective time management. In Majora’s Mask, the player has three days to save the world, and upon failure they must time travel back to the first day until they succeed. The crushing weight of the game is twofold: first, a literal doomsday clock lives menacingly on the bottom of
GODSPEED & THE FREEDOM
W. H. Auden, As I walked out one evening, 1940, lines 29-32
the screen at all times, and second, people that one helped in previous timelines revert to states of crisis when the player resets the clock. In effect, it’s impossible to beat the game in a state where everyone has been helped. This sounds oddly like life, doesn’t it? One of the hardest truths I’ve repeatedly had to come to terms with during my undergraduate years is just how limited I really am. But the humility that comes with accepting that truth, combined with trusting in God, is always my first step to reestablishing healthy life rhythms after I have taken a plunge into chaos.
I mentioned that trusting God is pivotal for time management, but is God even trustworthy in this area? To answer this, one must first ask how God even relates to time in the first place. Is God outside of time itself? And if so, how does He interact with us within our own perception of time passing? Did He create time and matter in a Big Bang, or is He somehow subject to time in an eternal universe but with a lot more freedom than us? What kind of authority does a (often perceived as) distant and archaic deity have over our use of time? And with all of this talk, what does “time” even mean? Saint Augustine is a timeless 4th and 5th century theologian whose vulnerability, wit, and pertinence are astonishingly enduring. He once asked: “What then is time? Is there any short and easy answer to that? Who can put the answer into words or even see it in his mind? Yet what commoner or more familiar word do we use in speech than time? Obviously when we use it, we know what we mean [...] I confess to You, Lord, that I still do not know what time is. And again I confess to You, Lord, that I know that I am uttering these things in time: I have been talking of time for a long time, and this long time would not be a long time unless time had passed. But how do I know this, since I do not know what time is?” 1
Augustine later pointed out that time is simply one of those concepts that pervades our speech and thought even as we struggle to define it. For instance, we know that things change and decay. We know that even our best models cannot accurately predict the future. Yet the Bible tells of a God who defies both of these points: He is always the same,2 and He predicts the future through the prophets.3 If God never changes, then part of His trustworthiness springs from reliability. If God knows the future, then part of His trustworthiness comes from the surpassing knowledge He possesses.
Moreover, themes of time and redemption go hand in hand throughout the Scriptures. God repeatedly reveals that He intends to use His power over the
1. Saint Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, 2006, Hacket Publishing Company Inc p. 242 2. Hebrews 13:8, ESV 3. Luke 24:44-49, ESV ages to a positive end. Christians look to a past event (Jesus’s crucifixion) as the main hope for their current redemption and forgiveness. Currently, “the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, [...] groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons [and daughters], the redemption of our bodies.”4 But God routinely promises that the entirety of creation will be redeemed at Jesus’s return, some time in the future. The redemption that will come is chiseled into the very legislation of Israel, as it is written in the Old Testament. The Law commands that every seventh year all debts were to be forgotten and slaves released.5 Similarly, every “seven weeks of years”6 (49 years), Israel was commanded to celebrate the Year of Jubilee by freeing servants from their obligations, returning family property that had been sold, and in general taking special measures to treat one another with heightened respect and honor.7 The connection between Sabbath and both the release of debts and the Year of Jubilee is quite significant because they are both nods to the timing of the Sabbath within a regular week. This is a clue that the Sabbath should be seen as a small chunk of redeemed time: a time
4. Romans 8:22-23, ESV 5. Deuteronomy 15, ESV 6. Leviticus 25, ESV 7. Leviticus 25, ESV
for forgiveness. The fact that these laws and the associated Sabbath were mandatory for everyone, even visitors and animals, was a forceful cultural reminder that all time actually belonged to God.
Furthermore, if one believes that God was deliberate in His creation, even through roundabout means such as evolution, then He created every interface by which we engage with the passage of time. I believe God crafted humans to rest on the seventh day of the week, for spiritual, psychological, and physical reasons. The Sabbath finds its roots in the creation story in Genesis where it is said that God took the seventh day to enjoy His work from the previous six days and again in the Ten Commandments.8 As such, it is part of the Jewish laws Christians hold on to (though not consistently across denominations). Participating in the Sabbath is an imitation of our Creator, not just a healthy rhythm to practice.
“But hold on,” you say, “are you telling me your argument for healthy time management is based on an outdated creation myth where the Earth was created in seven days by some magic Godsurge despite the geological, biological, and astrophysical evidence suggesting otherwise?” Well, no. Though some defend that position with compelling reasoning, that’s not what my argument is based on. Many Christians actually believe that our scientific insight into the age of the universe is correct while not in conflict with the Bible’s creation account. For starters, it’s worth considering the claims of Moses in the Psalms:
Psalm 90, ESV
God is not subject to our understanding of time. This—coupled with the fact that the Genesis day count starts before the creation of our Sun, Moon, and constellations—provides a decent argument for the fact that early Genesis days can be interpreted as poetic steps. These steps don’t perfectly follow the order in which it is scientifically assumed the Earth and life on Earth came to be; however, some key details are surprisingly accurate, such as the creation of fish before land creatures and the unintuitive concept of light before the Sun. The seven-day pattern doesn’t need to be literal to be significant to us though.
Even if the above arguments are compelling, I’m sure many readers will question whether it is possible to live at God’s speed. One of the most frequently recurring testimonial statements included in the book Sabbath Keeping is that deciding to keep the Sabbath is never as devastating a blow to weekly productivity as one might expect.9 Many, myself included, feel that it instead bolstered both productivity and work quality. I began refusing to do homework on Sundays halfway through freshman year, and it was a game changer. I found I was more motivated and had more energy to finish my work before the Sabbath. I found that some of my most meaningful memories were made during my days off. I found I had a larger emotional capacity to handle my own inner turmoil and to attend to that of my friends. But most importantly, I found a new way of relating to God.
Though I do love and cherish the Sabbath, I would be tremendously sad if one’s take away from this essay is that religion gives us an extra rule to follow, another rung in the ladder of holiness to climb. The first Sabbath reported in Genesis is a holy place of enjoyed time for both God and mankind, and should be seen as a gift to humanity. As Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”10 Similarly, Rabbi Heschel writes: “The Sabbath is the most precious present mankind has received from the treasure house of God. All week we think: The spirit is too far away, and we succumb to spiritual absenteeism, or at best we
pray: Send us a little of Thy spirit. On the Sabbath the spirit stands and pleads: Accept all excellence from me ...”11
The Sabbath should be relational. Twentieth-century German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer had many thoughts on weekly practices that he shared in his short book, Life Together. Bonhoeffer posited that it is important for Christians to have at least one day of solitude with God and one day of fellowship with the Church every week. Unfortunately, that goal is difficult to achieve as a student; however, mixing elements of the day of solitude and the day of fellowship into one’s Sabbath practice can still be quite refreshing. This provides an opportunity for renewal and a reordering of one’s loves and priorities. On the Sabbath, God’s desires surpass the busybody’s desire to be productive, relationships with family and friends are given more importance than our own personal ambitions, and our own suppressed thoughts and feelings cannot hide behind the clanking of industriousness.
The notion of God’s speed also reaches beyond the Sabbath. Yes, the rhythms addressed above are significant for
9. Lynne M. Baab, Sabbath Keeping 10. Mark 2:27, ESV
understanding the heart of God, but I would be cruel to ignore the other six days of the week. A recent documentary, “Godspeed,” follows the journey of an American pastor sent to work in three small Scottish villages and his discovery of an entirely different lifestyle.12 Eventually, this pastor concluded that he had missed something very dear to God’s heart in his early ministry. God wants us to know each other, to know Him, and to be freed by the fact that He loves us despite knowing our darkest secrets. This pastor speaks of the “pace of being known” as a significant trait in building meaningful relationships and argues that Americans often forget that it takes particular time, attention, and patience to know people. According to Francis Spufford, Jesus modeled this in His interactions with people every day.13 No matter how crowded the area, and no matter how busy He was, Jesus treated every person as if they were the only one present. No hopping around from conversation to conversation, no hurried glances at the time, and no listening in on networking opportunities happening across the room, as many of us students are tempted to do (myself included). In fact, with no regard for rank or importance, Jesus often stopped to hear the full stories of marginalized people even as he was on his way to perform other important tasks (the story of the widow and Jairus’ daughter comes to mind).14
I think one of the biggest barriers to slowing down at WashU is the mass expectation of excessive busyness born out of a widespread case of mild savior complex. For me, this manifested itself in friendships. I made many friends my freshman year and put a lot of effort into maintaining those friendships. I (begrudgingly) would drop my homework to be a listening ear to a friend in crisis, and for the most part, this was a good thing. However, I began to subtly believe that the world would collapse without me. This is not a mindset that fits with Christianity. God tells Paul in the Bible: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”15
12. Matt Canlis, Godspeed, from url: www. livegodspeed.org 13. Francis Spufford, Unapologetic: why despite it all Christianity still makes surprising emotional sense 14. Mark 5:21-43, ESV 15. 2 Corinthians 12:8, ESV Part of the ability to not overburden myself comes from trusting that God is in control, and that my limitedness within time as a finite being is a weakness that God can use well. I try to be careful not to let this beautiful truth absolve me from obligations, but rather to enable me to slow down and treat each task, each person, and each moment with the proper amount of respect and attention.
Surprisingly enough to me, I recently discovered that treating each person with the proper amount of respect and attention includes loving myself. David once sang: “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”16 The belief that God made us in His image and finds us loveable is the main theological point that convinces me to love my body. If you are a freshman reading this, I encourage you to take this point seriously. Please take the time to build good spiritual practices, attendance to mental health, exercise routines, healthy eating habits, and solid sleep schedules before deciding to double major, join an a cappella group, or become a student group leader of a demanding organization. I do believe that moments arise when sacrifice is greater than the principle of loving myself; but in retrospect, more often than not I have trashed my own body without it even being worth the associated sacrifice.
Typically, WashU students are ambitious, resourceful, and distracted. Not distracted from schoolwork or careers, but rather from knowing each other, asking big questions, and paying attention to the smaller, less boisterous beauties of the world. I have often been the worst at doing so, but I crave a change, and my hope is that you will join me in severely questioning the status quo for work and scheduling habits. Not necessarily in order to dismantle these habits—it is true that a strong work ethic is important at times— but rather in order to elevate the softer, yet still relevant, narrative that we are in fact human beings, not human doings.
