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1. INTRODUCTION In the award winning "Chariots of Fire," Eric Liddell's refusal to run on Sunday in the 1924 Paris Olympics was recounted. We generally hailed the firm commitment, the resolute faith. As a child I recall some similar family rules rooted deeply in religious convictions. One was that Sunday was a day of rest. You didn't buy on Sunday (we didn't even take a Sunday newspaper). We kids weren't supposed to play too hard on Sunday. But times change, or people change! The issue of observing a biblical day of rest is perhaps urgent today, on both biblical and psychological grounds. But the issue of "rest" and leisure is a deeper one than merely the question of Sabbath observance. Where do rest and
play fit in our priorities? This is clearly a work-oriented culture. When George Bernard Shaw declares he had never taken a vacation in seventy years, it is not a confession, but a boast. After all, "an idle mind is the Devil's workshop". David Reismann, Harvard sociologist, even suggested we play Bach and Mozart 10% faster today then when they were written. John Pollock, social scientist, observed, "Our flinty Puritan heritage has its hooks in the present". Nevertheless, leisure and play have become new issues. Social scientists, theologians and philosophers have begun to examine our "recreation" and suggested more is going on than simply "passing time." In fact, in his of Time, Work and Leisure, Sebastian deGrazia noted, "the word 'idleness' crawls out of its ugly cocoon to turn into into a beautiful butterfly, 'leisure'."
2. A SOCIAL/PSYCHOLOGICAL ISSUE Leisure is not just an issue of biblical faithfulness. Many commentators see issues of leisure and rest as urgent social and psychological questions for modern human life. Less time is required for the basics of survival, yet we seem to have less "free" time. The "work week" has shrunk, vacation time increased, wealth expanded recreation options – but we seem to be more harassed, less restful, rarely re-created. Vacations are exhausting! What's going on? A. Our use of leisure reveals our values: Psychologists such as Gunther Luschen, John Roberts and Brian Sutton-Smith have suggested that "the sports which a society favors can provide an excellent index to the nature of that society." What value does our leisure signal? B. Our fear of rest reflects our psychic insecurity: The opening quotation from Toynbee would even suggest that our preoccupation with activity and especially with work, may well be an escape from ourselves and even from God. We fill the time because of our lack of peace, assurance, and trust. We are constantly seeking achievement, success, worth, productivity. Middleton suggested: "So long as we abandon ourselves totally to work, we need not confront ourselves" Is this true for you at all? C. Our avoidance of rest is a sign of our brokenness: Work as a filler of our emptiness is a much more socially acceptable tool than alcohol or amusements (not that the word "amusement" literally means a=without, muse=thought). The person who escapes by endlessly playing cards or watching TV is seen a wasting life away, while the person whose escape is work is seen as industrious, committed, even noble because of selfless service to others or the "cause." Aren't professionals in
"helping" vocations
3. BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVES A. First, note an important pattern:
B. The Significance of the Sabbath
C. General Biblical Principles of Rest/Quiet The concepts of rest are not exhausted by the specific teachings about the Sabbath. The biblical notions of rest include larger concepts of peace, assurance, trust, quiet etc. Consider these:
Query:
4. APPROPRIATE USES OF OUR "REST"? How ought our rest to be used? What purposes and activities are appropriate? List several purposes or uses of rest in a Christian view: 1._____________________ 2._____________________ 3._____________________ 4._____________________ 5._____________________ Consider this observation of Arthur Gish:
5. REST AS RENEWAL What activities do you regularly engage in that provide some of the "rest" dimensions, some "renewing" things? List one specific activity for each category. Intellectual Renewal In which of those four categories are you most "unrested"? ___________________________________ Note for each category an activity you'd like to add to your life to provide renewal in that aspect of your life.
6. THE ABUSES OF "REST:"!
If our diversions reflect our hopes, even perhaps our values, what do the diversions of modern man tell us? When is play a part of our creative life, and when an escape from life or responsibility – a narcotic? Consider this:
Query:
7. OPTIONS: Imaginative Exercies
6. FOR FURTHER THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION "[Many People] have the courage to work, but lack the courage to be idle." --Charles Peguy How does the lack of capacity to rest relate to the issue of salvation by grace? Is being a workaholic a secular equivalent to meaning by works rather than grace? Josef Pieper in his Leisure: The Basis of Culture noted that "The inmost significance of the exaggerated value which we set upon hard work appears in this: man mistrusts everything that is effortless; he can only enjoy, with a good conscience, what he has acquired by toil and trouble; he refuses to have anything as a gift." Play even has famous theorists such as Johan Huizinga [Homo Ludens] who say play is an essential element in every culture. Hugo Rahner suggests that only one who loves God can truly play. Rahner declares: "It is only through our faith in the Incarnation . . . that it is possible for us to gain that 'gay security and freedom' without which we cannot attain the ease and effortlessness of genuine play at all." [Man at Play] For theologian Novak, work is an "escape," necessary but lacking in the freedom, community, honesty and courage that mark play. Robert K. Johnston writing in Christianity Today observed that play is a God-given expression of our humanity, part of an intended rhythm. "Such a viewpoint concerning play is heard in the biblical discussion of Sabbath rest. It is basic to the advice offered in Eccesiastes. It is pervasive in the sexuality of the Song of Songs. It is played out in such Israelite practices as festival dance, feasting and providing hospitality to travelers. It is even central to Jesus' pattern of friendships." How does your church life encourage or perhaps discourage effective "rest" and recreation? Jacques Maritain suggested: ". . . . there is here, it seems to me, a certain horror of any span of time which a man might have at his disposal in order to do nothing. The great value and efficacy of standing idle, and lingering over one's dreams is little appreciated in this country." And again, "Friendship requires a great waste of time, and much idleness" and the highest form of [leisure] is contemplative activity." --Reflections on America (1958)
Memory Verse _________________________________ "My presence shall go
with you,
This is Session IX taken from the book "Vocation, Work and Calling", written by Lynn R. Buzzard, Professor of Law, and used with the kind permission of the Christian Legal Society, USA.
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