The Anti-Overwork Gospel
In the brief nothingness comes the quiet and sinister question:
“What are you doing?”
Shame rises as I try to answer. “Nothing, I’m doing nothing.”
“Nothing? If you really cared, if you really wanted this to happen, you’d be working right now.”
“But I am working. I am trying my best…I think?”
“Are you? Is it enough? Do you expect things to just happen to you? Do you expect to get anywhere if you aren’t working harder?”
And then I welcome an unspoken but loud conclusion, an infiltration so familiar and effective that it’s harder to put words to and easier to feel. The thought has been whispered to me for so many years that it’s found a home in my body. It buries its roots, digs down deep, and I succumb:
“You have to work harder. If there is no pain or sacrifice, then you didn’t do enough.”
I have an unhealthy sin pattern of overworking. I can’t even claim that I achieve much—it’s just that stillness freaks me out, and I start snatching up random activities just to feel productive, just to silence the accusations in my head.
Here’s a simple example: my senior year. Every hour was deliberately filled—class then homework then stage combat or scene rehearsal or friend’s shows or mainstage rehearsal or studio show rehearsal or more friend's shows or self-taping or play-writing. At every moment of unexpected free time I would forfeit the opportunity to catch my breath, and instead panic-run to find something else to do.
But I was pursuing a risky career, right? And I reasoned that overworking would leave less room for failure. And just in case failure was still a possibility, I needed to work until it sucked, until it hurt a bit, until I was tired, so that if the same voice muttered, “What if it isn’t good enough?” I would have a comeback! “Oh yeah? Well I sacrificed everything to get there!” And then I could point to my scars and my exhaustion and spent hours as some kind of proof, as some kind of sacrificial offering. It was a threat to the threats. How dare you accuse me of not doing enough—do you see what I’ve sacrificed?
Deep in my heart of hearts, I believe I have to earn everything—and pain tells me if I’ve really earned something. I believe everything depends on me; I believe that God doesn’t care enough to take care of everything. I don’t believe anything comes free, and if it does, I feel ashamed because I didn’t do anything to earn it. Or even more dangerously, when something does come free, I am tempted to think I earned it as opposed to remembering that it was given to me.
But that’s just anti-gospel.
The whole point of the gospel is to recognize your inability to reach God, and so you give up self-sufficiency and instead, surrender into the goodness of grace—your salvation was accomplished by someone else! And the good news is that this grace extends even into to our day-to-day productivity.
But what does that mean practically? How do I stop trying to earn my way? How do I stop overworking, but still do what I have to?
“As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”
“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
Luke 10:38-42
Aha, a classic and possibly over-mentioned Bible story. But I’m not trying to bore you or do anything crazy here. I only want to emphasize critical but simple points:
Mary chose to sit and listen. Martha chose to be distracted by all that she had to do.
Only one thing is needed.
In other words, in the face of our daunting list of to-do’s, the gospel’s call is simple.
Go be with the Lord and spend time listening to Him.
(Because that’s all you need).
The temptation here is to be “distracted by all the preparations that had to be made,” or worry about work and end up working when we don’t need to. But in the rare moments that I do stop, pray, and listen, I’ve found that He usually asks me to do less than I thought. After all, my work must end somewhere so that His can begin.
The danger of overworking is unnecessary sacrifice. It is the danger of bleeding and burning out simply because you’re afraid of your own inadequacies and cynical of God’s goodness. But the gospel is the good news of work already taken care of. There is no need to sacrifice when God has sacrificed all. There is no need to fear your lacking when God promises to compensate it with His power. The gospel in our overworked lives is not necessarily a call to do nothing (although sometimes it is!) but it is absolutely a call to let go—and go sit with the Father first.
