The Radical Pursuit of Rest: Escaping the Productivity Trap
John Koessler
Intervarsity Press 2016
176 Pages
ISBN 978-0-8308-4444-9
Bill Hybels, senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, once shared a summary of the difference between religion and Christianity. Religion, he proposed, is spelled “D-O.” It’s all about what we “do” for God. Christianity, he countered, is spelled “D-O-N-E.” It’s all about what God has “done” for us on the cross.
While John Koessler never makes a reference to this summary, I think he’d argue that many today still spell Christianity “D-O.” He writes that we live in an age when “devotion equals activity” (19). That is the basic knot which Koessler’s book seeks to untangle. For many devout people, to love God more means to do more for God. The result is Christians who suffer from a weariness that reaches all the way down to their souls.
Large numbers of Christians live by this equation, Koessler argues, because we live in a culture in which the craftsman has been replaced by the worker. The craftsman almost always saw the end result of his labor. Work was a means toward that end. Today, however, workers rarely see the end result of their labor. They merely piece together one part of the larger “product” on an often digital assembly line and rarely see the finished “product” of their office or their company. Thus, for them, work is not a means toward an end. It is the end. This has been transferred into the world of the church and into the life of faith as well. Devotion equals activity. The goal of spirituality is simply to work hard.
Yet one of the first portraits of God in Scripture is a God who rested (Gen. 2:2). And, God’s people were invited into that same rest through the practice of Sabbath. Koessler uses these two anchor points to explore the place of rest in the life of a Christian in the twenty-first century.
The book is a bit heavy on theology/philosophy and light on application. There’s a lot of “why” but not a lot of “how.” Readers may walk away with a better understanding of why they are tired but not what they can do about it. Still, there are some really nice bright spots.
For example, Koessler’s discussion of “false rest” through a study of the sin of the “sloth” is intriguing. There is a type of rest that does not bring true rest. “Sloth,” Koessler writes, “is rest’s dysfunctional relative” (65). It may look like rest, in that it is the ceasing of activity. But where true rest refreshes, sloth drains away our vitality.
Koessler’s chapter on ambition is very helpful. Koessler argues that underneath our other excuses for not resting lies this more insidious truth–we refuse to rest because we are too ambitious. Stopping to rest would mean we would not be able to accomplish the tasks we feel are fundamental to our self-identity, happiness, or purpose in life. Thus Koessler points to Paul’s words tying true ambition to rest: “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life… (1 Thess. 4:11-12).” He explores what this might mean today.
Through it all, Koessler maintains that rest is something that must be radically pursued. It’s not simply going to happen. Not in this culture. We must seek it out. With dogged determination. But in the end, we will find what our souls long for–the rest for which we were made.
