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THE IDOLATRY OF BUSYNESS --- Dr Tan Tee Khoon, general secretary of FES


“I’d love to pray more, read more, take time to write my journal, take long walks, be still in God’s presence, spend more time getting to know friends, or take up this course or that hobby – but I’m just too busy. I don’t have time.” Sounds familiar? Those words describe how I often feel as well.

For a good part of my life I had taken solace in that cliché phrase: “I’m just too busy.” I even convinced myself all these years that the true reasons for my busyness were external circumstances. I am hardly to blame – first, it was my studies when I was an undergraduate and of course my extremely strict professor who supervised my doctoral thesis as well. Then it was my job – those deadlines, the traffic or the urban lifestyle. Surely, if these external factors could be eradicated, I would immediately feel less restless, move more slowly and make time for those other important things.

I learn that in reality, our busy lifestyles are not primarily dictated by external factors; external factors are symptoms but not the cause of our being extremely fast-paced. We are not restless because we are busy; we are busy because we are restless. In fact, many of us are actually addicted to busyness! We are afraid of silence and inactivity. Keeping ourselves busy prevents us from having to face our emptiness within. When we are always filling our time with reading the newspaper, eating a snack, running to catch a bus, making several quick phone calls, listening to music or seeing how many errands we can accomplish in the shortest period of time, we do not have to acknowledge how little we pray, how little we really know
about or care for our friends or even, how little we know ourselves.

We bow to “The Idol of Packed Schedule” because it gives us an instantaneous legitimacy to our lives albeit superficial or temporary. We tend to feel important, needed and indispensable when we accomplish much. We have the habit of setting ourselves dozens of daily goals, and if we meet most of them, we feel successful. We often long for a daily reassurance that we are loved, and we will turn to any form of “activism” to satisfy this need. Despite our belief in God’s grace and unconditional love towards us regardless of our works, in practice we live as if we are spiritually abandoned or orphaned. We remain convinced that
we must work in order to be approved.

Of course the remedy to our restlessness does not lie in exchanging busyness for inactivity. Work is essentially good for God Himself was depicted as a worker in Genesis 1 and He left Adam and Eve to work the Garden before they sinned. Also, we are told in the “Parable of the Talents” that it was the wise investor of his Master’s resources who will one day be rewarded – in other words, those who put God’s gifts to work. Our Lord Jesus Himself worked from dawn to dusk. No, we do not need to stop working; but we may be pursuing work with the wrong motivation. We are to be busy because of our obedience to God’s call and not because of a nervous striving for self-worth. If we acknowledge in our hearts that we are fully accepted and loved by God, we will undertake the work which God calls us to do out of joy, peace and gratitude. Part of our spiritual growth, then, is to know what our work is, when to work and when to rest.