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The Christian and Leisure

Ronald E. Pearce

New Horizons: July 2022

Moms, To-Do Lists, and Getting Things Done

Also in this issue

Moms, To-Do Lists, and Getting Things Done

Resting Outdoors

Report from Eastern Europe

Leland Ryken has aptly observed that “we feel guilty about our work, and we feel guilty about our leisure. We do not understand either of them very well” (Work and Leisure in Christian Perspective, 11). Christians need to have a biblical understanding of leisure and work so that we do not feel guilty about either. We need to consider the rightful place of leisure in the Christian life.

Certainly, leisure can be pursued as an idol: we can idolize entertainment, desire to be lazy, or even just use our leisure time for selfish purposes. Many in our day violate the Lord’s Day by putting recreation before the duty of public worship of God. Sports or hobbies ought not to keep someone from Sabbath worship with the gathered people of God. But the excesses of sinful indulgence of leisure do not cancel leisure as legitimate for the Christian.

What is leisure? A definition of leisure is usually negative: it is “time off” or “free time,” “spare time,” or “vacation.” We should have a more positive concept. Such definitions leave open the important question: leisure is freedom for what?

Biblical Rest

The Bible does not speak of “leisure” per se but it does speak of rest. God intends us to rest. It was built into creation, before sin, in the institution of the Sabbath Day: “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work” (Gen. 2:2 NIV, emphasis added). As God rested from his labor, so he calls us to a weekly rest from all labor and regular routine. The weekly Sabbath is to be a day for all to rest, the believer and the unbeliever (Exod. 20:8–11; Deut. 5:15). “In six days the Lord made heaven and the earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed” (Exod. 31:17). Rest must have its place in our lives as we model the Creator in whose image we are made.

And rest must be in other times than the weekly Sabbath rest. One biblical example is more than sufficient: the Sabbath year.

For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what is left. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove. (Exod. 23:10–11 NIV)

As land lies dormant, minerals are replaced; compost is added. The soil becomes richer for resting. Israel was to take every seventh year as a complete rest from all work. Fields were to lay fallow so that the land and all society would be renewed. The year of Jubilee, every fiftieth year, was to be a double Sabbath year—two years of back-to-back rest. Sadly, we have no records that Israel ever kept the Year of Jubilee. They did not take the gift of God’s rest and renewal. How foolish we sinners are!

In his earthly ministry, Christ rested as well. In Mark 6:30–31, we read that Christ had returned from extensive preaching. The crowds were pressing him so that he did not have time to care for his body, not even to eat. So the God-Man retreats for rest—not for his safety, not to make strategies for more campaigning, but for physical rest. He did so even though there was much work yet to be done. Christ clearly teaches that our bodies must be cared for in rest and renewal.

To rest in Scripture was more than time away from work; it was for celebration and festivals, feasts of the Sabbaths. A biblical concept of rest is for re-creation, for renewal. We should view leisure times not just as “time off” from work without any other guidelines. Rather we should evaluate how we spend our “leisure time” as how to best be re-created and rejuvenated. “Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and so that the slave born in your household and the foreigner living among you may be refreshed” (Exod. 23:12, emphasis added).

God is pleased when we take time to be renewed and refreshed in body and soul. As one quotation from 1880 sums it up: “We never knew a man to work seven days a week who did not kill himself or his mind” (A. E. Kittredge, The Christian Sabbath).

Insights from the Past

The Puritans understood the biblical place for leisure and renewal. A Parliamentary Act of 1647, when the Puritans governed England, decreed that “every second Tuesday of the month was to be a holiday when all shops, warehouses, and so forth were to be closed from 8:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. for the recreation of workers” (Ryken, Worldly Saints, 189). Seeing the legitimate place for rest, renewal, and leisure, is to be faithful to our Lord.

The Puritan minister Richard Baxter reflected at length on a body’s need for rest in his A Christian Directory.

The body must be kept in that condition that is fittest for the service of the soul . . . The health and the cheerfulness of the body makes it fit for duty . . . A heavy body is but a dull and heavy servant to the mind; yes a great impediment to the soul in duty and a great temptation to many sins; as melancholy people know by sad experience. A mower that has a sharp blade will do more in a day, than another with a dull one can do in two. Every workman knows the benefit of having his tools in order; and every traveler knows the difference between a cheerful and a tired horse. They that have tried health and sickness know what a help it is in every work of God, to have a healthful body, and cheerful spirits. (225)

Baxter even suggests that rest outdoors may be a duty, in preparation for future tasks:

When the sights of (beauty) or the use of walks, or gardens tend to raise the soul to holy contemplation to admire the Creator . . . this delight is lawful if not a duty. Our bodies must be kept in that state of health and readiness. In eating and drinking and recreation it is not only the next or present day, which we prepare for, but the duty which may be very distant. (225)

So too, the American Puritans: Thomas Shepard advised his son at college, “Weary not your body, mind, or eyes with long pouring on your book . . . recreate yourself a little, and so to your work afresh.”

“It is possible to throw our lives away foolishly by burning the candle at both ends,” writes J. Oswald Sanders. He then gives this story:

When Robert Murray M’Cheyne, only thirty years old, lay dying, he said to a friend, at his bedside, “God gave me a message to deliver and a horse to ride. Alas, I killed the horse, and now I cannot deliver the message.” The horse was, of course, his body. Christian workers should accept it that their service will be costly if it is to be effective, but they should be careful not to kill the horse. (Leadership, vol. 7, no. 3)

It is not a biblical concept to drive the body and soul in work, avoiding necessary rest and renewal. Being lazy and being a workaholic are equally sinful. To “burn out for God” may be a stirring phrase, but it is more gnostic than biblical, as M’Cheyne realized too late.

Biblical leisure is a gift from God. Are you one of those whom Ryken described as feeling “guilty about our work, and . . . guilty about our leisure”? Or have you a balanced and biblical understanding of leisure, God’s gift of rest and renewal?

The author, an OP minister, recently retired after forty-one years of ministry. New Horizons, July 2022.

New Horizons: July 2022

Moms, To-Do Lists, and Getting Things Done

Also in this issue

Moms, To-Do Lists, and Getting Things Done

Resting Outdoors

Report from Eastern Europe

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