Say ‘No’ to Busyness!

Phil Lancaster 

One of the ways in which men exercise leadership in the home is in their control of the family schedule. Unfortunately, in to many of our homes there is no rational control of the schedule; we are tyrannized by the urgent demands of commitments we have made. It’s time to step back and take a look at what we are doing. Too often we are doing just what the world is doing.

“A Walking Shadow”

William Shakespeare had a way with words. He was also quite a philosopher, often distilling into a few lines a commonly held, but not often clearly expressed, view of life. In Macbeth, we hear this gem of nihilism as Macbeth learns that the Queen is dead:

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
that struts and frets his hour upon the stage
and then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing. (Act V, Scene 5)

Few people ever so eloquently describe the sense of emptiness and purposelessness they feel, yet I believe that most modern men and women, if they are honest with themselves, think that life signifies nothing. To crowd out this gnawing sense of futility they fill their lives with "sound and fury;" they create an existence "that struts and frets," pretending some significance to all their busyness. What they end up with is "a walking shadow," a shell of a life. They look like they are living, but they are not.

Of course, this is precisely the truth. Living dead men—that's what the Bible says fallen men and women are. They were made for a living relationship with the living God who breathed into them the breath of life (Gen. 2:7) and who gave purpose and moral significance to their lives (1:26; 2:15-17). But their sins have separated them from God; sin has hidden God's face from them (Is. 59:2). Their lives have been quite literally emptied of meaning and direction. God himself is the fullness of life. Knowing him and doing his will is the meaning of life. Without him, life is a walking shadow.

The Babel Syndrome

Cain was cut off from God by his sin. He was driven from the ground and forced to be a restless wanderer in the earth after he killed his brother Abel (Gen. 4:12). If he had accepted his punishment, the continuing sense of rootlessness may have served as a reminder to him and his progeny to return to God and renounce the spirit of self-direction.

However, Cain chose to fill the restlessness in his life by building a city (4:17). His offspring coped with their purposelessness by engaging in all kinds of cultural activities, from raising livestock, to music and metal crafts (4:20-22). They tried to fill their empty lives with the work of their own hands. The epitome of this kind of effort, of course, was the tower of Babel, that monument to human independence (11:3ff.).

Mankind is the same today. To mask the emptiness of life without God, men are busily filling their lives with all kinds of activity: playing, making, building, watching, listening, going, coming—anything to avoid facing the fact that God has departed. Occasionally an event like the death of a loved one will intrude and the reality will hit home: life without God is busyness without purpose, like a tale told by an idiot.

Even Christians are tempted by the Babel syndrome. When God withdraws his blessing upon us because of active sin in our lives or through a passive failure to implement his revealed will we are apt to try to fill the ensuing emptiness with the work of our own hands. When a husband and wife have a fight, he surfs the Internet for two hours and she cleans out a closet, both filling their time with distracting activity rather than dealing with the relationship in obedience to God's will. Parents sense they need God's work in themselves and their children, but they fill their schedule with sports and shopping and this and that, hoping somehow that all this fretting will add meaning to their lives. Churches, sensing God has withdrawn his blessing, start a building project or add another program to the already harried schedule of the people.

Dust or Destiny?

We need to realize that we cannot redeem ourselves through our own activity. We cannot fill the void in our lives when God withdraws by any amount of busyness. I am afraid that our modern era provides such an array of distracting activities and trivial pursuits that it is easy to intoxicate ourselves with activity. We can even convince ourselves that the sheer busyness of our lives is the fullness God meant for us. Writing of the busyness of church life, Alan Peterson wrote in The Myth of the Greener Grass: "What we thought was the cloud of God's anointing over us was nothing more than the dust of our own activity" (p. 154).

That is true of many Christian families and churches today: they are so busy doing good things that they are sure God must be blessing. But families continue to fall apart, and churches have no power to transform their communities. Why? Because they are trying to redeem themselves through activity rather than returning to God and his word. We cannot create our destiny. God is our destiny. We must return to him. Relationship, not activity, is the fundamental element of life. We must stop our busyness and get to know the living God again. There is no other way. He himself is the fullness of our lives. His will is the purpose of our lives. When he withdraws, we must not distract ourselves with our own works; we must repent. We must get to know him and do what he says.

Many of us are adding home education as another activity which we hope will be the key to help our families prosper spiritually. It will not. The only thing that will so help our homes is the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. Some who have put their hope in homeschooling have already given up on it because it didn't work. God never meant homeschooling to take his place. We should not view home education as something we do to make our family work better. We should view it as obeying the voice of the One who rules our home. He who is our life calls us to raise our children in His way. We just want to do what He says. That is all. The one who calls us into a relationship with Himself calls us into a relationship with our children. So we obey.

Many churches are sensing the withdrawal of God's blessing. Typically we then seek some new method of evangelism, a new discipleship program, a new approach to Sunday School (even an age integrated approach!), a new staff position, and a new addition to the building. The glory has departed and we try to convince ourselves that the dust of all our activity is the glory cloud of God's blessing. But as in our homes, the only thing that will help us is the presence of Jesus and obedience to His revealed will.

Walking With God

Cain's line was not the only human line back then. Scripture tells us that when, after Abel's death, Seth was born and then had a son, "men began to call on the name of the LORD" (Gen. 4:26). One of the descendants of Seth was Enoch who "walked with God" (5:24). Noah was the only righteous man of his day. Instead of relying on his own efforts to give his life meaning and purpose, Noah "walked with God" (6:9) and "did everything just as God commanded him" (6:22).

That is what we need to do in our day. We must not rely on the technology of family and church renewal, ever seeking some new approach, some new gimmick, and some new activity to fill our days. We need to become people who walk with God. We are made for a relationship with Him, and nothing else can substitute. The fruit of that relationship will be that we do what God commands. We will abandon all the busyness that characterizes families and churches and concentrate on being the family and church that are revealed in Scripture, a loving community of people who together walk with God and do his will.

The Rat Race

Why is it that the generation with the most time-saving devices in history seems to have less time for intimate family interaction than those before it? Answer: because our generation (Christians included) substitutes activity for relationships, busyness for intimacy.

People may complain about the rat race, and parents talk like martyrs about how harried they are; but the fact is, they choose to live this way. They enroll themselves and their children in the classes, the clubs, and the camps—the good things that consume the schedule of most families and leave no time for the best things: calm and quiet family times.

Busyness is addictive. The buzz of the frantic daily pace feels satisfying for people who find quiet face-to-face intimacy difficult and unfamiliar. Our generation doesn’t know how to just be together. It doesn’t believe there is a real value in simple, unstructured time together as parents and children. So the schedule is filled with doing—which often means splitting up the family, too.

What Children Really Need

The greatest need of children is not "enrichment" activities, classes, sports and clubs. Their greatest need is for intimate time with their parents and siblings. Children thrive in the uncluttered schedule that has maximum time for those treasures that are found most readily in family spontaneity: warm affection and affirmation, "teachable moments" springing from real life, parental modeling of behavior and attitudes, and a parent-guided awareness of the moment-by-moment activity and love of God.

Home-educating families have rediscovered the sanity of the simple in education: Dad and Mom teaching their own kids in the quiet closeness of the home with its flexible schedule and familiar surroundings. They have escaped one of the greatest time- and intimacy-bandits ever devised: the school classroom. They stand counter-culture because they dare to believe that the home is superior to the classroom for training human beings—and they are certainly correct!

However, they are correct not just because the children receive a better academic preparation, not just because the children are spared the contagion of bad company, and not even just because the children can receive the spiritual training God requires Christian parents to give their children. They are correct—home is superior to the classroom for training children—because it encourages the strengthening of the most important relationship a child has: the parent-child bond.

God gave children to parents, not "professionals." He placed them in families, not classrooms. I believe that the most important work that home-educating parents have today is to rediscover the potential breadth and joyful depth of the parent-child relationship. The danger is that having escaped the defects of the classroom, we will hang onto our culture’s hyperactive extra-curricular lifestyle. Let’s not blunt the potential of our educational choice by copying the frenetic, programmed, family-fragmenting pace of the children of Babel.

It is possible for a family to be involved in outside activities without destroying the intimate hours they need together; and I am not saying you are in sin if you allow your children to be in sports or clubs. I am saying: Watch out! Be careful! Make sure that you don’t fall into the activity-driven lifestyle of your contemporaries. Remember what your children need most: you!

I remember hearing of a father who was a little league coach for his son’s team. This man was shocked when his boy told him that all he really wanted was to play catch in the backyard with his dad. Now not every boy would say that. Many children want the activities—and the busyness may grow addictive to them, too. But it is the father who must decide what is best for the children, whether they agree or not.

Some years ago my oldest son wanted to play baseball on a team. At that time I established a policy for the family: no regular individual activities outside the family except for music lessons. I do not want my family to become driven and fractured by schedule tyrants. Some would say I’m depriving my children. Actually, I think I am protecting them from allowing the good things consume the best things. Your choices may be different, but do err on the side of freedom and time—freedom from unrelenting obligations, and time for unhurried family interaction.

The Simple Is the Best

Here is a gem from a book we once read aloud as a family (Caddie Woodlawn, by Carol Ryrie Brink, p. 84):

The long winter evenings in the farmhouse were very pleasant times. Grouped about the fire and the lamp, the Woodlawns made their own society, nor wanted any better.

Can we say this of our families, that we make our own society, nor want any better? Do we know how to spend a quiet evening together, swapping stories and working on handcrafts as the Woodlawns did? Or do we need some place to go or something to watch on television?

I am struck by two things in this quote. First, the family made their own society, they worked at companionship. It didn’t just happen. They chose to interact with each other, to improve the quality of the natural bonds God had given them. Granted, they didn’t have all the distractions that we have. We are more "free" in the sense that we have more choices, more ways we can spend our time. But I dare say the Woodlawns were freer in fact, because they were not bound to busyness and technology for a sense of fulfillment. They enjoyed the liberty of the simple. It is ironic that in our day we have to work harder to get simpler in our lifestyle. But it is worth the effort. We need, our children need, the simplicity of intimate family society.

Second, the family found these simple family times to be the best times they had. They didn’t endure them, they relished them. They couldn’t imagine a better way to spend an evening! How tragic that in our day families has to make a special effort to plan a "family night." We must have lost the natural enjoyment of family if we have to make ourselves spend time together.

Here again home education has opened new doors for many of us. God is using it to turn parents’ hearts back to their children. Many of us did not grow up in families that spent intimate time together, and it doesn’t come naturally to us. But we are not only learning its importance, we are also learning that there is nothing better!

Take Control of the Schedule

James Dobson has some wise words for fathers (What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women, p. 51):

Prescription for a happier and healthier life: Resolve to slow your pace; learn to say "no" gracefully; resist the temptation to chase after more pleasures, hobbies, and more social entanglements; then "hold the line" with the tenacity of a tackle for a professional football team.

Don’t wait for your wife to get overwhelmed with carting kids to all their engagements. Don’t wait until your children are addicted to the busyness buzz. Act now to regain control of your family’s schedule. Tell them that you love them enough to want to spend more time together. Tell them that you want your life as a family to be more than a shadow life, an idiot-tale full of sound and fury—active but empty. Tell them you want your family to err or the Mary side of the Mary/Martha continuum.

Remember how Martha was bustling around with her preparations while Mary sat at Jesus feet. Martha was an activist. Mary was more concerned for relationships. Here is what Jesus said to Martha when she asked Jesus to make Mary help her: "Martha, Martha, 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. 10:41, 42)

Let’s choose relationships over activities. Let this be a picture of your life as a family: sitting together at the feet of Jesus, spending time with Him and with each other.

Our Shepherd does not lead us in a rat race; He leads us beside quiet waters and restores our souls. Let’s return to a life of quietness and rest in the presence of our Savior. Say "No" to busyness!!!.