Confession: I am still in my LL Bean flannel pajamas in front of a roaring fire. It is well past morning.

I am thinking about a concept called "idleness aversion."

Idleness aversion is something the German sociologist Max Weber called "one of the core ingredients of the modern soul."

Oliver Burkeman defines it as "not wanting to rest." It is the idea that we find it "seriously unpleasant to pause in our effort to get things done." The refusal to give ourselves permission to cease our relentless productivity.

I am not experiencing idleness aversion today. It is Sunday, and Sundays come with what feels like permission to rest from the Universe itself.

Normally, though, idleness aversion runs wild in my soul. I know I am not alone.

And do you know where a great deal of blame can get placed for that aversion?

Burkeman tells us:

"It first emerged ... among Christians in northern Europe, who believed in the doctrine of predestination--that every human, since before they were born, had been preselected to be a member of the elect, and therefore entitled to spend eternity with God after death, or else as one of the damned, and thus guaranteed to spend it it hell."

YIKES!

Those who carried this Calvinist worldview believed that "relentless hard work" was the way they demonstrated to the world (perhaps even to God?) that they were part of the chosen, rather than part of the damned.

Overwork, never-ending productivity, and the inability or unwillingness to rest have origins with our European ancestors. They had a desperate religious fear and a wish to prove they were chosen by God to go to heaven.

People worked ceaselessly to show their good favor with God.

Idleness was a sign of future damnation.

This was such an enlightening bit of information for me. Idleness aversion isn't solely a personal character flaw. It flows from my forefathers and mothers. It lives in my DNA.

We value hard work because our great-great-great-great-great-great grandfathers and grandmothers believed hard work demonstrated divine approval. And idleness was a sign of the opposite.

But I believe in grace, not the arbitrary sorting hat of Calvinism.

And grace preaches a gospel of rest. It claims there is nothing we can do to ever earn the favor of God.

So, doing nothing is as lovely as doing something.

Sometimes, even more.

And when I rest, I am subversively standing up to the incessant demands of capitalism. I am also rejecting a Calvinistic worldview I no longer adhere to.

When I rest, I preach grace to myself.

And maybe even to you.

What do you make of that?

Photo by Rodolfo Sanches Carvalho on Unsplash