Burnout Syndrome

   I do not want to write another treatise on the burnout syndrome. A lot of them can surely be found on the Web. I am concerned about what happens in many churches and what is detrimental to health in the long term. People are often strongly encouraged in churches to serve God with all their energy, to engage in all kinds of activities etc. It holds true especially for charismatic churches and congregations of “word of faith and super-faith movement”, nevertheless, it happens also in traditional churches, albeit to a lesser extent.

   Do you wonder what can be wrong about “working at full stretch for God”? The issue has several aspects.

   We need to check and know our motives. What is the driving force that makes us engage in activities for God? If it is the assurance that we have been forgiven, that we are loved and accepted as God’s sons or daughters, everything is all right. However, if our reason for doing it is our “fear of hell”, our effort is doomed in the long term – we will be overcome by aversion to any activity at all and by anger at God who will have become in our view a mere bailiff who waits for any hesitation or failure of ours. If we work for God to deserve His love, we have not understand anything. We do not need to deserve God’s love. God has always loved us, even so much that He sent His beloved son Jesus in a human body to the earth to save us.

   One of the worst motives to work for God is remorse. Whether provoked by emotional appeals of preachers or genuinely felt by ourselves, it need to be examined by reason. By the way, it is often the doing of the evil one who tries, through remorse, to drive us into excessive activities, followed by exhaustion and perhaps even departure from the living God. As the Scripture says, there are two kinds of sorrow: the godly sorrow and the sorrow of the world:

2 Corinthians 7, 10-11: For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death. For observe this very thing, that you sorrowed in a godly manner: What diligence it produced in you, what clearing of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what vehement desire, what zeal, what vengeance! In all things you proved yourselves to be clear in this matter..

   Therefore, if the remorse you are feeling in respect of the work for God is justified, then resist your laziness and indolence and start doing something. If it is only destructive remorse, just STOP it! You will probably have to ask somebody who knows you well to help you asses the real state of affairs (you had better not ask those fervid preachers :-) .

   Whatever may appear to you, having only limited resources, none of us is able to give more than actually possesses. Neither our heavenly Father nor Jesus want us to fall from exhaustion in our following them. We often burden ourselves with heavier or different loads than we should. Not asking God about what He want us to do, we dive hastily into all sorts of “God-pleasing” activities and services in or outside the church. Jesus said something very interesting:

Matthew 11, 28-30: Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.

   It does not look like a state of exhaustion or a “burnout syndrome”, which is becoming ever more common nowadays, does it? Jesus, like all the others, had to eat, sleep and rest. Although he prayed all night at one time (Luke 6, 12), at another time he fell asleep from fatigue even in unusual situations - e.g. during a fierce storm in a boat (Matthew 8, 24). Experiencing in his body everything like other people, Jesus sympathized with them. When, having returned from their mission to gain experience, his twelve disciples recounted what they had been doing, Jesus did not send them to other villages to continue their work; rather, he told them to rest a bit:

Mark 6, 30-32: Then the apostles gathered to Jesus and told Him all things, both what they had done and what they had taught. And He said to them, Come apart by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while. For there were many coming and going, and they did not even have opportunity to eat. So they departed to a deserted place in the boat by themselves.

   Don’t expect from yourselves more than God does! The design of the human body is marvellous. If you are tired, you need only to eat and sleep to restore your strength. However, there is a limit to everything. An extreme exhaustion may lead even to death (e.g. the well-known case of the first unofficial marathoner). After long-term, repeated physical and mental overtaxing without sufficient regeneration, the state of exhaustion may become “chronic”. It is similar to breaking the clock spring. Sleeping , eating, viewing a film or playing a game doesn’t help any more. When this happens, people often lose all zest, stamina and the meaning of their lives. Suddenly they are not even able to get up and go to work. Every little thing becomes a problem. And this condition is difficult to manage even with professional help...

   Don’t let it go so far! Life is not just work and duties. Not to end up with some form of depression, we need to “recharge our batteries”. Besides air, food, and drink we need also sleep, rest and entertainment. And all this has its place in God’s plan for our lives...