Yesterday at church, Derek Max, the pastor with panache, said in front of the sleepy congregation, “Who here is tired?” I was, but I didn’t want to admit it, nor did I want groupthink to set in before I preached and have a full auditorium of mindless zombies listening to me drone on like a teacher from Charlie Brown, “Maw-maw-maw-maw-ma-ma-maw.”

So I screamed out, for all the church and world to hear, “I am not tired!” I wanted to wake all the sleepers up. But alas, the moment was short-lived, I took a deep breath, and felt my eyelids grow heavy after my busy weekend as the choir sang “Hallelujah” while the offering plate was being passed.

Tired. Why so tired? Why so tired all the time? 

Since it is Monday, the one day of the week where every hibernating bear wants to pull the warm comforter just up past their cold nose to snooze another hour in bed, it seems appropriate to consider this question. And more specifically, I want to analyze whose fault it is for causing my exhaustion? Have you ever pondered that question — whose fault is it?

There are a few possibilities:

1. Henry Ford. It’s the power-hungry white male motor company mogul’s fault, the one person who sparked the gray-smoked laden Industrial Age. In his desire to make big-time profits, he determined he could produce cars efficiently through automation and standardized work hours. So he came up with the idea for the assembly line and the regular workweek for his employees. Monday to Friday you punch in at 9:00, punch out at 5:00 and get overtime pay on Saturdays if you so chose to work. It was a great incentive to squeeze out more production from the hard-scrabbled soul. Now, after years of unionization, mechanization and profit, a robotic mentality for a regular work-week has been hardwired into the mind of almost every American. If you don’t work those hours and you want to go walking the dog instead, guilt arises like a storm. It’s Pavlov’s dog’s behaviorism that drives us and eventually wears us out, where the only exciting thing in life is to have an early retirement so you can feed the pigeons at the local park. As Pink Floyd once sang, “Welcome my son, welcome, to the machine.”
2. The Puritan Work Ethic. Sometimes Christianity is hard, and it is not always for the right reasons. If you take a few regular verses and mix them with the dangerous ingredient of “legalistic demand” you get a toxic stew that can kill your soul. The “legalistic demand” says to your heart, “You must or else!” Or else what? Something bad is going to happen to you, or the Holy God is going to be mad at you. So for instance, take the verse “Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, strength and mind”, it is one of the most well-known axioms found in Christianity. “Legalistic demand’ says “Do it! Or else!” Tell me, how do you actually do this where it is completely fulfilled? if you are not careful it could kill you. How about this verse, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might!” (Ecclesiastes 9:10). How much is all? Legalism says “everything you got until you are exhausted. And if you don’t God is sure to be raving mad.” Listen to two resolutions the puritan writer Jonathan Edwards made when he was a young man that he tried to live by every day of his life. No wonder he never smiled, “Resolved, never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can. Resolved, never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.” Wow, just reading that makes me want to jump off a bridge, I can’t live like that. I am not made to live like that. Grace, the opposite of “legalistic demand” says I am already pleasing to the Father, and this truth frees me up to love him with all I got, and if I don’t, he is still pleased. It is no longer a matter of “I must do” it is “I want to do it.”
3. Donald Trump. Face it, he is always there to blame. It is our communal need to find a scapegoat for our societal ills, and when we fail, or government fails, or the church fails, or community leaders fail, or the cops fail, or the guy who fixes the pot-hole in the street fails, we need a person to point to so we can place blame on him or her…and since Donald Trump won the election in 2016 he is now the chosen and agreed upon beast of burden. And plus, his orange glow adds a strange tint to his complexion which begs you laugh at him. If you don’t believe me, just read the news, he is the one person we can shower our vitriol upon, our condemnation, our name-calling, and utter disdain without feeling like we have done anything wrong. Some people feel justified when they call him a fool, idiot and human miscreant. It may not be fair, and it isn’t even Christian, but it makes sense why people do it. It is so much easier to blame someone else than own the problem and be a solution to the problem.

But even though all of these reasons have a bit of legitimate rational, there truly is only one source for your exhaustion. Here it is, are you ready for it?

Look into the mirror, and say this out loud, “It is all my fault!”

You are the reason you are tired. But we don’t like to hear that. And it doesn’t translate too well. When someone comes up huffing and puffing and weary with their head down, and they say, “I am so tired”, it doesn’t work to say to them, “You know, it is your own fault.” Sounds so cruel to say that. But, it is oh, so, true.

We are tired because we have personal expectations that we must live up to. The house needs to be a certain way, the kids need to be dressed like other kids, sports is their ticket to the future so they better go to every practice, every camp, every weekend event. But is it really? Do you HAVE TO go to everything?

It is your own fault!

You are the one addicted to technology. NO, you don’t need to answer every call, every text, every email, every Snapchat, every Instagram. You don’t need to record every meal, every time your kid does a cartwheel in the living room, every sunset on a peerless clear night. You don’t have to post it.

It is your own fault.

You don’t need to be busy every weekend. You don’t need to compete with the other cool people who are having a glass of white wine at the new restaurant in the city. You don’t need to be the first one to see the movie, watch the play, or join the latest workout craze.

It is your own fault.

But here is the problem, the reason you won’t quit doing all of those things is because you somehow feel you need to prove yourself to everyone. Who is that person you want to impress? Your mom? Your dad? Your sister or brother? Your teacher? Your cool friend? I know it isn’t your pastor, his job is to make you feel good about yourself…and he already knows he fails miserably at it!

So who is left to impress?

And don’t say God. He was already in love with you before you did a single thing to deserve that love. He died for you to prove it. So forget about pleasing him, he is already satisfied. Why then are you so tired? My suggestion, go to the mirror and figure it out. Because honestly, you have nothing to prove to anyone, not even to yourself!