The Folly of Hurry

Consider for a moment how much of your time is spent in a rush. We are constantly on the move and trying to pack as much into our days as humanly possible.  We stretch ourselves thin with the various activities in which we are engaged.  Our culture is infatuated with productivity and schedules.  Many have bought into the lie that we only have worth if we are constantly busy with something.  We almost wear how busy we are as a badge of honor.  We live in a consumer culture. We are seemingly obsessed with the latest gadgets that promise to simplify and enhance, but in reality enable us to pack more and more into our already busy lives. The question we all must ask ourselves is, “Does hurry help us?” 

We seem to be content floating down the rushing river of life without ever asking where the river is going and why we are on it.  Plato quotes Socrates as saying; “The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.”  Hurry hinders examination about our purpose, what life is about, and what is truly important.  How many times have you said to yourself, “I would do ________ (insert what you are passionate about or what is important to you) if I only had time.”  We supposedly live in a “progressive” and “enlightened” age.  Can the epidemic of ‘hurry’ that we witness really be considered progress? 

Richard Foster, in his book “The Celebration of Disciple” said the following: “In contemporary society our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry, and crowds.  If he can keep us engaged in ‘muchness’ and ‘manyness,’ he will rest satisfied.  Psychiatrist Carl Jung once remarked, ‘Hurry is not of the Devil; it is the Devil.’” Consider a study conducted at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1973.  The study aimed to discover whether there was a correlation between how much of a hurry someone is in and their willingness to help someone in immediate need.  Goldsmith reports, “A group of theology students were told to go across campus to deliver a sermon on the topic of the Good Samaritan. As part of the research, some of these students were told that they were late and needed to hurry up. Along their route across campus, the researchers had hired an actor to play the role of a victim who was coughing and suffering.  Ninety percent of the "late" students in Princeton Theology Seminary ignored the needs of the suffering person in their haste to get across campus. As the study reports, ‘Indeed, on several occasions, a seminary student going to give his talk on the parable of the Good Samaritan literally stepped over the victim as he hurried away!’”  If hurriedness causes us to think less, focus less on what is important, and make us less likely to help those in need, why are we so addicted to it?  How can we correct this problem?

One has said that if we truly want to focus on what is important in life, we must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from our lives.  This does not mean that we withdraw to the hills to live life as a hermit.  John Wesley said, “Though I am always in haste, I am never in a hurry.”  We are to be engaged in meaningful activity. Such is wholesome, honorable and necessary to life.  God created us to be workers (Gen. 1:27-28; Dt. 5:13; Ecc. 2:24).  However, we should be deliberate about not letting work and activity consume our lives to the point where we are perpetually in a ‘hurry’ at the expense of spending time in things that are most important. The Preacher of Ecclesiastes writes that God “has made everything appropriate in its time” (Ecc. 3:11).  The point is there should be a balance in the way we spend our time and recognize the need for such.

Getting rid of hurry does not happen by accident. Thomas Kempis said, “All desire peace, but very few desire those things that make for peace.”  The tides of culture do not change instantly.  However, I would like to think there are enough thoughtful people who would consider the folly of the hurry epidemic and would want to rethink how we spend our time and mental energy.