Fatigued on Mondays
The Monday after I speak at a church is typically a slump day. I’m tired. It’s been that way since 1997 when I started preaching. Back around 2000, a fellow pastor and I were talking about Mondays. He said he was always energized on Mondays and suggested there must be something wrong with me. I, too, should be pumped up, especially since preaching is a high privilege and a work of God. He also suggested that I might be in sin or was having spiritual issues. Since he was a seasoned pastor and older, his comments made me explore what was wrong with me. So, I talked with another fellow pastor who was also a Nouthetic counselor. Sure enough, since he too was invigorated from preaching and had plenty of energy for Mondays, there must be something wrong with me. He suggested I had faulty, sinful thinking about preaching or Sundays. Also, I was probably undisciplined. Getting to bed around 7:30 or 8:00 PM on Saturdays was imperative. Perhaps praying more on Saturdays and during Sundays would help, along with confessing every sin I could think of? Another thing I should do was read more of the Bible, memorize scriptures and the sermon.
The problem was guilt and shame
It was apparent the root of my problem was spiritual. My heart was not right. And of course, the way to deal with that was to make sure my heart was right with God and to get a good night’s sleep on Saturdays. The advice from these two older pastors did not help. It only heaped guilt on me and weighed me down further. Worse, this “counsel” shamed me. One definition of psychological, helpful guilt is “a feeling of psychological discomfort about somethings we’ve done that is objectively wrong” (www.NICABM.com ). The challenge was trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. I must be blinded to my sins. Sure, God forgave me in Christ, but I needed to purge those temporal sins.
Elders to the rescue with more guilting
The pastor-counselor told the elders at the church where I served that something was wrong with me and encouraged them to help me overcome the problem so I would not be tired on Mondays. They proposed I take Fridays off instead of Mondays. That might discipline me to overcome wrong thoughts or discover what is causing my fatigue. More guilt. This is what I later learned is called unhelpful guilt. Unhelpful guilt is defined as “a feeling of psychological discomfort about something we’ve done against our irrationally high standards” (ibid).
Now, these two pastors and others like them would argue that we are supposed to press toward those high standards and that when it comes to spiritual things, there are no irrationally high standards. An unofficial survey found that a bit less than half the pastors in our presbytery were also tired on Mondays. They felt no guilt about it. But from time to time, the one pastor would tease me about Mondays. Occasionally, the pastor-counselor would check on me and remind the elders they needed to help me.
Shame on me
A simple inquiry about being tired on Mondays now became a matter of shame. Shame is “an intensely painful feeling of being fundamentally flawed.” The problem had morphed from something wrong I was doing to something horrible about me. I was defective, which in our particular Presbyterian circles was unacceptable. A few years later, I read a book on Christian leadership that encouraged pastors and others who did public speaking to rest on Mondays. The author pointed out some studies that found public speaking uses as much energy as rigorous physical exercise. He said that an hour of public speaking was comparable to an hour of playing football. My physician confirmed this is the case with many public speakers. She also said, given my body’s auto-immune challenges, I had little physical reserves to bank on. The fellow pastors dismissed that saying such studies were worldly and could not be trusted. Besides, their own lives refuted those findings.
Freedom from false piety and flawed thinking
Since leaving that presbytery, I no longer feel guilt or shame about being tired on those Mondays after preaching. The pastors and elders would argue that I was suppressing the truth about my sins and blind to my defects. But based on what? You see, this is the kind of flawed thinking and false piety fundamentalists have. Yes, fundamentalism. Fundamentalist (legalistic and Pharisaical) Presbyterians might be the worst? Why? Because they not only (rightly) emphasize God’s Law, but they add the burden of thousands of their own rules. They do so in the name of holiness. However, where in the Bible does it support their assumptions and rules? This is a false spirituality and manmade piety. This is a flawed view of sanctification
Though they would deny it, they also discount or ignore the impact of Christ’s Gospel. Christ paid for my guilt on the cross. Christ receives me as righteous and makes me his child. Christ removes shame because, though judged as flawed by others, in Christ I am not defective. Yes, Presbyterian Fundamentalists would agree that I am a Christian saved by grace, where sin and guilt are taken care of by Jesus. But they would argue that Christians, especially pastors, need to discipline themselves for true godliness and deal with temporal sins through daily repentance to root out sin. That includes repenting from the sins causing fatigue.
Those are manmade rules. Those are laws derived from faulty thinking and flawed theology. Those are rules manufactured by people who can easily follow them to show how holy they are and how unholy others are. But they are not God-derived, biblical rules.
They can hold onto such false pietism, but I no longer will. The truth is, in Christ I am free. In Christ, you are free! There is no sin in being tired or taking off Mondays to rest. And thank God I am free from the world of oppressive fundamentalism.