Sleep & Meritocracy
If you’ve followed me online for any length of time, you know how much I talk about sleep and rest. In honor of National Sleep Awareness Month (March), I’d love to explore sleep and rest through a lens I haven’t yet discussed: meritocracy.
As a culture, we hear about the value of rest for our creativity and emotional health. We know the health benefits of sleep. And yet—a hustle culture at our core—we struggle to prioritize rest and sleep.
Now, I understand there are seasons of life in which sleep and spare time are scarce, sacred things. Out of necessity, we coax our not-yet-rested bones out of bed—one hazy, monotonous morning after another—because we must.
And yet, there are many instances in which we continually wear ourselves out because we don’t know how to live another way. In spite of my belief in the value of prioritizing sleep and carving out space for rest, I’m still not particularly good at either.
I imagine we, as people of faith, align ourselves so comfortably with the grind we claim to oppose for one reason: we’ve mistaken the kingdom of God for the meritocracy of the American dream.
I suspect people of faith—people called to rest and surrender—instead live in constant chaos because we assign capitalistic values to God’s Kingdom.
In allegiance to the gospel of our country, we pride ourselves in patterns of overtime, proving our dedication to the dream in our short nights of sleep and perpetual exhaustion. “We must earn our worth” has been deeply engrained in us from the beginning.
It’s no wonder Gospel rest feels foreign to the heartbeat of our lives.
We’re constantly fed opposing narratives from God (“rest in the knowledge that you’re already something, already loved”) and country (“if you work harder, you can amount to something—be somebody”).
Now, I’m not suggesting we embrace laziness or idleness in lieu of hard work. But we can embrace the upside-down way of God that knows when to say “enough” on a day’s work.
The American tenets of sleeping less and working more need not apply to our faith or our self-worth. The kingdom of God is not a meritocracy.
We don’t have to wear ourselves out to earn our worth.
We’re not more loved, more valuable, when we do more.
We’re not worth less when we rest.
As I subconsciously begin telling myself to push a little harder, work a little more, I’ll keep reminding myself: the kingdom of God is not a meritocracy.
For further study on sleep and rest, here are some resources I recommend:
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
Prayer in the Night by Tish Harrison Warren
Here’s more of my content on rest and sleep:
