By John Chandler
Matthew Sleeth is a medical doctor, later-in-life convert to Christianity, activist for creation care, and author of “24/6 — a prescription for a healthier, happier life.” His book about Sabbath is intelligent, intelligible and winsome. His practical suggestions for how to keep Sabbath should be required reading for contemporary North American disciples of Jesus.
We are, Sleeth says, in the first generation since the Hebrews of a massive cultural experiment in which we have traded in the gift of Sabbath for a wretched combination of pace, accessibility and information known as “24/7.” The operative ideals in 24/7 are “more, now, and fast.”
Sleeth knows how to turn a phrase: “Fast living that includes fast food and fast eating may ultimately be slowing us down.” Today, Americans spend less than 80 minutes per day eating meals. In related news, 35 percent of our population has a BMI (body mass index) of over 30. A BMI of 25-30 is overweight; 30+ is considered obese. In 1972, Americans spent 3 billion on fast food. Last year it was over 110 billion. Fast makes us obese.
We not only are addicted to fast food, but to fast information. Peter Drucker classically argued that executive leaders required large blocks of uninterrupted time to synthesize risks, weigh risks and plan strategies. But who has time for that? U.S. Internet users average 13 hours online per week, browsing 99 domains and 3,123 web pages. The time spent on an individual website, however, is just 56 seconds. Where the average response time to an email is 90 minutes, the average response time in the U.S. to a text message is 90 seconds. And today, 90 percent of Americans keep their mobile phones within reach 24/7. We want our information now. Fast makes us dumb.
And, of course, our 24/7 addiction to “fast” makes us tired. By tired, I mean exhausted to the point of an early death. Perhaps the most arresting information Sleeth presents is research demonstrating how Sabbath-keeping communities average life spans of 11 years longer than those of the non-Sabbath-keeping cultures around them. Subtract 52 unkept Sabbaths per year, multiply that pattern over the course of a lifetime, and you have over a decade. Apparently you can keep Sabbath weekly, or it is deducted on the back end of your life. Fast makes you tired — to the point of death.
I am trying to do many things with my life, but becoming more fat, dumb, and tired are not among them. I’m going to have to take a step back to ponder this — a step into Sabbath-keeping.