Writing For CMDA, TMC Alumna Emmy Yang, MTS ’21, MD ’22, offers Theological Reflections on Time and Work
“Pastor and theologian Simon Carey Holt writes, “Prolonged busyness is a state of violence…to the human soul, the community, and earth.”[i] This violence manifests in medicine in high rates of burnout, moral injury, healthcare worker attrition and poor patient outcomes.[ii],[iIiAgainst a cultural background of optimization, described by Anne Helen Petersen as the “dominant millennial condition,”[iv] time is lost for therapeutic alliances: between clinicians and patients and clinicians and their communities. Time and human labor become commodities for optimization.
For Christians, these insults invite reflections on what Scripture and theological tradition teach us about time—specifically, our relationship to time and its Creator. As a student of the Theology, Medicine, and Culture fellowship at Duke Divinity School[v] and a physician-in-training, I was consumed by these questions and desired to learn how we heal from the “violence” of busyness.
For those weary and burdened, I offer these five biblical and theological reflections.”