Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist from Wharton, offers a provocative article in the New York Times about how many feel at the trailing edge of the pandemic. He says that many of us feel languish: There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing.
I have become accustomed to describing the general emotional state (malaise?) of folks in my sphere: weary. This still seems like a fair word. However, the prescription for weariness is rather straightforward. Perhaps a long vacation is in order. Perhaps a visit to the spa. Perhaps some light hiking or a drive in the Smokies in a red convertible. Weariness seems to have several physiological antidotes ready at hand. But not so for languishing, at least, not as ready.
Both weariness and languishing are biblical expressions, at least according to the translators that I read. Languishing shows up in the Bible some 17 times, which is not much. The Hebrew word often used to capture this feeling have to do with drying out, withering away, dwindling. I think of the hood of my Nissan pickup truck slowly delaminating and rusting in the New Mexico sun. That’s languishing, but languishing on the surface. Like the languishing of the land or the vine or the gates or, ahem, world. In the Bible, languishing is more often a deeper malady. Languishing reaches the bones (Psalm 6.2) and, when it’s really bad, even the soul (Jeremiah 31.25; Deuteronomy 28.65).
The ESV translation of the Bible does not use the word, languish, in the New Testament. Scanning the Greek Old Testament, we can find a couple of comparable words, that is, Greek words behind the Old Testament’s use of, languish. When we do this, we find weak (asthenes), melting away (teko), diminish (oligoo, which doesn’t appear in the NT), and mourning (pentheo). Throwing these words together in a stew makes for a rather unpleasant supper. The idea of languishing is that of slowly shrinking or decaying, losing one’s structure over time.
Returning to Adam Grant’s article, he says that the languishing he is witnessing is “a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield.”
Two things that are striking to me:
- First, referring to sociologist, Corey Keys, who coined languishing as a description of mental health, Grant notes that the languishing may turn into depression within a decade. Keys surveyed those currently struggling with depression and anxiety disorders and found that many of them were not depressed ten years prior, but many of them were languishing. There is evidence from Italy to suggest that those who were languishing in the spring of 2020 are three times more likely than their peers to develop depression.
- Second, languishing is not always recognized by the one languishing. Grant says, “you might not notice the dulling of delight or the dwindling of drive. You don’t catch yourself slipping slowly into solitude; you’re indifferent to your indifference.”
There you have it: the languishing may develop into more, this even though those languishing are not aware that they are languishing. This reminds me of the small impurity that enters the system and wreaks havoc while barely noticed, like a minutely off-center casing of a tiny pipe in a jet engine can, over time, lead to complete engine failure (this from having just read Simon Winchester’s excellent, The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World).
And yet, for the Christian, languishing is no guarantee of disintegration. The Bible can be no clearer that Jesus is the ultimate Comforter to our mourning (Matthew 5.4). In His life and ministry is the very comfort for all who mourn. The gospel promises this for Jesus is Himself the oil of gladness and the garment of praise for those who languish (Isaiah 61.2-3). The Christian hope is that, just as sure as we suffer, we can be sure that we will not only be comforted in our suffering (2 Corinthians 1.7), but even exalted by God Himself (James 4.10). The gospel that promises eternal salvation also promises comfort amidst our mourning. The two promises are one.
Those who languish may occasionally feel that they are “poured out like water,” that their “bones are out of joint,” that their “heart is melted within [their] breast,” and that their “strength is dried up like a potsherd (Psalm 22.14-15).” Adam Clark cringingly suggests that they may not actually feel these things, that they are indifferent to their indifference. This matters less than we might think. The gospel that brings salvation is the gospel that brings comfort. At a recent church event I panicked because a child almost toppled over backwards right off the stage; I would lunge for the child regardless of the height of the stage. Our Father cares for us whether or not we realize our own danger. A promise of the gospel is God’s care for me even amidst my own blindness.
The languishing, often enough, truly feel their languishing. In the Bible, suffering is real suffering (see again 2 Corinthians 1.7). And yet again, the mystery of the gospel is that this languishing is neither the end of the story (it is not eternal), and neither is it really the middle of the story (defining the present). Even in the now of the present, amidst real suffering, God’s present comfort is near. This is no doubt what’s behind God’s word affirming that Christians do indeed grieve, yet they do not grieve as others do (1 Thessalonians 4.13). Their grief, indeed their languishing, is never an all-consuming, hopeless guarantee of deeper and deeper depression after the pandemic rolls back its veil.
Recall the lamentation above of the one whose bones were out-of-joint and heart melted and whose strength dried up like discarded cookware. That same individual of Psalm 22, in the same psalm, reminds us of this:
“For he has not despised or abhorred
the affliction of the afflicted,
and he has not hidden his face from him,
but has heard, when he cried to him (Psalm 22.24).”
This is the true nature of a life that feels languishing. The gospel tells us that the God who saves is a God who delights to work through our weakness, even that He might show us and others His own strength. Being in no position to boast ourselves, we become in His hands an instrument in which He may do His own boasting (1 Corinthians 1.27-29). How odd are these words must be to someone without the hope delivered to us through the gospel: “I will boast of the things that show my weakness (2 Corinthians 11.30).” The acknowledgment of our own weakness is mysteriously related to the implications of the gospel, namely, that our weakness serves to remind us that God is always at work in us and through us, a work that ought to comfort us (1 Corinthians 9.22-23).
What are the alternatives to finding comfort in our languishing through the work of Jesus in the gospel? Adam Grant offers a smattering of ideas that are good, even very good: immersive flow, uninterrupted time, and small goals within small challenges. These are good. But may they never be permitted to be all. There is a better antidote for languishing.
