Quiet Quitting!

But now in a single victorious stroke of life all three – sin, guilt, death – are gone. The gift of our Master Jesus Christ, our Lord. With all this going for us my dear, dear friends, stand your ground, and don’t hold back. Throw yourselves into the work of the Master confident that nothing you do for Him is a waste of time or effort. 1 Corinthians 15:57-58

There’s a new trend floating around these days called quiet quitting. I have to admit that I was completely oblivious to this until a woman in my aerobics class pointed out that members of the staff at the workout facility were participating in quiet quitting. Quiet quitting refers to doing the minimum requirements of one’s job, and putting in no more time, effort, or enthusiasm than absolutely necessary! The employees don’t believe in staying late, arriving early, or staying for non mandatory job meetings or extra activities.

It’s a sad commentary on a culture when employees slack off because their job is so unrewarding that there is no pride or joy in a good well done. The job market is so tight at this point, that employers have been forced to tolerate this behavior because employees are so hard to replace. In a Gallup survey results showed 32% of workers were engaged in their respective jobs, 18% were making no secret of their dissatisfaction with their job, and 50% were quiet quitters meaning they were dissatisfied with their job but didn’t broadcast the fact!

A friend of ours who is a successful businessman often visits the offices of his company early in the morning or late in the afternoon to walk around and see what’s going on with his employees. He reported that less than 20% of the workforce arrived before 10 and even less remained late in the day to finish up the day’s work. Many never bothered to show up but rather said they were working from home on several of his visits.

His remedy was genius! He sent out a memo inviting everyone to Breakfast with the Boss. As expected, almost everyone accepted the invitation. Next, he amended the invitation with the place and the time. The time was 5:00 am. Now our friend is an early riser, so he arrived at 4:30 am and waited to see who would show up early. Interestingly, not only were only 5% of the employees early, but over half straggled in late. Is this an example of quiet quitting or just a picture of our society these days?

The sad thing is that quiet quitting is also becoming apparent in other nonwork aspects of our lives such as marriages, relationships, spiritual life, and church life. Covid 19 left many people with the quiet quitting mentality. Our world was suddenly smaller, and we suffered from loneliness, isolation, and fear, but we also became content to quit on a lot of the things that made our lives meaningful. We took the lack of things we needed to sustain our life, and substituted other less important things. Some people quit on their marriage, some quit on their job, some people quit on friendships, some quit on their health, some quit on their church, and others quit on God. The trouble is, we have never taken those things back, we just quit on them and cut them out of our life.

Scott Peck reminds us in his book The Road Less Traveled that “Life is hard. All of life’s music is not in perfect harmony. What starts out to be a symphony becomes a cacophony, and discordant notes can dominate the score.”

So, how do we avoid quiet quitting in our lives? First, we need a change of perspective on life and our view of it. We should shift our thinking from quitting on this life because we believe it has treated us wrongly to the nearness of God and the fact that He is stronger than our pain and provides a light in the darkness. Even Paul carried a thorn in his side, but instead of quitting, he said, “I can do all things through God who strengthens me.” He had the right perspective.

Next, it would be helpful to return to many of the things upon which we quit, and renew the joy they brought to our lives. We need to persevere.

Finally, go back to our trusting God and others. Robert Burns said, “We need to have some certainty, some things that we can trust, some one who will stand with us and for us.” So many things that we encounter in this every day life is not worthy of our trust, but there is one who is always trustworthy. C.S. Lewis said, “Look for yourself and you will find hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him. and with Him everything else is thrown in.” Only trust Him.

Quiet quitting is still quitting, and as a Christian that is not an option. He called us to be doers not quitters, and we need to be about doing His work all around us! Don’t quit!