In Praise of Uselessness

I’ve created a new space on this site that was really what this page was originally about: a place to write anything. I’m calling it the “wanderlog.” This ultimately is a category to protect me from me, to give me permission to write anything without purpose, without apology. Of course, I very much hope that it’s not useless, but I’m giving myself permission to be useless.

And really, that’s an important value to protect. Usefulness is good, but the world pushes you to make it ultimate. I may have shared this before (maybe I should give myself permission to be repetitive, too!) but I really connected with something I heard on Peter Bregman’s leadership podcast years ago. He said he has a tendency to turn his hobbies into projects, and almost without meaning to, he would find that he keeps repeating this cycle of professionalizing.

You may laugh and wonder how I relate to that since I currently walk around with an imaginary “master of none” sign on my back. He does it better, don’t get me wrong. But I feel the same pull to take something I enjoy and professionalize it. I can’t just journal; I feel compelled to write books, to improve in the craft, hone a message, build an audience, and find a publisher. I can’t just build a loft bed for my son; I feel compelled to practice, refine, get better tools, build better things, maybe start selling some of them. I can’t just write songs; I have to record them, produce them, refine, share, monetize, etc. I can’t simply teach; I want to be a teacher. I can’t simply learn; I want to be a scholar. I can’t simply counsel; I want to be a counselor.

I imagine this is just part of living in 21st century America. Technology and social media have given us the tools to access vast amounts of knowledge, to DIY anything, to monetize anything, build your own brand. There’s an invitation—for anything you want to do—to do it better, do it for money, and find your identity in it.

My problem is not lack of interest or lack of aptitude, but lack of focus. But I’ll save that thought for another day.

Casting aside the details, my first blog very gradually turned into a professional online presence. So I created a second one. And that one gradually turned into a different kind of professional online presence. This is partly because there is a pressure—often self-imposed—to curate your online image, to carry yourself a certain way. And this is probably more true in some disciplines than others. But whether on the altar of professionalism or to some other god, “just write” eventually gets sacrificed to “just write something amazing.” And what counts as amazing? Well, it sure isn’t useless!

Don’t get me wrong. Usefulness is great. Everything has a purpose, and without purpose, I don’t know that anything could exist. Even our most useless moments are made possible by thousands of useful components.

I want to be useful. I find joy in serving others. We also play a role in God’s plan that lends itself to talk of being “used by” Him. It comes up when Paul talks about being clay in the Potter’s hand, crafted for one purpose or another. It comes up in images of the church, where a part contributes to the body, or a living stone contributes to the greater structure.

Further, God gives us spiritual gifts so that we can help one another. We are to use them for each other, and by extension make ourselves useful in these ways.

Usefulness is good. Isn’t it?

I was recently trying to explain to a friend my beef with Pragmatism. It’s not that being useful is bad. It’s not that being better is bad. The problems arise when you look at “to what end?” and “in what context?”

All things being equal, it’s better to help more people than fewer. All things being equal, it’s better to do something well than to do it poorly. All things being equal, it’s better to be efficient rather than wasteful. All things being equal, it’s better to fit the medium to the message. All things being equal, it’s better to to maximize impact.

But all things are never equal. Ever. It’s a thought experiment. It’s an imagined world. In the real world, there is always a context, and in that context, bigger may not be better, efficient may not be better, polished may not be better, and, paradoxically, better may not be better. There’s the cost of resources to do the thing, whether time, money, etc. There’s the potential for your thing to compete with other goods, not just in production but in the life of the consumer. There’s the unintended consequences of attributing value to one thing and, by implication, devaluing whatever is not being emphasized. There’s human nature, there’s the cost of amplifying a mistake, etc., etc.

These costs don’t mean “stop trying to be better!” They just need to be factored in. Sometimes slower is better, fewer is better, messy is better. The first problem of Pragmatism is that we tend to take the one thing we’re trying to improve and make it ultimate. Then more and more things become instrumentalized toward one end. And the more we emphasize their usefulness toward that end, the more we endanger their inherent worth and their role in other systems toward other goods.

And then of course, there is the more basic problem of “what are you chasing?” Is what you think is good really, actually good? Do you really need fame? Do you really need membership in that club? Do you really need more people than you can serve at your current capacity? So there are good things that become corrupt by being made ultimate, and there are sketchy things that we chase that really aren’t worth our time. I’m sure there are better examples, but for now, let’s move on.

If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. It’s worth doing poorly, too, but (all things being equal!) do it well if you can. If you can’t, there are probably times you need to stop. But why assume that you should? Let’s say making food is worth doing, but you can’t do it well. Would you starve because someone else does it better? Of course, you don’t want to poison anyone, and maybe you shouldn’t set up a stand by the roadside, but if it’s worth doing, do it! Dare to be less than the best.

But I would challenge you to more than that. Don’t content yourself with simply being bad at something. Dare to be useless. Dare to leave money on the table, potential untapped.

Why? Well, there are all the concerns I mentioned above about context and pursuing bad ends or making the wrong thing ultimate. But I believe it goes deeper than that. I think our interest in usefulness is itself a good thing that has become twisted by being made ultimate. We so quickly move from wanting to help to being seen as a helper, then to finding our identity in helping, then to feeling lost when we can’t help. We so quickly move from valuing someone to valuing their contribution, then to measuring them by their contribution, then to writing them off when they don’t contribute enough. So whether we are measuring ourselves or someone else, who we are and whether we are loveable comes down to a measure of utility.

Dare to be useless. Dare to love the useless. Not as an excuse to be lazy or apathetic or in any other way to promote some alternative destructive value. We need to recognize that some things have value not because they do something but because they simply are.

Consider the idea of rest. I have a tenuous relationship with rest. It seems wasteful. “Sleep is for the weak.” Rest is for people who aren’t determined enough, who are content with less. I have gotten better at this as an adult as I realize I need rest in order to be restored, and that this is a good gift from God and not merely a form of coddling.

But so far, my idea of rest is still tied to its utility. When God rested on the seventh day, it did Him no good. It was a good thing, don’t get me wrong, but because He did not exhaust Himself, it wasn’t restorative. You might reply that He used it to set an example, and I’ll grant this. He is wise and has His reasons. But the example He sets is one that need not be restorative. It may be ceasing for its own sake. It may just be without accomplishing one agenda or another. It comes with permission for dignified uselessness.

Now, I realize I risk stepping on toes here. Some traditions take Sabbath very seriously, and I don’t mean to say that it shouldn’t be an opportunity for worship or that it precludes the possibility of doing something else that is somehow restful in a different way. I don’t mean to empty Sabbath rest of any of these good things. I simply want to make the case that there may be room in the Sabbath for dignified uselessness. Maybe, just maybe, one day a week can be free from the very idea of accomplishment. It can just be without any consideration of being for.

This is why I think we should dare to be useless. Because the very thought of uselessness seems like heresy, like wickedness, like debauchery. But as Christians, we know that there are some people whose usefulness is very difficult to measure, but their value remains untarnished. We know that an unborn baby is valuable not because it has potential or because it makes her parents feel good, but simply because she is. Value without use. We know that someone at the end of life may have lost physical and mental faculties, even to the point of being unresponsive, and yet their value is not indexed to inability. He is valuable not because of legacy or independence, but simply because he is. Not because he is for. The same can be said for people in the middle of life who are unable by one measure or another. Is their utility hampered? Maybe. Their value? Not on your life.

Dare to be useless, to love useless things, to break the tie between value and impact, worth and work, praiseworthiness and potential.

Now, you might say, (and I confess, I hope you would), “Josh, that was a helpful thing you just said.” Does that undermine the point? Aren’t useful blog posts better than useless ones? Contexts and ends, my friend. Contexts and ends. In this case, it is only because I was willing to risk uselessness that I even started typing.

“Aha!” you say, “so uselessness is a useful idea!” Well, I suppose it was today. I don’t think my point requires uselessness to persist in itself or to become a dominant value. I simply need to accept it as part of life, and accept the possibility that actual uselessness need not be a threat or a sin. Maybe it’s not possible for any good or true idea to be completely fruitless; but I suspect it’s not necessary for the content of the idea to somehow govern the nature or quality of the idea itself. I’ll save that debate for another time. For now I’m content to simply push back against the cult of pragmatism and leave it at that.