4,173 hours wasted.

I’ve never been good at arithmetic, but I enjoy numbers.  There is something about quantitative analysis that I find fascinating.  Statistics, charts, graphs, numbers… they’re great. So the other day I was sitting in class and the idea struck me, just how much time did I spend exclusively on Christianity? Naturally, it is next to impossible to come up with a solid number.  As a Christian, my faith was pervasive through most all aspects of my life.  I’ve avoided the temptation to ‘double dip’ (ex. Inner monologue-type prayer while at work or school is not included; conversations about God are not included, etc.).  I counted up the average number of hours I spent in church, bible studies, doing devotions, etc. during my high school and college years. Of course they are only averages, I did not go to church every Sunday nor did I spend the same amount praying each day, but I’ve come up with what I think is a good approximation:  4,173 hours over a period of seven years spent exclusively on religious activities. That’s roughly 14.7% of my time devoted exclusively to religious activity.
               

 

To put that in perspective, if I slept an average of 6 hours a night, that would come out to 15,288 hours (40.0%).  That means that after sleep and religious activities, less than half of my life was spent on all other activities combined.  Also if 6 months is about 4,300 hours then I spent nearly 6 months of my life in church, reading the bible and praying.  That’s a lot of time.
               
What if I had spent that 14.7% of my time reading?  Say I read a page roughly every 2 minutes. In an hour then, I would read 30 pages. That’s 125,190 pages. That’s a lot of books. What if I had spent that time running? I would be doing marathons left and right.  What if I had spent that time working? At minimum wage, that would have been well over $25,000 earned.

  What if I had donated that time to volunteering at a soup kitchen or a United Way?

I recognize that I am neither dedicated enough to spend all that time on one activity, nor am I future thinking enough to have spent that time doing exclusively productive things.  Not to mention that it is not as if all that time was a waste.  My time as a Christian has helped form me into the person I am now (for better or worse).  It was my Christian youth pastor that virtually forced me to attend college, avoiding what would most certainly have been a life working at a local factory in my home town.  Most of my friends are religious to varying degrees.  The point still remains, I feel somewhat foolish having dedicated that much time to something I ultimately abandoned.