The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to stay emotionally healthy and spiritually alive in the chaos of the modern world

Comer opens Chapter 1 by recounting a conversation between two mentor figures in his life, John Ortberg and Dallas Willard (See: Key Figures). Ortberg asks Willard, “What do I need to do to become the me I want to be?,” to which Willard replies, “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life” (18-19). This quote, the inspiration for the book’s title, leads Comer to an examination of the social and spiritual issues which the problem of hurry causes in contemporary society. He insightfully notes that most people, when asked how they are doing, will reply that they are doing well, but are busy.

Busyness has become such an inextricable part of modern life that many people don’t even notice how much of a hold it has on their lives. This is true across most subsets of Western populations, including Christians (and especially, Comer notes, among pastors). However, there is a troubling problem there, because most of the highest values which Christians hold to—love, joy, peace, and so on—are all virtues which require deep attention to the present moment; they can’t be rushed. So if busyness and haste are among the defining attributes of our culture, then it is a culture that will likely fail to produce the love, joy, and peace that are meant to be hallmarks of the Christian way of living: “The message is clear [in our culture]: slow is bad, fast is good.