Where strivings cease and self-actualising flees
What kind of story am I living in? Do I just hustle my way onwards? Am I free to do and become what I like?
I am walking with my two sons and my wife. It is a Friday—my day off from my ministry commitments. My daughter is at school. We’re in a scrub-enclosed area near our home. A concrete track runs underfoot. My younger son rides contentedly as I push his stroller. My older son is walking (or skipping or sprinting or jumping or something else).
I’ve not always appreciated my weekly day off. Too many have been filled with a restless angst—to achieve, to make progress, to strive. Whether it’s with household chores, house work, or creative pursuits, I’ve often been aimed towards an outcome. That day was unusual. I wasn’t checking my phone to read the news, or to scroll social media. I wasn’t worrying about how I could be more focussed, or squeeze in five minutes of a podcast while cleaning the kitchen benches and distractedly answering one of my children’s questions. I was embracing the present.
It’s perhaps a small sign of change in me that has come imperfectly. Honestly I’ve taken two steps forward, and a few back (if steps can illustrate rest). I’ve been learning to be more attuned to my present circumstances and all I have to be grateful to God for. I have been re-learning about the Sabbath command and its ongoing application to us in the church. I have been appreciating the freedom of having no benchmark to reach. This journey of learning has been a grace.
In part I’m embracing my freedom to have an inconclusive pathway. It’s a unique gift of Christianity. I don’t need to ascend a ladder, or one-up others. While our culture tells us to bend a life arc one day at a time, at least one day a week I can let mine go awry.
Of all the aspects of Christianity, perhaps this is one of the most underrated.
The Christian story as a whole is not a story of what I must “do” but what Christ has “done”. That is a cliche, but it is true.
Martin Luther once said the doctrine by which the church stands or falls is that of justification by faith alone. The Protestant reformation unearthed that it is Christ’s completed work which gives us a right standing with God. We hold out empty hands to receive Jesus’ nail marked hands for us.
Ephesians 2 is a famous passage about this: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)
Romans 4 is perhaps even more stark: “…to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness.” (Romans 4:5 )
The modern tendency toward hustling, ascending, striving, and running, is absent here. At the heart of the gospel is an empty-handedness. Worse, we are broken beyond repair, and must come that way. God doesn’t want us to try to search for a self-made shower, a human hose-down, or a creaturely clean up. He wants us to come to Jesus with our dirty clothes on. Jesus wants the weak and powerless, since there is no other kind of person in the end. The blood of Christ is for a complete not a partial cleansing.
That’s what the idea of baptism represents—it is an outward sign of the internal work of Christ. Forgiveness only works if there’s sin to forgive. Grace only enlivens those who are spiritually dead. “Christianity is a crutch for the weak,” is only a critique in the way that “King of the Jews” was a mockery of Jesus. Yes it is. And yes he is.
Let me take an odd turn, then, and talk about fiction.
I make this shift not because I believe Jesus is fictional. The opposite is true. I believe he is historical and his identity is unveiled across the pages of the Bible. Nevertheless, an analogy from fiction might help to explain something of what it means to follow Jesus in the 21st century.
The first century disciples got to witness Jesus. They walked with him. He healed some of them. He read some of their minds. They experienced miraculous care as God’s flock on the ‘green grass’—those who had found their Good Shepherd (Mark 6:39). Some were mistreated for their association with Jesus. They testified to him saying: “He told me everything I ever did” (John 4:39).
What does it mean to follow Jesus today? The orthodox Christian commitment is that we believe Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, died under Pontius Pilate, was buried, rose and ascended to heaven. We also believe he poured out his Holy Spirit and will come again to judge the living and the dead. That is the Christianity I affirm in the words of the Apostle’s Creed, along with the saints across the ages. But these propositional truths have a dynamic lived experience, as we engage with a personal Lord.
Back to fiction, then. There are broadly two kinds of fictional stories.
On the one hand there are plot-driven stories big on adventure, clues, developments, tensions and resolutions. On the other hand there are character-driven stories full of psychological turmoil, developments of resolve, conversations, and moral transformations. In the world of publishing these are sometimes called genre fiction (plot stories) and literary fiction (character stories).
In one sense the modern, secular west schools us to feel as if our lives are like genre fiction. We are like the character looking to: stand out at school, make a first break, find a first love, perhaps nearly lose it all, only to survive to find greater success. That kind of thing is supposedly the good life today.
Here is the analogy.
As a Christian living in 21st century Australia, I am living in a story that is both plot-driven and character-driven. And yet the plot differs so much from the one dished to us in our secular context that it might hardly be in the same category. And the character developments are often more painful than they are romantic. They usually involve my hands being prised off the steering wheel of my life and the universe so these can be given back to God, again.
What is the plot? I am meant to live out the story Jesus started and will finish. So it is not a story of my own self-actualisation. John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress shows us that side of things. As his main character ‘Christian’ makes his perilous journey to the Celestial City, he faces impossible ‘dangers, toils and snares’ arrayed against him. And yet he is sent on the journey, and guided through it by God’s initiative.
NT Wright’s fivefold drama is a helpful breakdown of what the Bible’s plot entails: creation, fall, Israel, Jesus and the church. We remain in that fifth act.
Graeme Goldsworthy and Vaughan Roberts mention various epochs in the Biblical account, the second last of which is the one we remain in: ‘the proclaimed kingdom’. That is, we live in the time of the kingdom being heralded as Jesus’ word is shared. For us, there is plenty of loving, praying, preaching and worshipping still to do. That is the plot in which we walk—a story ultimately written by God which has its conclusion already written. In the end: The Lamb will have opened the scroll, things will be put right, justice will be done, and a new heavens and earth will be established, full of righteousness.
It hardly needs to be said this plot differs entirely from the striving of 21st century life. It is far more important that we use our gifts faithfully, being conformed to Christ’s image, than that we reach certain KPIs.
In that sense, we are also living in a story of profound character development. The plot happens around us, with a major focus being that our lives are transformed. It matters more who I am, than what I achieve. We have, in the words of the apostle Paul’s letter to Colossae, “put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (Colossians 3:10).
God wants me not just to do my duty, but to become who I am because of Christ’s reckoning. God has declared me holy. So now I try to be like him, with the help of the Spirit and Word. I am engaged in a winning battle, because God always finishes what he starts.
On a weekly ‘day off’ from work, the second kind of story must take centre stage. Can I trust God with the means and the ends? Will I truly continue to say: ‘nothing in my hand I bring’? Am I content to do little, and receive my present life, faith and future as a gift?
As I walk that nature trail, I hug shaded sections where large, strewn bark canvasses the track. Rising air pushes over the escarpment and knocks into a canopy of eucalyptus branches above me. My son darts between the kind of movements he will probably grow out of within the year. I will not relive this day. I do believe I live in the final acts of history, in a plot not of my making. And this particular day I am not required to do anything, except “live and move and have my being” in God (Acts 17:28). I need to keep at bay the restless desire to do something impressive. I need to achieve nothing. It sounds nice. Yet this part of my character development is proving difficult to grasp. My mind needs to come to rest in the apostle’s words: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” As the hymn says I’m living: “where striving cease”.
Very good writing. You made a point I needed to hear!