Exhausted by Holiness, or, Why Can't I Do Enough

Actual footage of me trying to save myself

Have you ever felt your value is measured in what you do, or, what you can produce?  That every relationship you have is in some way transactional?  If you do "this", then you will be valued, if you can behave just a little bit better than you will receive the love/care/respect/etc that you desperately are desiring?  

To add to that, there is also the powerful sense that we are in a "what have you done for me lately" world.  Maybe I was valued yesterday because I did great that day, but today, I didn't do so hot, so I am no longer someone worthy.  

Exhausting.

Human history is shaped by this constant grasping after feeling "ok" knowing that at any moment we will still mess up, fall short, and be cast out.  Even when you observe religion you see a list of tasks that must be perfectly completed or you will be out! 

And this religious impulse through history is even put into practice in all our new modes of "religion" today.  Think about all the social movements that exist.  Whether BLM, Me Too, Political parties, Eco Justice, etc.  It doesn't take long for the group that you desperately tried to be accepted by to turn on you because all your previous good work is cast aside when you mess up on one area.  

Your best is never going to be good enough.  

Our spiritual struggle is the deeply internal acknowledgement that something is wrong.  Wrong with the world around us, wrong in our relationships, wrong in ourselves.  Even at our best, there are the hidden parts of ourselves(and sometimes not so hidden) that shout out, "This is not ok, this is not right, there is something wrong".  

Most of the time we are quite capable of stringing together enough obvious "good" in our lives that we can hold at bay the thoughts of inadequacy.  In the West, we are almost experts at this.  We can fill our lives with so much entertainment and comfort that we can stave off these feelings almost indefinitely.  But it always comes due at some point.  

It shouldn't come as a surprise that in an era of the greatest prosperity and material comfort and "ethical" living we have an ever increasing, at record levels, mental health issues of depression, anxiety and hopelessness.  

How is this possible?  The external world is improving, yet our internal lives are falling apart.  

It IS possible because we are a people desperate for absolution.  And all our comforts and self-pleasing behaviors offer no such thing as forgiveness and absolution. We intrinsically see that our internal and external realities are at war with the state and condition with reality.  The Apostle Paul points out in Romans chapter 2 that even those who claim there is not God, fall short of their own standards.  Entertainment and distraction just shoves the problems down deeper where they fester and rot. 

And when we fall short of what we hope for and there is no hope for absolution, we are left anxious and depressed.  

We pursue an exhausting form of "holiness".  The rules are constantly changing, the judges are arbitrary and often capricious in their verdicts. 

But why is this so?  

In God's Word we see where it started, but are also pointed to where it is going.

Genesis lays out our ultimate issue that started in the garden.  Adam and Eve did not just want to disobey God, they wanted to be the ones calling the shots.(to be God ourselves free of consequence-Gen 3:4-5).  At that moment in history the heart of all of our issues that we struggle with today are painted in stark fashion.

We are made for God.

We are made with a purpose.

We rebel and break the vertical relationship with our creator and it ricochets to destroy our horizontal relationships with each other and the rest of creation.(Genesis 3:12-19)

And we are incapable of truly fixing it all.  

So we get on the hamster wheel and think if we can just run a bit farther, a bit faster, a bit more passionately, then, then we can see and feel our desperately desired absolution.  And we are tired as we see as much as we have worked, we are still in the same spot.

But God.

But God, loves us.  He created us for Himself, with a purpose, to have a relationship with Him. 

When Jesus, God the Son, saw His people tired, beat up, worn down, he looked at them with compassion.(Matthew 9:36)

When Jesus went to the Cross his compassion was an active work of healing and restoring as he declared "It is Finished"(John 19:30)

Not, lets get started, here is all the work to do.  It. Is. Finished.  

But Adam(this is you talking here)..But Adam, if it is finished, what are we supposed to be doing to make sure we are loved by God???  Are you saying we can do whatever we want??????

So let me double down with what Paul says in Galatians 3

You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. 2 I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? 3 Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? 4 Have you experienced so much in vain—if it really was in vain? 5 So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard? 6 So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”

What Paul is dealing with is that after starting off their relationship with God based on the love of Christ and His finished work, they are now trying to reverse engineer their salvation and absolution of sins through all the works they can do to look good enough.

Stop it.

Jesus said IT IS FINISHED.  He meant it.

So what DO we do about sins in our lives and in the lives of the people we love.

This is how John puts it in 1 John 3

2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 3 All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

What makes us like Christ according to John?  What purifies us?  

John doesn't say, "you will be like Christ and purified when you start doing the right stuff".  He says when you place your hope in Christ and look upon Him and truly see and know him THAT will be what changes us.

So here is the false bill of goods we are often sold that is directly contrasted from what God's Word actually says.

FALSE NARRATIVE:

1- There is a problem in you and the world

2- You better do do do do to fix it or carry around guilt

3-  If you do enough good stuff you MIGHT be ok, hopefully

4- And if you want to be right with God in all of this don't forget all of those rules too

GOD'S TRUTH

1- There is a problem in you and the world

2- You can't do better by doing more, God will take away your guilt and shame

3- When you experience that and look to Him in hope you WILL be ok

4- Because you are right with God already, your natural behavior changes because of God in you as your place your hope in Him as you look upon Him in truth

Stop trying to make yourself ok.  Lay down your burdens and look on a savior who perfectly did for you what you could never truly accomplish.  Give up the exhausting lie that you can absolve yourself and achieve holiness.  You will never be holy.  But Christ is.  And he calls you to enjoy Him forever.  

Why my kids(and everyone else) really annoy me!!

My kids are reaallllllllyyyyy needy.  Like, insanely, obnoxiously needy.  Since their birth I cannot recall a day that they didn't impose their neediness on my otherwise idyllic personal life.  Some of the most obnoxious things I have resigned myself to enduring are; Preparing 3(THREE!!!) meals a day, daily baths, diaper changes, baths, snuggling, book reading(sometimes the same one multiple times!!), listening to their stories(which rarely are very engaging since they generally lack a purpose and plot), and lets not forget I have to put them to bed every night since they don't just walk off and get in bed promptly at 8 every evening.

You know why their neediness is so offensive to me?  Because I am insanely self-centered.  My self-centeredness does not just effect my view on my perception of my children's obnoxious neediness, it causes me to be offended by everyone's neediness.  Every time someone, uninvited, engages into my life it is an affront to my independence and plans.  Sure, I want my kids around, but only when I am the one who wants them around.  I would prefer they operate on my schedule and stop infringing upon mine. 

And that goes for everyone else as well!

I will be your friend, as long as our friendship is convenient to my needs and wants.  I will be your spouse, as long as I am feeling "spousey" at the time.  God forbid you want or need something from me when I am not actually interested in that at that exact moment.  I am the sun at the center of my universe and I prefer everyone to be oriented around me.  Spinning and moving according to the dictates of my own personal gravitational pull.

Now, why am I, and seemingly everyone else, so lonely and depressed????  It doesn't seem to make sense...I only do what I want when I want to with who I want to.  And the more and more I put myself first, the more and more I feel driven to fix my problems that seem to keep occurring by putting myself first.  Yet it never gets better.....

Selfishness is arguably the most destructive attitude and behavior that us imperfect mortals can embrace.  Why does this looking inward become so damaging?  Because at our fundamental level, we are not that great of a person in the first place.  Don't get me wrong, you are probably pretty nice and friendly.  I know I am.  But at my very core I sense a destructive nature within me.  As the apostle Paul said, "I don't do what is good, but I do what I hate". 

Be honest, think about your own life.  How many times do you know what you should do, but you do the opposite?  Everyone knows that overeating and smoking is terrible.  But we do it anyways.  Even while it is killing us we can't bring ourselves to stop behaviors, attitudes and mindsets.  Our constant struggle is that at the same time we ARE improving some areas of our internal life, we still recognize a bunch of messed up crap inside of ourselves. 

No one knows us better then we know ourselves.  And when we become more and more selfish we become more and more defined by a destructive relationship with a person who is extremely harmful; Our own self!!  What if your only friend in the whole world was angry, bitter, selfish, violent, etc, how would that effect you?  That is what selfishness creates for us.

How do we change this?  How do we move from broken selfishness to healthy wholeness?

³⁶ When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. --Matthew 9

Jesus is God.  He came for a very essential purpose.  Reconciliation and redemption of sinful man with a Holy God through His death and resurrection.  He is preaching about repentance and the Kingdom and what is the response of the crowds??  Help me, fix me, do this for me, make my runny nose stop running!!!!

How would I generally respond?  Seriously folks, this is quite inconvenient to my goals right now....

How does Jesus respond?  Compassion.

Their needs and hurts were not viewed as an inconvenience to Jesus, but instead the outward manifestation of their internal pain and loneliness.  Instead of thinking about Himself, He thought about them.  And He loved them. 

When I find myself frustrated with people in my life for their constant demands I forget that what is true about me is what is true about them.  They are harassed and helpless.  Hurting and lonely.  Sad and desperate.  While I am being selfish I am mad at them for my perception of their being selfish.  When I am angry about their neediness it is always because I want to put MY neediness before theirs. 

Why are my kids obnoxiously needy?  Because they NEED me.  They are just like me.  And just like them, I need help.  When I become bitter and resentful to their needs, I am in turn shutting off finding my own needs being met.  Living for myself only leads to a deeper and deeper problem of brokenness.  My lack of compassion for others needs creates a mindset that there is no compassion for mine. 

The process of believing that the needs of others are inconvenient and obnoxious causes us to internalize our own hurt and pain because we believe internally what we put into practice externally.  At the moment we act in love and compassion it opens us up to becoming recipients of love and compassion. 

If you are struggling with peace, contentment, satisfaction, etc.  Ask yourself, am I a selfish person?  As long as you are, those struggles will only magnify.