Jun 25, 2018
by Johnmark Camenga
You know, childhood is messed up. I don’t mean childhood is strained and difficult—it is—I mean that childhood is a savage mass of unresolved tragedy and tensions punctuated by the presence of dispassionate sentries who, as all the evidence would suggest, are bent on maintaining the status quo. There are bullies and impossible expectations and domesticated—if hostile—animals, and all of that is before you even get out of your house in the morning. It’s messed up. Then, once you’ve finally figured out how to cope with the swarming hornet’s nest that is childhood, you turn 18 and you find out that people were actually trying to be nice to you.
As it turns out, adulthood is messed up too. I don’t mean adulthood is complex and unwieldy—it is—I mean adulthood is a symphony of catastrophe played for an audience wallowing in a stew of apprehension. There are bullies and impossible expectations and breakfast cereal without marshmallows, and all of that is before you even have your first cup of coffee in the morning. It’s messed up. Then, to put some butter on that biscuit, adulthood is a 24/7 gig complete with latent feelings of inadequacy and disproportionate feelings of guilt.
So, into this grating, gnawing, despair-laden reality we thrust ourselves all day, every day for fear that should we opt out, if even for just a day, we may be left behind and thought of as shirkers who just could not handle the demands of life. Societal pressures hold both children and adults hostage, and, in a society full of hostages, we are left wondering to whom do we pay the ransom so there can be some relief only to find out that the ransom we pay is the life we live. A life lived beholden to the pressures of society is akin to a hostage thriller where, in the end, the hostage is shot. It’s messed up.
So, I’m writing to deliver some bad news—not that you hadn’t picked up on that already—and the bad news is this: these realities cannot be redeemed. What’s the saying about putting lipstick on a pig? We cannot accessorize these realities such that they become something they are not. Though this, I fear, is how many Christians approach their lives. We look at the smoldering embers of the world we inhabit and we think, “We just need to add a little more Jesus to the recipe.” We convince ourselves that this is the answer and then we evangelize this faulty gospel, convincing others that they just need to start listening to Hillsong on their way to work and, voila! It’s not a pig anymore. The problem is that we misunderstand the problem. The problem is not in how we see the smoldering embers of the world we inhabit but in how we fail to see that the smoldering embers of the world inhabit us.
I don’t know you—I mean, I might know you, but for the sake of this article, let’s keep it anonymous. I don’t know you, but I do know this about you: you are living life on the edge. The edge of exhaustion. The edge of moral failure. The edge of financial ruin. The edge of insanity. The edge of complete and utter devastation. Life is all edges for you. So, on the edge, you desperately search for some sort of solid ground upon which to take a rest.
If you are going to find that solid ground, there are things you must give up and things you must pick up. We all love that Jesus said, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,”1 but we sometimes forget He followed up that command with a clarifying command. “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden it light.”2 Whoever told you that Jesus only came to take away your burdens was being stingy with the second half of the story. No, Jesus didn’t come so that you could live a burden-free life; He came to rescue you from your irredeemable burden and to replace it with a better burden. What Jesus is saying here is you must take His burden if you want to take His rest.
Here’s the clincher: there is a scriptural framework that dictates the proper way to follow Jesus and there is a scriptural framework that dictates the proper way to rest. The framework for following Jesus is summed up like this: deny yourself, pick up His burden, and follow Him.3 The framework for rest is summed up like this: work hard Sunday through Friday and then take Saturday—God calls it Sabbath—and rest.4 I know there is a large circle of people who get all pucker-faced when scripture says that there is a right way to follow Jesus. I know there is an even larger circle of people who get all-but-apoplectic when scripture says there is a right way to rest. I can’t and won’t argue all the points—isn’t that what social media is for?—but I can and will declare this truth: you can try your whole life to follow Jesus and to find rest some other way but what you will find, at the end of your life, is that you have only succeeded in failing on both counts.
Jesus is the Savior you need—indeed, He’s the only Savior there is—Sabbath is the rest you need, and both are given on God’s terms. The only things left for you to consider are if you’re messed up enough to admit your need for Jesus and if you’re tired enough to admit your need for Sabbath.
References:
1Matthew 11:28
2Matthew 11:29-30
3Matthew16:24
4Exodus 20:8-11; Hebrews 4:9-10
