Rest

There is a quiet murmuring that we all hear, a weighty compelling argument against all that we wish to be true. A hiss from our inner souls pronouncing us guilty of all our worst nightmares. Announcing to the world that we have been weighed on the scales of life and have been found wanting. Deny that it is there all you want, but if you sit still long enough, you will realize that all of your engrossing busyness is fueled by the anxiety of proving that you are worthwhile. Our fears make us incredibly productive or frighteningly paralyzed. Those who know rest from this inner murmur find it in one of two different ways. The first and most popular way (in our culture) to quiet the voice is by going against every bit of philosophy that has ever existed.

Teachers, counselors, and theologians will all tell you that you must remind yourself that you are not as bad as you think. We are the only culture that has ever said that. Look at the way we treat our prisoners, our child molesters, our adulterers; we tell them that they have too low of a self-perception. Those robbing the liquor stores, murdering people over gang colors, or even those who cheat on their wives just think too low of themselves. Their actions are fueled out of a belief that they are worse then everyone else, thus provoking them to damage themselves and others. This is ridiculous, every other culture that has ever existed and most that presently exist deny this belief. It is an over arching pride that fuels their crimes and attitudes. They quiet the murmur of self-contempt by deceiving themselves about their own present condition. The ancient Greeks called this dangerous pride “hubris.” Hubris in ancient Greece was a sin of the largest punishment, it was the crime that always led to destruction. Aristotle defined hubris as;

“to cause shame to the victim, not in order that anything may happen to you, nor because anything has happened to you, but merely for your own gratification. Hubris is not the requital of past injuries; this is revenge. As for the pleasure in hubris, its cause is this: men think that by ill-treating others they make their own superiority the greater.”

Even if something has happened to the perpetrators mentioned earlier, for instance a crime against them, their motivation for their actions is revenge against a world that “mistreated” them. So their crime is against a world that doesn’t know how worthy they are.

Rest from the inner murmur of self contempt is found in one place. Shane Bernard says it so well, it is found in “Embracing [the] Accusation.” Unless we welcome the accusation, we will never be able to defeat it. The accusation is the fact that we can’t live up to our own standards, nor can we live up to anyone else’s. It’s true, we must permit the idea that we are just as guilty as everyone else. Plead guilty to the accusation you know is true, you have failed, you aren’t better than anyone else; your occupation, your salary, your car, your life is not enough to pardon you from the accusation of failure. God has laid us open by His law, He has the double edged sword of the Law against our neck and we are all too vulnerable. Do not only recite but embrace the fact that Christianity is not following a list of arduous rules allowing us to move from failure to success. Rather we as a church need to embrace our failure, our defeat, our annihilation, our self-righteousness, and our hatred so that we may be able to embrace that Christ is sending us on a journey of unsurpassable rest. Rest that is found in Him, rest from the disquieting murmur of failure. Rest is found in knowing that we can boldly yet vulnerably enter the throne room of God, pronounce ourselves guilty and rejoice in the freedom we find by embracing the accusation.