An Invitation to Let Go
The second Friday in January is affectionately known as Quitters Day, when most people are likely to have abandoned their New Year’s Resolution. If you make it past the 14th of this month without having already given up, congratulations to you, you’re no quitter (although you still have the rest of the year to become one, apparently).
The fact that our hopes for self-improvement tend to last only a couple of weeks alone should give us pause, but the real issue here might be why we make any resolutions at all. What is it, in the end, that we’re chasing?
Plenty of resolutions have to do with fitness or health objectives. Hard to argue here. But let’s suppose you don’t give up and that sometime this year you become as fit or as thin as you dream of being today. Then what? After all is said and done, you might look at yourself in the mirror and think you’re probably not fit enough. You can always be fitter and someone else is certainly fitter than you, so back on the treadmill you go.
Or, say you “quit” two weeks in. It only reinforces the negative self-image that you can never be the person you think you need to be in the first place. Either way you’re likely feeding a hollow version of yourself. This is not to say that goal setting is harmful. It has its place, to be sure. But if we’re to be healthy in any respect, fitness or otherwise, it needs to be first rooted in a compassionate view of ourselves.
Shame sells
Whether or not we’re aware of it, every one of us has some form of emotional pain or wounding we carry around in life. It leads to all the nervousness and anxiousness and restlessness we tend to live with. And it’s this sense of incompleteness and lack of closure that causes us to be susceptible to easy fixes. “If I am more fit, I will be complete,” is one.
Our success-addicted culture is no help here. Every day, bright images about who we are supposed to be, what we are supposed to do, and how we are supposed to look flash before our blinking eyes. Without our consent, these become the external, objective standards we use to judge ourselves. We often do this without mercy, which only feeds the anxiety.
Meeting these standards become internalized demands and burdens we place on ourselves. You don’t want to “improve” yourself unless you feel the pangs of a lack somewhere in your life. And, God forbid, you give it a go but stop somewhere along the way. Well, then you're nothing more than a quitter, or so the story goes.
“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul.”
What’s ironic and sad, is that it’s the very attempt to achieve satisfaction on our own terms that leaves us dissatisfied with life. We’ve become so committed to pushing away what we don’t like about ourselves that we’ve become out of touch with who we really are.
The only way off the treadmill, so-to-speak, is to come to terms with what it means to be human.
Beauty in the flesh
In the Christian tradition, there is no clearer example of what it means to be human than in incarnation of Jesus. The beginning of the Gospel of John describes Jesus’ coming into the world in highly symbolic language. It was as though light was beaming down into the darkness. A familiar verse in the opening says, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory … full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
This is a way of saying that God’s presence or wisdom was embodied in Jesus. It hints at the inseparable connection between the divine and physical intimacy. This glory is not in the abstract. It’s experienced. It’s taken in. Like a beautiful work of art, it penetrates you. It moves you. It reveals something about the world you might not be able to put into words, but deep in your heart you know is true.
In the incarnation, then, God says that physicality and intimacy and presence - the “stuff” that makes us human - is good, very good. And in doing so, of course, God submits to the physical demands of space and time. The writer of the letter to Hebrews says Jesus became human “in every way” (Hebrews 2:17).
Being “in the flesh” is a fragile reality but, strangely, it also reveals light.
The Light /Darkness Equation
Fully-human does not mean superhuman. There’s a difference. We can draw out a simple contrast of the two to make the point.
In the quality of life Jesus lived, there are a few characteristics that stand out:
Limits: Jesus accepted limits. He got tired and dirty and hungry. He couldn’t be in two places at once. He had to narrow his focus. And despite the Renaissance renderings of Jesus as a Norwegian male with perfect skin and a trim beard, he probably wasn’t anything near the standards of conventional beauty.
Weakness: Jesus experienced weaknesses. He had an emotional and spiritual crisis in the Garden of Gethsemane, the night before he was crucified. He had all these emotions swirling around inside him. And they were tough to sort out. He was anxious. He bled. He cried. He didn’t want to go on.
Vulnerability: Jesus took the risk of being rejected and he was - by his family, his hometown, his religion. He was open to others and suffered, because that’s what love requires. It’s a risk we often shy away from, but he didn’t.
Limits, weakness, vulnerability - these are important aspects of our humanity. But we’ve been conditioned to see them as darkness, aspects of our lives we’re to avoid, to not show the world.
Instead we think being human means something entirely different:
Limitlessness: We fantasize what it’s like to live without limits. Even Christians often use the words of the apostle Paul, “I can do everything through Christ who strengthens me” as license to try and do everything without rest. And what ends up happening is that there is no reservoir for what really matters--other people, relationships.
Strength: Because we’re taught that you’re only valuable when you’re doing something well or accomplishing things. We hide behind masks, showing people what we want them to see, so that people will accept us. We’re afraid we’ll be rejected if people find out the truth about who we are. But God says, “My power is made perfect in weakness (2 Chornintians 2:9.)” There is something about human weakness and frailty that God uses. Why? Because the ego has to get out of the way. It’s no longer about “me” anymore.
Protection: We want to protect ourselves, our interests, our life plans because we tend to have a fundamental distrust that God’s universe can’t provide for us what we need. We’re scared and anxious people. So we don’t let go and receive. Instead we invest emotional and spiritual energy in grasping at things, in controlling and holding on.
Limitlessness, strength, protection: we tend to think of these as light. We want to live in the warm glow of looking good, having it all together, making it, never failing, putting up our best face. It’s how we’re supposed to be, how we’re supposed to live. It’s the stuff we should all aspire to. And we get stuck into believing there’s no other option for us in terms of how to measure our self-worth or the kind of life that’s worth living.
But the incarnation of Jesus flips that script. The goal in life isn’t to cover up every weakness you have, to be a perfect looking person, or to have the world’s most magnetic personality. You’ll just end up being a slave to it all. And life shouldn’t be about feeling bad about the things you don’t have, don’t do well or can’t do at all. That, in fact, is darkness because there is no freedom there. We waste so much of our lives with this.
In all of his teachings, Jesus never said to be successful. He tells us, instead, to be “fruitful.” And to bear fruit, in the biblical language, is what it looks like to grow in love:
Allowing people in.
Being open to others.
Living with an open hand.
Receiving life as a gift instead of making demands of it.
It’s not that accomplishments don’t matter. It’s just that accomplishments are not all that there is.
What the incarnation tells us, is that the human body in all of its frailty has this unique, tender, remarkable capacity to give and to receive love.
Jesus perfected love in human form. It’s what we’re made for. But to do that, we have to be in touch with our limits. We can’t see them as imperfections. We have to explore them, to see them as a vital part of who we are. It puts us back in touch with ourselves.
Jesus did this.
Isn’t it good to know that he accepted all of his humanity? And that it was good? As the writer of Hebrews points out, “We have a high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses” (Hebrews 2:18). It makes it much easier for us to accept those things about ourselves too.
An Economy of Grace
How we measure ourselves tells us quite a bit about what kind of world we believe in. Is the world a place where I need to create my own identity using measuring sticks to compare myself to others? Or is it a place of grace where who I am isn’t determined by anything on the surface of life? Is it a place where even the “quitters” win?
The logic of grace is that more effort doesn’t necessarily translate into “better.” This might be a tough pill to swallow for many of us overachievers. Grace, instead, is a gift that comes unexpectedly in the midst of the messiness, the unpredictability, and the failures in life. It’s a light that shines in what seems like darkness, not for shame, but to remind us that we are, in fact, good.
This puts us in touch with our deepest self and it opens us up to the world. To accept our own limitations and disabilities, whatever they may be, allows us to accept those things in others. It helps us to become light to them.
You Are the Light
This seems to be what Jesus was getting at when he said, “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14).
When he spoke those words, he was in the Galilean countryside talking to peasants, subsistence farmers, indentured servants. He wasn’t in Jerusalem talking to a crowd of religious elite or the upper crust of society.
He was talking to people who didn’t know if they’d get by - just frail people. Limited. Weak. Hurting. People who had to deal head-on with brokenness everyday.
They had no trophies or anything to hide behind. They had to be open to grace.
It’s also important to keep in mind that Christ wasn’t born in the bright lights of Herod’s kingdom or in his palatial hotel. He was born in the manger. The place no one wanted to be was the very place Christ was born.
This can be taken as a beautiful analogy for our own lives. Whatever you cover up, whatever pain and struggle and anguish that gets hidden beneath all your anxious striving, is the very place God’s light is waiting to be born in you.
Grace helps us to see that life, the human experience, with all it’s pain and struggle is worth living. But we have to believe it’s possible if we’re going to recieve it.
The Invitation
So as we begin this year, be brave. Reclaim yourself. Don’t take the bait in believing that there are five things you need to do to become a better person. Get in touch with who you already are. It’s only then that you can decide where you need to go or what you want to work on.
If you’re to commit to anything in 2022, let go of one expectation or demand that you make of yourself.
In other words:
How can you be more self-forgiving?
Where do you need grace?
This is an invitation to dance differently this year, to wait patiently for grace with a calm assurance that you are good, and that in letting go, you’ve already won.
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