“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion?” (Matt 11:28a, MSG)
It’s not easy feeling tired all the time. It’s not easy feeling the weight of unmet, unknown, or unachievable expectations. It’s not easy feeling like scrutiny is imbalanced and eyes turn at the slightest fault. Sometimes, groaning under the weight of our own making, where the belief that we cannot be authentic without being judged, relational without being hurt. In order to be accepted in this environment we might create an outer façade which we originally esteem to become, but the weight of not being creates an increasing chasm between our inner lives and outer lives grows wider and wider.
Sometimes we groan under the weight created by others, being placed on a pedestal of testimony; when the double-standards of faithfulness remain unaddressed; or acts of violence and injustice perpetrated in the name of Jesus are not called out for the current ‘greater good.’ Tired, worn out, and burned out on religion that is built on politics of a kingdom that eerily does not look like God’s.
Tired because life is not as simple as proof texts and fundamentally saying, “because the bible says so…”
Tired also because holding on to a complex web of beliefs is… tiring.
Tired because, sometimes, it’s not a choice of changing beliefs but whether the beliefs have to go.
Tired because, like the words of Christian Wiman,
“All my friends are finding new beliefs.
This one converts to Catholicism and this one to trees…
All my friends are finding new beliefs
and I am finding it harder and harder to keep track…
… my doubts, and my friends,
my beautiful, credible friends.”[1]
The frameworks of how we live become strangely illogical or irrelevant, the ethics that we once go by become suffocatingly contradictory to flourishing, and our beliefs come into greater contrast to what we desire.
Can following Jesus be good? Can holding on to hope be fruitful? Can believing in the midst of doubt be faith?
“Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest.”
(Matt 11:28b, MSG)
We become easily irritated, reactive, emotional, at times hypervigilant, and with diminished capacity we may increasingly feel cornered and trapped wanting rest, but not finding it. When we are tired, pulled in multiple directions, with our internal resources depleted, our capacity for compassion diminishes. Compassion for others and ourselves. Compassion is already, in the best of time, a difficult task; Henri Nouwen reflects
“Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken.”
But when we are the very ones who are constantly feeling “weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken,” then refusing compassion for ourselves and giving up is all the more the temptingly viable route. Nouwen continues:
“But [compassion] is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it.”[2]
Constant feelings of tiredness, combined with the corrosive ingredients of hurt, pain can be a slow drip of poison that can eat away at our core. Before long, we enter into a state of apathy and burn out.
Spiritual apathy and burnout are not treated by greater commitment, trying harder, or spending more time in spiritual communities.
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.” (Matt 11:28-29, MSG)
These words of Jesus, rendered by Eugene Peterson, come to mind often. I am weary, I am burdened, stuck between complexifying and simplifying, wondering whether to keep going or stop. Jesus calls out to me from the Gospel of Matthew and offers something that I want – real rest.
It’s not a rest of completely stopping or to put belief on hold. It’s a rest that has movement – “Come to me,” and action, “Take my yoke (NIV)/walk and work with me (MSG).”
It’s not a rest I carve out or create, it’s a rest that Jesus “will give,” one where I have to receive with the posture of opened arms and surrendered hearts. It’s a rest that returns us to the very heartbeat of humanity, as people who are beloved, and returns us to the very heartbeat of God, the one who loves us. It’s the heartbeat that drums to the rhythm of grace – our truest form of interaction. It allows me to unlearn ways that have led me away from Jesus, and re-learn ways to come to Jesus, commune with Jesus, and walk with him. Part of learning means that I haven’t reached there yet, I am no pedestal – I will grow, I will make mistakes, and Jesus will teach me.
This restful learning space is bound in his character of being “gentle and lowly,”[4] a character that is essential to who he is and essential to who we become in as we learn from him. [5]
A space that is at the one-time real and now, and hopeful in eternity.
And if that is a lot to take in, in the space of tiredness, doubt, and unbelief there is only thing I need to do right now when we hear the words
“Come to me”
is taking the first step, in your own time.
Note: The artworks on this post is part of "STORM" ©️ Malik Dieleman and are used with the artist's permission. One of my best friends, beautiful human being, and all round roadtripper. Find him on:
[1] Christian Wiman, All My Friends Are Finding New Beliefs, https://onbeing.org/poetry/all-my-friends-are-finding-new-beliefs/
[2] https://henrinouwen.org/meditations/compassion-is-being-with/#:~:text=Compassion%20is%20hard%20because%20it,a%20quick%20cure%20for%20it.
[3] See also https://www.centerforfaith.com/blog/reflections-from-a-closeted-gay-pastor, https://www.fathommag.com/stories/welcome-to-my-closet, Walt Odets, Out of the Shadows: The Pyschology of Gay Men’s Lives (Great Britain: Penguin Random House, 2019), Chapter 4.
[4] “In heart locates these qualities at the center of his being. It was not that he pretended to be humble and made a show of being lowly: he really was lowly, and that at the very center of all that he was. Because of what he is in his innermost being, meek and lowly, those who come to him find rest.” Leon Morris, The Gospel According to Matthew, PNTC; Accordance electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 297.
[5] See Michael J. Gorman, Participating in Christ: Explorations in Paul’s Theology and Spirituality (Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker Academic, 2019).