The Radical Pursuit of Rest E-Book

John Koessler

• Herausgeber: IVP
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 247

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

- Evangelical Christian Publishers Association Top Shelf Book Cover Award We live in a culture that values activity, achievement and accomplishment. Whether in our careers, churches, schools or families, busyness is the norm in our lives, and anything less makes us feel unproductive and anxious. We have to work all the harder, then, to pursue true rest in a 24-7 world that is constantly in motion.John Koessler understands that rest is not automatic or easy to attain. He names the modern-day barriers to becoming people of rest and presents a unique perspective on how pursuing rest leads us to the heart of God. With honest, biblical reflections on trends in our culture and churches, he exposes our misconceptions regarding the concept of rest, as well as offering correction and practices to align our ideas with God's ideal.The book includes reflection and discussion questions designed for both individual and group use. You will discover the true meaning behind Jesus' idea of the yoke of rest and restoration for your mind, body and soul.

Leseprobe

For my sons Drew and Jarred,

with deepest love and an earnest hope

that you will find rest under the easy yoke of Christ.

CONTENTS

Foreword by Mark Galli

Introduction

1 Restless Faith

2 The God Who Rests

3 Beyond the Day of Rest

4 False Rest

5 Rest and Ambition

6 Worship as Rest

7 Rest and the Digital Age

8 Rest and the Future

9 Final Rest

Acknowledgments

Questions for Group Discussion

Notes

Praise for The Radical Pursuit of Rest

About the Author

More from InterVarsity Press

Copyright

FOREWORD

Mark Galli

In the American Standard Cultural Version of the Bible we read, “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, at least in principle. Otherwise, seven days you shall labor and do all your work and shopping, and maybe a couple of times a year take a Sabbath to the LORD your God. Otherwise, make yourself useful, which includes you, your son or daughter, your male or female servant, your animals and any foreigner residing in your towns” (Ex 20:8-10).

Okay, this is not a real version of the Bible, but it is a verse underlined in our hearts and minds. Yes, gentle reader, I point my finger at you—“Behold, the restless one!” But of course, three fingers are pointing back at me.

Some people argue, rightly, that we live in a sex-saturated culture, and that this makes obedience in sexual matters a mighty challenge today. But it is more true that we live in a culture saturated with activity and anxiety, and that this makes obedience to the fourth commandment nearly impossible—harder than living in sexual righteousness. When it comes to commandments six (adultery) and ten (coveting, lusting), we’re vigilant. Adultery is scorned and disciplined, and lust (think pornography especially) is shameful. But we hardly bat an eye when someone uses Sunday as they would any other day of the week.

This is not a call for a renewal of Sabbatarian laws. Our attitude toward the Sabbath, however, is a huge neon sign that advertises how deeply committed we are to the commandments of advanced consumer capitalism: seven days you shall labor and shop, and in between cart children to sports leagues, teach Sunday school, volunteer at the homeless shelter, mow the lawn and fall asleep exhausted watching the evening news. We have no doubt that God has the words to eternal life—life that not only lasts and lasts, but overflows with abundance and peace. And yet we have the hardest time living as if this were true.

On top of that—and here’s the interesting conundrum—few of us are happy living this way! I know I’m not. The mantras “I’m so busy” and “I have no time” and “I’m so tired” have become for us like a liturgical prayer, ending implicitly with “Lord, have mercy!”

What’s going on here?

A lot. The state we find ourselves in has evolved slowly in our culture. It’s complicated. I’m guessing that every reader of this book does not waste much time. I’m guessing that everything you do helps others or promotes kingdom work or glorifies God in some way. And when someone gets on a “Remember the Sabbath” jag, you’re thinking, All well and good, but what good thing am I to give up exactly?

Then again, the all-powerful and never tiring Creator of the universe thought rest a pretty good idea: “For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day” (Ex 20:11). God resting, of course, is an anthropomorphism: describing God as if he were a human being. In fact, God is always at work, sustaining the universe, nanosecond by nanosecond. If he ever stopped doing that, the universe would disappear into the deepest of black holes. That’s one reason some theologians describe God as “pure act.” Anything less would signal our end.

And yet they can also describe God as “pure rest”—a being so complete and perfect there is nothing more to be done or said to complete that perfection, only a glorious existence to behold and enjoy. I believe we can read the Genesis text in this way as well. God creates six days and rests on the Sabbath, the text explains. And the theologian surmises: God is both pure act and pure rest.

In fact, it is precisely because God is pure act—never ceasing to uphold the universe by the power of his Word—that we can take a Sabbath and really rest, knowing that God still has the whole universe in his hands. And because God is pure rest, we know he is the perfect reality we are called to behold and enjoy. God’s call for us to rest is not just about recharging our batteries for another week of work. It’s mostly a command to set apart time and space many times a week to realize and live into the amazing reality that is to come—and is in part already ours in Christ: eternal life. Forever, yes. And for now.

This book is about much more than the literal Sabbath. It includes some wise words about that day, to be sure. But it also includes insights and practices that can help us live a Sabbath life, nanosecond by nanosecond, while we fulfill God’s very active call day to day. To radically pursue rest does not mean to take up a new bag of tricks and perform a new list of duties. Yes, there are spiritual practices that can help. But the practices are paradoxical: they are things we do (take the spiritual discipline of silence) that teach us how to stop doing!

As a man addicted to activity and anxiety, I could tell you story after story about how a restless lifestyle is everything from silly to stupid to soul killing. I think you get that. Instead, you need to hear from John Koessler, who has more than a few insights about the culture of restlessness and some wise guidance about building a life in the perfect One we are destined to behold and joy forever.

INTRODUCTION

After I graduated from high school I got a job in a factory that made automobile parts. There were skilled craftsmen who worked at this factory, but I was not one of them. I was an unskilled laborer whose work consisted mostly of pushing buttons on pounding machines that smelled of oil and steel. Every hour a whistle sounded, requiring us to take a five-minute break. This was a safety measure, intended to keep us from being careless with the great machines. There was an obligatory lunch break secured for us by the union. There were also many moments of waiting for others farther up the line to perform their tasks.

The work I did was not hard but it was monotonous. Often the assembly line I was on had a quota for the number of parts it was expected to produce. When the counter reached that number we were done for the day. We were not allowed to make any more parts, but weren’t permitted to leave the factory either. So we whiled away the remainder of our time sitting in the cafeteria waiting for our shift to end.

I usually had no notion of what the parts I made actually did or where they fit into the finished vehicle. To me they were metal shapes adorned with clips. I suppose it could be said that I did not really make anything. I pushed the button that told the machine to perform its task and then watched the part move down the line or else lifted the part from the machine and carried it to a waiting bin. Indeed, this work was so easy that it was difficult for me to call it work at all. As a result, my time there was marked by tedium more than anything else. The boredom of the work itself was complemented by the greater boredom of the rest that followed it. Neither was especially satisfying.

Rest and work go together. “The sleep of a laborer is sweet, whether he eats little or much,” the author of Ecclesiastes observes, “but the abundance of a rich man permits him no sleep” (Eccles 5:12). In our common experience it is work that gives meaning to our rest and rest that provides energy for our work. In this equation work is at the center. Remove work and rest becomes meaningless, perhaps even impossible. Rest in this paradigm exists for the sake of work.

But work, while meaningful, is not meaningful in itself. The writer of Ecclesiastes praises the sleep of the laborer but laments the futility of work. “What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun?” (Eccles 1:3). This is the first question raised in his book. It is also its primary complaint. While work is meaningful and God uses our work to provide for us, work alone cannot give meaning to our lives. Theologian Josef Pieper observes, “To serve some other purpose is the essential characteristic of work.”1 Work is the servant, not the master. However, we live in an age in which work has become an end in itself.

In our world the craftsman has been displaced by the worker. While the craftsman’s work has a telos, or purpose, the worker merely engages in a task. Both make an effort. But the craftsman has the end in view and can see the finished result. The worker usually does not. In such an environment work devolves into a series of tasks performed for a prescribed period of time. Because of this the task never ends. It is only interrupted. When the hand on the clock reaches the appointed hour, we cease. When the hour to start comes around, we begin again. Our work becomes endless and eventually pointless.

When work loses its purpose and becomes an end in itself, rest also loses its meaning. This is not because rest serves work. Neither is it because work justifies rest. It is because rest in its rightful place needs nothing to justify it. Rest is an end in itself. We do not work in order to justify the fact that we rest. We do not rest in order to work. Rest as the Bible describes it is our destiny. It is what we were made for. In this book I am arguing for the radical pursuit of rest.

I should confess at the outset that I am not a radical. I do not live in a cave like St. Anthony or espouse an ascetic lifestyle. I reside in a suburban neighborhood in Northwest Indiana. I take the train to work every morning. I like to watch television at night with my wife by my side and my dog on my lap. I say this because I am afraid the title of this book might give readers the wrong impression. When I write about the radical pursuit of rest, I am not speaking of a life that can be lived by only a select few. Christ’s invitation in Matthew 11:29 is addressed to all who labor and are heavy laden. But in a world made up of workers, rest itself is a radical notion. In a church that believes that worshipers must also be workers in order to justify their presence, rest is an uncommon experience. I am not arguing that we pursue rest by radical means. Rather, it is the pursuit of rest itself that is radical.

I should also confess that at one point or another during the writing of this book I have violated every principle I describe in it. I do not and cannot counsel perfection. I write for ordinary people who hope to experience the easy yoke of Christ in the midst of struggle under normal circumstances—not the spiritual elite. You do not have to be a radical to engage in the radical pursuit of rest. You do not have to be perfect before you can experience it. Rest is not reserved for the monk, the priest, the nun or the pastor. It is God’s gift offered to common people who work at ordinary jobs.

Still, the idea of pursuing rest may seem like a contradiction in terms. Doesn’t working at rest mean the end result is not rest at all? The Bible describes rest as both a destination and a gift. Jesus invites us to receive rest from him as a gift of grace. At the same time we are urged to “make every effort” to enter that rest (Heb 4:11). Rest comes to us, but we can also fall short of rest.

I will make practical suggestions along the way. Some will be very concrete. But this is not really a “how-to” book. The secret to rest is not in what we do so much as in how we see. Rest is both a location and an identity. It is a realm in which we exist. Rest is synonymous with grace, which is never seized by force but always taken hold of freely by faith. Rest is also synonymous with Christ, who is both its primary proponent and chief architect. The first step in the radical pursuit of rest is to seek Christ. This is also the last step. When you find Christ, you will find rest.

- 1 -

RESTLESS FAITH

Ido not go to sleep easily. When I do sleep, I sleep lightly. I often wake in the middle of the night, disturbed by the creaking of the house as it shifts on its foundation or startled by the rustle of the dog as she turns in her bed. My wife’s breathing beside me is quiet, rhythmic as an incoming tide. But in the distance I hear the shriek of an ambulance and I wonder whose misfortune it laments. I replay the events of the day in my mind, reviewing its conversations and improving my contribution with imagined repartee. I brood over the past. I fret about the future. As the clock on the nightstand counts down the remaining hours, I lie in the dark and wait for the window to brighten with the gray light of dawn.

Apparently I am not the only one who is awake. According to the National Sleep Foundation, more than half of all Americans say they have problems sleeping at night.1 We are a sleep-deprived culture.

The church suffers from a similar problem. Not from sleep deprivation so much as from a deficit of rest. Today’s congregation is a frenetic place. Our worship is marked by frenzied devotion that has full congregational participation as its primary goal. The drummer marks the tempo for the first song and we stand to sing. We remain standing through the entire song service. We are urged to lift our hands or clap in an approach to worship that sees it as a full-body experience. Between songs the worship leader tells us to fan out and find someone to whom we can introduce ourselves. The pastor reminds us to stop by the information desk and sign up for the latest congregational project and then spend time chatting over coffee with someone in the vestibule.

There is considerable enthusiasm in all of this but not much quietness or contemplation. Indeed, in such an atmosphere ­quietness and contemplation would be frowned on. Con­templation is liable to be interpreted as disengagement or, even worse, dead orthodoxy. Quietness is seen more as awkward ­silence than a mark of spiritual reflection.

In other churches the start of worship is signaled by the reedy call of the organ. Although there are no drums here, there is just as much activity. But in this case the pressure is focused on worship attendance and involvement in church programs. Those who love Jesus should be present whenever the church doors are open. To be about Christ’s business means to attend to the church’s business. This church’s members are expected to serve on committees, teach Sunday school and listen to children say verses on Wednesday night. At least some (about twenty percent) do. The rest feel ill at ease, trying not to look the pastor in the eye as he or she issues the latest appeal for more help in the nursery.

Both kinds of churches reflect an underlying assumption about our relationship with God and the nature of the Christian life. It is the assumption that busier is better. This assumption in turn is based on the supposition that devotion equals activity. The more we love Christ, the more we will do for him. Those who love Christ the most, whether churches or individuals, will do the most. Since our devotion to Christ should know no bounds, neither should our activity. No matter what we are doing now, we should do more. No matter what we have done in the past, it has not been enough.

The Culture of Productivity

The result is a highly driven church that constantly strives to exceed its current level of activity. If attendance has grown, it should increase further. If programs have expanded, they must expand even more. Every year the church rolls out new initiatives the way automobile companies roll out new models. Like the latest-model car, the latest project needs to be more impressive than the last. The church is driven by the bottom line just as much as a company whose lifeblood is sales revenue. Only in the church’s case the bottom line is measured primarily in people and what they do. It is only secondarily viewed in dollars and cents. However, the two are related. If you have more people, you have more resources. The most “successful” church has plenty of both.

These assumptions have had a profound effect on the church’s culture of leadership. Today’s church leaders have been shaped by the corporate world where productivity is the summum bonum of the organization. Business writers like Jim Collins, Patrick Lencioni and Seth Godin have as much to say about how the church operates as the Bible does. It might be said that they influence the church’s culture of leadership even more than the Bible, since the Scriptures do not speak with the degree of specificity that we would like on the pragmatic matters that are of greatest importance to us.

The community of believers is no longer a kingdom of priests but a service industry whose primary mission is to provide spiritual goods and services to the masses.

The Bible does not describe how to have a successful church—at least not as we define success today. As a result, where leadership and ministry strategy are concerned, we are more interested in results than in theological reflection. We adopt the latest ministry methods without critical appraisal. The only test we employ is to ask what the method has done for others and whether it will work for us. What’s more, our methods often work. But methodologies also impart ethos. Neil Postman’s observation about tools also holds true for methods. Postman warns that there is an ideological bias embedded in every tool, “a predisposition to construct the world as one thing rather than another, to value one thing over another, to amplify one sense or skill or attitude more loudly than another.”2

The ethos of the marketplace is one that combines utilitarianism with consumerism. In the marketed culture of the church, God is treated like a product. One might even say that he is less than a product since the marketed church is not really selling God or even the gospel. It is selling itself. The contemporary church is seeking to create an atmosphere that will attract worshipers and persuade them to return. The community of believers is no longer a kingdom of priests but a service industry whose primary mission is to provide spiritual goods and services to the masses. Visitors are treated like consumers and the church’s members are employees whose main job is to promote the brand. They do not worship; they produce. We call the things we do to get results “being effective.” But we call the results “God’s blessing.”

Busy Preaching

The church’s preaching is equally busy, chock-full of moral imperatives, practical advice and five-step methods. Every sermon poses a new challenge that can be resolved by applying the right combination of faith and effort. The problems vary but the solution is the same. Christ is the answer, of course. He always is. He is all-powerful. But apparently his unlimited power is of little help unless we learn how to apply the right mix of Scripture, faith, prayer and sanctified elbow grease. God is waiting for us to act. We sometimes feel when listening to these sermons that although we are saved by grace, it’s really the effort that counts.

Each week the pastor urges the congregation toward greater exertion. Congregants are told that they must round the bases from mere attendance to full involvement. They are Christ’s hands and feet. Church attendance is good, but it is not enough. Fully devoted followers of Jesus join a small group and engage in service projects. They serve in the nursery and come out on weekends to rake leaves for the elderly. They spend their vacation doing short-term ministry. They run for office or become political activists. They join the school board and support the arts. It goes without saying that in all of this real Christians keep the family a top priority. And the time they spend in God’s Word should be measured in hours rather than minutes.

These are the shadowlands of grace, where the line is blurred between what God alone can do for us and what we must do for ourselves. We may not be legalists in the technical sense, but we do inhabit a region that shares a border with legalism. As writer and Christianity Today editor Mark Galli has observed, “What I’m hearing time and again, in every corner of the church I visit, is not the soaring message of grace but the dull message of works—that I have to believe a certain theological construct, or have a certain feeling, or perspire in effort before I can be assured of God’s radical acceptance and my future salvation.”3

What the church needs is rest. But it is a special kind of rest. We need the rest that only Christ can provide. The rest of Christ is both a remedy and a relief. But more than anything else it is a gift. Jesus describes its character in Matthew 11:28-30: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

We should not take lightly the fact that Jesus addresses this invitation to all who are “weary” and “burdened.” Jesus was a laborer. He was a carpenter and the son of a carpenter (Mt 13:55; Mk 6:3). He knew the weight of a load and shared the experience of all who ply a trade. Jesus was familiar with the roughhewn contour of unshaped wood and the pleasing weight of the proper tool. He felt the weariness that comes at dusk when strength ebbs along with the light. Jesus was also a wanderer who knew the rigors of travel. It was Jesus who sat down by Jacob’s well, “tired as he was from the journey” (Jn 4:6). Yet the weariness he speaks of in his invitation does not come from ordinary exertion. Common labor may tire the body but there is also a weariness that afflicts the soul.

Weariness of the Soul

In 1901 a scientist named Duncan McDougall believed he could ascertain the weight of the soul. He tried to accomplish this by measuring the weight of six patients as they died. Based on his experiments, he concluded that the human soul weighed twenty-one grams. Unfortunately subsequent attempts to reproduce McDougall’s experiments were unsuccessful, leading scientists to conclude that his methods were flawed and the results invalid.

Yet even if the soul is weightless, it is clear that it can be weighed down. Our personal experience is proof enough that such burdens are real, even if they cannot be calculated in grams or pounds.

The soul can be burdened by anxiety (Prov 12:25), a state of mind in which concern is amplified by fear. The concern itself is often legitimate, which is the very thing that enables fear to grow so easily. When Jesus warned his disciples not to worry about what they would eat, drink or wear in Matthew 6:25, he was not implying that such concerns were trivial. If we don’t eat, we die. Food is necessary to life. Clothing is necessary too, required by most cultures for both warmth and modesty. Even God recognizes this—food and clothing were among the first things he provided for those he created. When God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden, he gave him the freedom to eat of all the trees but one (Gen 2:15-17). After Adam and Eve sinned, God replaced the makeshift garments they had thrown together with garments of skin he crafted especially for them (Gen 3:21).

Jesus acknowledges that food and clothing are necessities in Matthew 6:32. And it is this very recognition that underlies his instruction to cast worry aside. Why shouldn’t we be anxious about such things? Because God already knows we need them. He always has. Anxiety as Jesus diagnoses it is not the result of misdirected concern so much as it is a consequence of misaligned confidence. We feel the weight of anxiety because we have placed our trust in the wrong thing. We depend on the means of production. Or we rely on the things that are produced. Jesus says all these things come from the hand of God. As he puts it, there is more to life (literally, the soul) than food and more to the body than clothing (Mt 6:25).

Jesus indicates that we have more important things to worry about. There is a life that is greater than physical life and a death that is worse than physical death. We have better things to pursue than food and clothing. It is the pagan who runs after these things; this is what people do when they have no God.

But more than anything else, Jesus’ words direct our attention beyond our daily concerns to one who is greater than they are. He redirects our focus from the concerns themselves to the one who is concerned for us. We do not need to be anxious about food and clothing because our heavenly Father knows we need them. Thus the weight of anxiety is the soul’s misapprehension. It is the thinking of people who see themselves as orphaned. Such anxiety is the anguished cry of a soul that has forgotten it has a Father in heaven.

All Who Labor

The overburdened soul does not always manifest itself in depression. It can also go to the opposite extreme. In Luke 21:34 Jesus warns, “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap.” The Greek word translated as “dissipation” referred in Jesus’ day to the giddiness that comes with drinking too much wine. It is interesting that dissipation and drunkenness are linked here with the anxieties of life. In this case it would seem that the heart is not depressed but overstimulated. The agitation that comes with anxiety can be just as paralyzing as depression and often leads to it.

It is often tempting to resort to artificial means in an effort to cope. The drug of choice mentioned in Luke 21:34 is alcohol. But not all artificial means of coping are chemical. Many of us rely on our careers to define who we are as persons, to order our world and to satisfy our desires. In its ordinary and healthy form, work serves as a means to an end. But in its narcotic and distorted form, work turns into a distraction and eventually becomes an end in itself. The nature of the task may not change at all. The work we do may be virtuous and even necessary. It is our relationship to work that has become destructive.

This distortion of work sometimes manifests itself in the addictive behavior known as “workaholism.” But it also reflects an approach to life itself. The resulting inversion creates a world where work exists for work’s own sake. It is what Josef Pieper calls “the world of total work.”4 He observes that this kind of world is always poor and impoverished, even when its inhabitants are rich in material goods. This is because everything and everyone in it is subjected to the rationalist and utilitarian principles that shape its values. Work is more than a distraction. It is more than an addiction. Work has become a religion.5 In a world where a person’s worth is measured by usefulness, all things are subordinated to work.

In such an inverted world, it is not enough for worshipers to contemplate the beauty of Christ. Those who gather for worship must justify their presence by doing something useful. Believers who come to church intent only on worship are treated like spiritual slackers. Meanwhile congregational worship itself is described from the pulpit in terms that suggest that it is the lowest and least valued form of spiritual devotion. Many pastors and worship leaders urge church attenders to get more involved by suggesting that the worship service is only the “first base” of devotion. This gives the impression that the worship service is primarily for visitors and beginners. The truly committed will volunteer for the nursery or join a small group.