It’s a new year. The time of feasting through the holidays is fading, leaving us with bellies and hearts full of guilt and shame and the weight of another year’s transgressions. And so we offer our resolutions, hoping it’ll be different this time. We will be better this year, we will lose some weight, reach that next rung on the ladder, and heal ourselves of the weight of a million lies. The relentless pursuit, the hustle, and the tiresome motivations are here again.
Remind me, what are we chasing, what exactly are we resolving? Are we simply attempting to run away again from that which lives within us and can’t be run from? Will a few cosmetic changes, a little sanding, and rounding a few sharp edges make us whole again this year? Or is it something far more existential?
I know that well-meaning resolve is hardly ever thought of as more than that. And I surely don't resolve to change anyone’s mind. But I can’t help but wonder if all this running and resolving are adding pounds to the weight of another self-improvement failure. What if there was some existential freedom from this weight of it all? What if there is a God that provides us a finalized freedom from the burdens of saving ourselves? And what if this God has already done something we could never do, and in that doing he has freed us from the relentless pursuit of saving ourselves? I’m not sure where you are with the whole God question, but at the very least wouldn’t freedom from the burdens of our ever-piling guilt and shame be objectively desirable? Could this freedom bring us a kind of cheer that all that the resolving leaves us short of?
Imagine being already enough; complete. Imagine living in light of a completed work, a job already finished. Would your perspective of work not change? If your daily work were not so tied to your identity, your outward appearance, your ego, your idols, etc. Imagine the freedom of work unhinged from the shackles of producing your salvation or even just the pursuit of more trophies. Sounds dangerous doesn’t it? A critic may say, then why work at all? Valid in the sense that you don’t have to work merely to achieve. Work was never intended to save us. Work existed in a beautiful garden before any transgressions entered the story. So what is work in light of already being freed from the burden of it? I’d argue that work is tied to another ancient word, called worship.
Not to tarry for long, work and worship don’t just share a common etymology, they have a long ironic, and complicated relationship that can’t be fully explored here. But let’s not kid ourselves, today’s work ethos from corporate America or even communist China is very much a religion. The structuring and vocabulary are as religious as a Vatican mass, with promises of new freedoms just ahead with a little more, what? You guessed it, with a little more faith in the corporation or the government or the nation and with A LOT OF HARD WORK, your self-realization, your salvation is just ahead. And this is how we stay shackled to work of all types and never reach the unburdened freedom to work as an expression of freedom, gratitude, and worship. Any work is misery if it's just a mere attempt to pay off debt.
But the debt is already paid in full, redemption is yours, declaring you loved, unconditionally, which means it has nothing to do with your works and your performance reviews and everything to do with a God of relentless grace. You are free indeed. Including the freedom to resolve or not. But perhaps more importantly freedom to cry, to doubt, to fail, to celebrate, to dance, and to flail aimlessly into the night. But you’re also free to rest. Rest in knowing all you ever need is never tied to your work or resolve, but to One who has already accomplished, finished, and paid it all. Happy New Year!