Embrace a Life of Restful Exertion to Counteract a Self-Help Culture

I’ve noticed myself becoming impatient with some of this year’s newly published books, which seem to be running toward Christianity as a self-improvement project. Scanning the lists from publishers, it dawned on me that there’s no way I can be or do or fix all the unspoken broken that populates our world, the church, or even my own heart. It’s exhausting!

Psychologist Svend Brinkmann calls this “self-optimization fatigue.” When we latch onto our faith as a self-improvement plan, there’s no end to all the work that needs to be done.

And worst of all, there’s that temporary feeling of having “arrived.”
“Just look at me, working on my marriage!”
“I’m sure tearing it up with my self-care routines this week!”

And it’s not long before we fall into the satisfied rut that follows a season of concerted exertion.

A Theology of Restful Exertion

Nearly one hundred years ago, Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned the church about “cheap grace,” and we’ve lined up in droves to get our theology straight on this point, which Bonhoeffer has masterfully defined:

"Grace is costly because it calls us to follow;
it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.
It is costly because it cost a man his life,
and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.”

God’s grace is muscular and abundant. It will support me even if I were unable to lift a finger to advance the Kingdom of God. (This is good news to me in absorbing the realities of Parkinson’s disease.)

But there is a call to follow, which I am prone to turn into a do-list. I’m supported in this by a culture that deifies organization and full schedules–but we don’t call it idolatry. We call it “efficiency,” and then write a blog post or even a book about how to do it well.

What, then, is our right response to God’s lavish grace?

Rest is Our Right Response to Grace

Psalm 116 records the psalmist’s response to deliverance. God had delivered his eyes from tears, his feet from stumbling. He owed his precious life to God’s great intervention, and this was his response to God’s bounty:

"Return, O my soul, to your rest.” (Psalm 116:7 ESV)

He probes this conclusion again in verses 12 and 13:

"What shall I render to the LORD
for all his benefits to me?
I will lift up the cup of salvation
and call on the name of the LORD.” (Psalm 116:12-13 ESV)

God does not work on a barter system where I take grace and then render to him my service as a Sunday school teacher. He does not require three casseroles per month for the needy.

God is self-sufficient. He needs nothing, so the only acceptable response to his “benefits to me” is humble acceptance. Lifting up “the cup of salvation” to him implies that I know he is the only one capable of filling it. When I “call on the name of the LORD,” I admit that all my own efforts, my self-improvement projects, amount to ashes.

Am I making this sound “simple” or “easy”? On the contrary, we have been enculturated to the practices and values of a self-help culture. Rest is not our default and it’s not an easy posture. I appreciated the work of my friend Lauren Sparks, who asks, “Can you relate to rest being hard??? Maybe the word 'rest' conjures up images of lounging in a recliner or laying out by the pool. But if you are anything like me, rest equals struggle.”

God’s valuable and expensive grace invites us to a life of restful exertion. Let’s admit to each other (and to ourselves) that striving is useless and leads to exhaustion. Rest brings nothing to the equation and relies entirely on God’s power and grace.

Will you join me in this path of restful exertion?