Take my yoke upon you.
Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart,
and you will find rest
for your souls.(Mt. 11:29)
In Rafael Yglesias' screen play of
Victor Hugo's timeless Les Miserables,
Javert, the soul-less villain, finally captured the convict Valjean
for good and has a gun to his head.
“It's a pity that rules don't allow
me to be merciful,” Javert says. “I've tried to live my life
without breaking a single rule.”
The line is thunder to the human heart.
We imagine the keeping of rules is a good thing and the breaking of
them is bad. We are right, and suffer the pride or shame that goes
with either.
And yet Javert, it seems, had made
rightness his highest goal. Separate from God, rightness builds its
own prison, an echo-chamber of moral superiority that, in the end,
can justify almost anything. Javert had devoted his life to rightness
and in the end his life was forfeit at his own hand: he self-destructed in suicide. Javert found himself in a vortex from which not
even Valjean's mercy could save.
And how else could life end for us if
we make our supreme goal – the idol to which we daily bow –
“living without breaking a rule?” Rules beget rules and crush the
soul. Mercy cannot breath, and eventually dies.
A dear friend once said this to me in a
different way. Listening to my struggle through tears and meandering,
he said, “Sounds like you are in a valley.”
"Yes," I replied. "But what are we doing looking at all
of this stuff, misunderstandings, stubbornesses, ideals all but
crushed. What is this!?”
“We are in the laundry room, sorting.”
“We are in the laundry room, sorting.”
I liked the analogy, helpful instead of condemning. I wanted to say something about diapers
and their messes, for that was the kind of
'laundry' at hand.
“I think you are fighting a phantom,”
he continued. “I think the answer will be found when you quit
straining. I think the answer is gentle, and you've not tried that
much. How 'bout gentle?”
I didn't know what to say and then the
conversation was abruptly interrupted.
And so I have often wondered: “Gentle.
What does that mean?”
The Canadian teacher and
psychologist, Jordan Peterson, gives a clue in one of his life rules: “Learn to
treat yourself like someone for whom you are responsible and for whom
you care a great deal.”
Really?! “Care for a great deal?” I
care for myself well enough, especially my bodily wants. But can I be
tender with myself? Can I forgive? Can I begin to ignore, and
eventually quit the negative,
perversely addictive self-talk? I think Peterson has it right. If I
cared for someone else a great deal, how would I treat them? The
answer gives guidance for how I should treat myself.
And
so, how does this come around to Javert? Javert
was his own cruel task-master. There was no room for love, only
rules. He could not show mercy to himself, nor, in turn, to others. He
self-flaggelated, and in it all a creature emerged whose only goal
was to avoid breaking rules.
This
is like Lewis's deep remark about selflessness. “We have it
backwards” – my paraphrase. “The emphasis must not
be on avoiding selfishness but on showing love, learning to
demonstrate care and consideration for the needs of others.” Merely
avoiding selfishness, like
Javert's avoidance of rule-breaking, defines our life by a negative. It is a trajectory of despair. Love
could not save him because he was bound to rules.
How we
need this lesson. Do I care about others, or do I care about being
right? We can live both of course. But we will find, I think, we are
most right when we lay aside a singular focus on rightness and
consider those around us. In this, love sets us free and we find the
gentle way, learning to be free of striving, learning to be
gentle with ourselves so we can, in turn, be gentle with others. How
I long to learn this good way, this easy way to carry burdens, this
letting go of the need to be right.
God is
with us, and Jesus calls us, so beautifully, to His easy burden.
That's the one I receive today, with gladness. And I want to be together on that journey with my wife and family, and with all who share this wonderful gift of life.
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