I can't get no satisfaction...

Okay, once again I'm posting something totally un-original. But this made me think of a friend of mine, not to mention my own present sense of identity/purpose-crisis. So, here you go. This is from the latest online issue of Relevant magazine (see my previous post on this fab mag for a link):

PEACE IN RESTLESSNESS
by Stephen Simpson

I had arrived. I was married to a wonderful woman, I had a decent place to live, and I was making a living doing exactly what I wanted to do. My wife and I had found a church that we both liked, and I was going to church regularly for the first time in years. I even taught Sunday school. I should have been at peace. I wasn't.

After that opening, you might expect me to reveal some dark secret, like I was addicted to sniffing glue. Or maybe you thought I'd deferred some lifelong dream, like becoming a circus clown or a Jedi Knight. Nope. I liked my life just fine, but something still eluded me. I never felt finished, never felt like I'd arrived. It was impossible to achieve a worry-free homeostasis. Just when I'd save some money, my car would break down. If my career was humming along, my wife's would go off the rails, or vice versa. But it wasn't just the slings and arrows of fortune that disquieted me. I was restless. I ached for something new to explore, some new challenge. My wife called it my "obsession of the month." I wanted to write a novel, record an album, right some social wrong or run for political office. When that didn't work, I turned to diversion, be it running marathons, playing video games or hanging out at the local bar drinking beer and playing trivia games.

Don't get me wrong—I wasn't miserable, just impatient. I expected all the studying and working crappy jobs I did in my 20s to pay off in a feeling of quiet vindication once I was a married professional thirtysomething. Where was my peace? Where was the well-dressed guru I'd hoped to become?

A friend of mine struggled with a similar problem. He retreated to a Benedictine monastery to try to get his head around it. One of the monks spent some time in spiritual direction with him. When my friend told the monk about his restlessness, his response surprised him.

"Good," he said. "We live in a fallen world. You should be restless." Huh? What the heck kind of answer is that? I thought Christians were supposed to achieve perpetual inner peace. I thought I'd end up with a glowing countenance and a wise smile as I dispensed wisdom and good vibes from a comfortable chair. Now some monk says I should be restless. I told my friend he should ask for his money back.

Then I remembered something or, rather, someone: Jesus. I tried to think of a time when Jesus felt finished, like He'd arrived. I thought of one, but it didn't help: Jesus arrived when He died. After His resurrection, He had that Zen quality I'd been looking for, but before that, He was restless. He traversed Judea looking for the poor, infirm and brokenhearted. He turned over temple tables and pissed off the Pharisees. He sweat blood and died on a cross, all because the fallen state of the world made Him restless.

Sooner or later, the dream of a perfect, peaceful life has to die. Thoreau said, "Most men live lives of quiet desperation." Bono sang, "I still haven't found what I'm looking for." I think I know now what they mean. I'm called to a life of silent striving, because the world's imperfect and so am I. As long as I have breath, something will be incomplete.

As a psychologist, I've seen a lot of people suffer because they can't accept this. They want their lives to be perfect and experience a lot of disappointment and rage as a result. I've seen couples despair when marriage isn't the fantasy they imagined in their youth. I've seen businessmen who can't understand why money doesn't make them happy. I've worked with ministers who pull their hair out because their congregation continues to behave like sinners. But these folks come to a place of healing once they understand that striving with such imperfection is part of who we are. Until Christ redeems the world, we'll always have work to do.

But there's good news. Our restlessness can give us peace. Once we realize that we can't force perfection and that we depend on God to sustain us, we can reach a place of quiet determination. We can learn to relish restlessness as a sacred purpose, sustained by the Holy Spirit. It also makes us take heaven more seriously. If you're like me, you sometimes think of heaven as a retirement home, a place you'll go after you've gotten what you want out of life. But if we realize that the peace our hearts desire comes only in eternity, enduring the restlessness of life in a fallen world becomes easier. In Philippians 3:12-14, Paul writes, "Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal ... but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus." Or, as Pete Townshend says in "The Seeker," "I'm not gonna get what I'm after til the day I die."

But we aren't dead yet. We have work to do. Doing that work can be thrilling and fulfilling if we rely on God and accept that we live in an imperfect world. In the movie Gladiator, Maximus wants to be with his wife and son in the afterlife. One of his fellow gladiators tells him, "You will see them again, but not yet." First, Maximus has to kick some butts and straighten out the Roman Empire. When he dies at the end of the movie and joins his family, he gets what he really wanted all along. Our time of peace is coming. One day, there will be an end to the striving against evil in the world, sin in our lives and restlessness in our hearts. But not yet.

[Stephen Simpson lives in Pasadena, Calif., where he and his wife are expecting quadruplets.]