Burned Out

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest.” Mark 11:28 (The Message)

It takes brutal honesty to admit that our faith may be the very thing that is wearing us out. We may feel we are promised “heaven on earth” but experience little of it here or we believe heaven awaits us when we die and we have to trudge through until then. So, in one method we look for those few and far between experiences that others share with us where glory comes down and fills their soul. Or, in the other, we dutifully carry on, bucking against the tide until finally arriving “home.”

What someone is honest enough to admit that they feel burned out, and honestly suspect the way they play out their faith is the cause? Hopefully they are listened to, encouraged, and hear other honest responses. How many of us hear about people being transported into heavenly experiences with God, only to realize we have had no such experience. So we pray longer, agonizing, nearly begging God to grant us a teaspoon of what others have described as a never-ending spring.

What if, in all sincerity, our desire for God is what has actually worn us out? The Pharisees, portrayed as Jesus’ adversaries in the gospels, certainly had good intentions. Most people, even the most legalistic overachiever, don’t start out with the desire to lay burdens on people’s backs. Giving others the same benefit of the doubt we give ourselves, we can assume most start with fairly good motives.

But, sooner or later we have to make a choice. We can honestly admit that the way of life we are committed to is wearing us out, or we go plodding along because we don’t know what else we would do. Fearful that admitting we are unfulfilled in our chosen expression of faith, we just keep going, like the Energizer Bunny, except we actually wear down.

This is dangerous territory for a pastor because we build our careers on an institution that needs people to commit. We need them there for Sunday’s so we have someone to preach to. We need them to bring food for the potlucks and show up for midweek Bible studies. The men aren’t men unless they are at their regular meetings, and the same goes for the women’s commitment to a regular Bible Study meeting. All in all, we measure our faith by the commitment to a religious structure called the church.

The reason this is dangerous for a pastor to write about is we are afraid that if we really admit that Sunday morning attendance has very little to do with actual Christian faith, we may find ourselves without a job. Perhaps it’s something like a psychiatrist whose healing counsel is so effective he no longer has patients and therefore is also without a practice.

But I’ll admit it, nearly 40 years after coming to Christ; I am tired, I am sometimes depressed, and I would like to start all over again in how I express my faith in Christ. I think this is much of what is behind the so-called “emergent church” movement. Whether or not it is, I do believe it is of utmost importance that we tear down the curtains that hide our personal fear that perhaps I am missing something.

Don’t be afraid to give in to the heartfelt anguish for “something more”? But, don’t give in to the hawkers selling spiritual experiences with one wave of the hand. Many of us are willing to admit our heart desire that seems so deep, but we stop far short of actually receiving anything of substance. We keep going to the next seminar wanting the latest best-selling author to lay their hands on us, or to give us some personal word and send us home all patched, washed, folded and put away.

Jesus offers us something so far different that it nearly escapes words. It is much to easy to say he offers “relationship instead of religion”. Truly, what in the world does that mean? Because we have turned the “relationship” we are called to have into a new series of religious, (read “spiritual”) duties. If we are not careful, we simply rename our religious exercises as “relationship”. We relabel the bottle but keep the contents much the same.

Let us be honest when we feel cut off from God’s presence. Jesus Himself, on the cross, cried out in His own native tongue, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” And, even if we accept the theory that Jesus was forsaken because He bore all the sins on Himself at that moment, requiring God to turn away from Him, the truth is, Jesus still “felt” that forsakenness.

If He experienced it, there is no reason for us to act as if we do not. If we are “crucified” with Christ, we may indeed experience the same “forsakenness” Jesus did when He cried out, “Why have You forsaken Me?”

Are you weary, tired, burned out? Jesus knows it far more deeply than we even understand. Allow Him to touch the truth you are afraid to admit anywhere else. Let Him into the “forsaken” place you feel within. Let Him share with You the same cry, the same brutal honesty that says, “I believe, but yet I feel forsaken.”