Speed is no friend of life with God
But speed is the value of our culture.
For the last decade, I’ve been frustrated with how little I can get done with the time I have. I’m realizing anything worth pursuing takes far longer than I wish it did. I want to change faster, and I want to keep up with the world around me which seems unburdened by time.
In the pursuit of change and progress, we’ve taken the call to put away childish things and chased becoming the wrong kind of adult. We’ve defined life on our terms, at our speed, free of any authority outside of ourselves.
These free, fast-moving selves are untethered to the past, to tradition, to a larger purpose over our days. Our culture believes that “Every human has the right to define for himself or herself what it means for him or her to be human.” Finding that definition is to find true authenticity.
In his book, The Congregation in A Secular Age, Andrew Root writes this about our culture’s pursuit of authenticity:
“The vehicle for identity to meet the speed of late modernity is performance. You're free to have whatever identity feels most authentic to you, but to really possess that identity, you must meet the speed of modernity, not be free of it. Not coincidently, those who seem the most authentic are those moving fastest, those with the most Instagram followers, those who most directly perform their identities to win recognition.”1
Be whoever you want, but to sustain your self-defined world, you must keep the plates spinning, or else no one will notice you.
Root goes on with a little more detail:
"The speed of late modernity, its frantic pace of life imposed on us by the blitzing social and technological change since the 1970s, makes life a raging river. In this raging river you need to not only create your own identity but also reach out into the world to receive recognition for that identity, swimming like hell to keep up in the breakneck currents.' It is your individual job in a constantly moving environment to be a self in the always-increasing pace of late modernity.
And you need to be not just some generic, bland self but a happy, successful, recognized self who's not spitting out water but riding the rapids, maybe even with style. Needing to swim yourself to the crest of the current means that the self in late modernity can never rest. To be this kind of self requires constant navigating. This self constantly rushes to keep up.”2
How does that sound to you?
It sounds exhausting.
We find ourselves formed by the way of culture, which has deemed us all Lost Boys and Girls, free of parents and the tyranny of limits. In Neverland, we’re free to define our reality, accountable to no one but ourselves.
Root adds that our time has been emptied of unseen realities (angels, demons, sin, hell, damnation, salvation, and heaven). These realities cause life to be thick with meaning and depth, and when you choose to delete them from the equation, time is now thin, empty, and light. Unhindered by God’s world, time has no final meaning or end.
And what do we do with this thin, empty time?
We double down on what we can see, touch, and experience. We fill our time to feel meaningful. It doesn’t matter if it's the right thing, as long as it is good enough. Root calls this “busyness as fullness”.
When fullness is sought through busyness and when authenticity hollows out the moral substance for the sake of being light enough to be busier, it becomes very hard for Christians to know their purpose, other than keeping pace with the world—but to where?
Many of us have been at high speed for so long that this thinness of life is okay as long as it feels like fullness. It’s a bit like chips and salsa. They’re great, while 3 unintentional bowls of chips later, you feel full—but you came for fajitas. Don’t be fooled. Chips and salsa and fajitas are not the same.
Busyness as fullness is no substitute for God’s way of life.
Busyness feels like fullness because moving fast brings energy. Speed is exciting, and it’s dangerous. When things move fast we confuse them with health - but plenty of dangerous things grow quickly.
Here’s the last quote from Root, and it’s about the difference between change and growth:
"Modernity is the constant process of speeding things up. Modernity demands that things increase speed. If we're not careful, to diagnose the church's issue as the need for change is to cover it in the core commitments of late modernity itself. If the consultant raises the church to a new speed, this yokes the congregation to always be speeding up to meet the never-ending change that will always remain on the horizon, a carrot forever out of reach. Speed is the supposed gift of late modernity that can quickly turn into a depressive curse.
Change is almost always considered to be some kind of growth, and in late modernity that which grows must continually grow. Modernity is about change because it is about growth. It takes a lot of work, and a whole different imagination, to disconnect change from growth. Untying the two leads to something completely different: transformation in the Spirit. Being the church is about transformation, not change. Though on first blush these seem synonymous, transformation and change are quite different.
Transformation, in the Christian tradition, comes from outside the self, relating to the self with an energy beyond the self. Because transformation comes from an energy outside the self, it invites the self into the new as a gift, as grace. It demands no increase for continuation, no energy investment to receive it. Transformation is the invitation into grace; it comes with an arriving word, "Peace be with you" (John 20:19). Transformation is not the necessity to speed up but the need to open up and receive. Change, on the other hand, comes from within the self. Change makes the self into something new, using the power and the effort of the self: it is produced by the energy of the self."3
It’s hard to keep pace with an inhuman speed.
We’re offered a life of thick, transcendent meaning—of depth in God’s way, but it requires we admit we’re created beings, not the Creator. It requires we admit we don’t know what’s best for us and can’t provide for ourselves what we ultimately need. It is faith in God’s world and his way. But this slows us down, is unpredictable, and requires faith that God is not just good for us, but to us, and that he’s kind.
What is the speed and pressure of life doing to our faith?
Is God’s promise of who He is and who He says you are, of what he has done and what he will do - are these realities beautiful enough, attractive enough for you to patiently endure in hope?
Are we saying the better thing God provided, what the hall of faith in Hebrews waited for, is a Neverland of our own making? I think about telling Moses that life is great because I can order whatever I want on my phone, or the Apostle Paul that I haven’t put off sin because sin’s not really a thing anymore— in fact, we’ve redefined our reality to match our feelings, instead of disciplining our feelings to match our God’s reality.
How disappointed would they be in the race they ran, the pleasures they avoided to remain faithful in hope, what they gave up when they see how we’ve run with the baton for the next lap?
How do we live in God’s world and in God’s way when the speed and pressure of life feel out of control?
We live in God’s time. Sacred time. Root calls this sacred time “time that matters, time you set your being to.” Do you know this kind of feeling? The experience of time slowing down? Maybe it’s a special meal with friends, a story that captures your attention, or an experience with people you love. It’s the kind of time that is thick with meaning. It roots you in the world. This is the kind of time we keep with God: meaningful attentiveness to the mattering things.
When time is thin and empty of meaning, when we live at speed and under pressure with “busyness as fullness,” we carry forward the enlightenment, modern, even late modern yardsticks of progress, tolerance, and innovation.
Keeping God’s time means that we live in God’s world and God’s way based on who He says we are as individuals and as the Church.
When we do this, we have a fighting chance to use technology, innovation, and progress as tools instead of treating them like saviors. The speed and pressure of life don’t have to rule us.
Have you ever had a chunk of time with nothing to do…but you ended up feeling guilty for not being productive? We actually feel guilty for wasting time even though we’ve thinned it out and emptied it of real meaning.
What do you do with that guilt or fear of wasting time? We overcommit to busyness because it feels like fullness. Because when we live in our own world and in our own way, there is no one to deal with our guilt and shame but us. We seek our own freedom from authority, become an authority to ourselves, and then live under our own condemnation for not living up to inhuman standards.
How often do you feel overwhelmed in daily life? Like things you once could do easily take 5x the effort now?
Do you feel the pressure to perform so you know you matter?
Do you get anxious when you don’t have anything to do?
It’s no surprise that for those who choose to live outside of God’s world, way, and time - rest is a priority that we don’t know how to embrace. Rest requires internal stillness, but the speed and pressure of life aren’t conducive to stillness.
Recently, Carly and I were enjoying a moment of reading while the kids were playing upstairs. I think they were playing - we couldn’t hear yelling, so we assumed they were playing.
She said, “Ok - it’s a day off, so what’s the pla-I mean, what would you like to do today?”
We both caught it and laughed. We’ve been so formed by speed and pressure - we both are bent toward doing something and struggle to simply be.
If you’re tired of feeling thin, as Tolkien said, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much toast, nervous that it won’t slow down anytime soon: the invitation for you is to keep God’s time.
Again, it’s hard to keep pace with an inhuman speed.
Human speed is on God’s time, in God’s world, ordering life in God’s way.
God’s never asked us to speed up to achieve bigger, better things.
He asks us to be still, to trust that He is who he says that He is, and what he says about us is true. He wants us to acknowledge our need and his provision.
But in the Neverland of our own making, there are no last days, final judgments, accountability for our actions, or future promises. There is just thin and empty time to be filled or flitted away with distraction.
Neverland isn’t real. The sobering thing about our day is that we can look at all the limitations humanity has liberated itself from, and the good life still doesn’t seem to be found. We’re tearing down every institution because our culture has put its hopes on openness to what’s next - to the new.
Keeping sacred time acknowledges there will always be new, but there is only one who is the Ancient of Days. He has created the world, created life, and holds time in his hand.
His promises do not fail, and he is not slow to fulfill them. He is right on time.
Set your being to God’s time, and even when it turns out different than you expected - submit to God’s wisdom. Live as creatures kept with care before our Creator.
Consider:
Are you living out busyness as fullness?
What is the promise you’re living for?
What do you want so bad that you’re willing to patiently endure hardship, disappointment, or suffering in order to gain?
Lots of us would answer this with fine things like health, fitness, wealth, happiness. How many of us have this mindset toward personal holiness?
What speed and pressure are you living at? Is it human or inhumane?
Why are you living at such speed and under such pressure?
You can’t seek God at the speed and under the pressure of our culture. There is no room for the thickness and meaning of God’s world in a culture built on defining it’s own reality. The drumbeat of innovation and liberation at all costs will eventually have us asking the questions:
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?4
Tired of the speed and pressure of daily life?
You need a hope stronger than the promise of innovation and progress.
You need deeper meaning and beauty than busyness or individualism can give.
Cultivate meaning and purpose in your time by paying attention to your hope. Take an honest look at your commitments, habits, and way of being.
What are you living towards?
Who are you becoming?
What hope is driving where your attention goes?
Are you living at speed and under pressure?
How much is your digital world driving how you spend your time?
Living in God’s world, way, and time is hard meaningful work. Are you living as a created being - receiving God’s design for your life and honoring the limits of your abilities? This can be hard work and is often directly opposed to the values of the world. Who can you partner with to help spot busyness as fullness in your life? None of us can go it alone—find a friend and have the conversation - invite them to help you see what is driving the pace, and what you need to lay down.
God promises that He is perfecting his children. Speed and pressure make perfection seem instant. The reality is that you are an ongoing process of change until the day you die. Pursuing holiness is an admission on our part that God’s design is the quality of life we’ve wanted all along—we’ve just gone about it the wrong way. In Christ, we choose to believe that God’s way is better than fake fullness. We pass on the chips and wait for the fajitas with patience.
As clear as I can say, Our best defense against the speed and pressure of life is to cultivate time thick with meaning and hope. Speed is opposed to the spiritual life, but speed is addictive because busyness makes life feel full.
You need a hope that inspires patient endurance in the things that matter—and that’s only found in Jesus.
Funny thing is that in life with God, you not only get to move at human speed—but the pressure to perform is off. No more looking for validation - because you’re loved as a child of God.
The invitation for us is to name the speed and pressure of culture, to dethrone it, and to increasingly live in God’s world, follow God’s way, by keeping God’s time.
Andrew Root, The Congregation in a Secular Age, 12.
Root, Congregation, 8-9.
Root, Congregation, 14-15.
T.S. Eliot, Choruses from the Rock.
“busyness as fullness” - that statement hit hard! Great post brother.