Getting Stuck

One thing many people can relate to is the feeling of being stuck. That is why people make New Year's resolutions and students resolve to do better academically at the start of a new semester, and it is also why we become cynical regarding resolutions. We know they hardly ever stick. This is certainly something that therapists experience. We see people who are stuck having the same argument with their spouse for years, returning to the addiction that they know will not bring fulfillment, trying to overcome depression and reaching deeper levels of despair each time their efforts fail. And therapists themselves can become depressed when they feel like their efforts with clients are not paying off.

There are three major literary works that can shed a little light for us on the nature of despair. One is Paradise Lost, where Milton shows Satan having second thoughts just before he heads off to tempt Adam and Eve. He realizes that God has not really asked that much of him and he does not really have a reason to be angry. But his rage quickly returns when he is reminded of the greatness that he once possessed and the pride that went along with that. He knows that if he were restored to life with God and to his former greatness, the same pride that led to his fall would still be there. He had not changed, so he could not repent.

A second example comes from Moby-Dick. Ahab has a moment of clarity where he is reflecting on his life and the madness that drives him, and Starbuck is trying to help him take the next step and give up the chase, but then that same madness drives him to stay the course in pursuing Moby Dick:

‘What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare?’

There are two related questions to consider: how do we get stuck in the first place, and how do we get unstuck?

With regard to both questions, one thing we have to do is not blame others for our problems. We cannot blame our spouses for choices that we make. We cannot blame our parents or our teachers for our choices. We have to consider how we have contributed to or caused our own problems.

Satan was able to see, for a moment, the folly of the course that he had chosen. But he was not able or willing to take the further step of trying to overcome the pride that led him down that road to begin with. He simply resigned himself to continue down that road, come what may.

Similarly, Ahab had an obsession that had been driving him for a long time, and it would take a lot more than one moment of reflection in a conversation with Starbuck for him to change course.

What the Lord calls us to is often described in the Bible in terms of ‘fullness.’

‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory’ (Isaiah 6:3).

Paul speaks of the Church as Christ's body, ‘the fullness of him who fills everything in every way’ (Ephesians 1:23), and he says that God has given different talents and roles to people in the Church so that we might ‘all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ’ (Ephesians 4:13).

This is what is needed to find our rest in the Lord.

Certainly we want to be forgiven by God, but forgiveness is not the end of the Christian life. Neither is having a dog and a house and children active in sports who get good grades. God calls us to fullness.

This is what Paul is speaking of in Philippians 3:7-14. He was not seeking to be righteous by obeying the law or gaining the praise of men. Instead, he says, ‘I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings.’

That is fullness, and Paul describes pursuing it through strenuous effort:

‘Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.’

Getting stuck begins, at least in part, with not seeking after God with every fiber of our being.

Instead of straining toward, we make an effort.

Instead of running the race, we walk—and take a lot of long breaks.

It is the difference between the Michael Jordan mentality and the Charles Barkley mentality. Barkley used to joke that he was not paid enough to play defense. When he played with Scottie Pippen late in his career, Pippen later described Barkley as keeping up with his demanding pre-practice workout routine for only about a month before falling back into old habits.

The same pattern shows up over and over again in stories about achievement. When Rocky loses the eye of the tiger, when he becomes comfortable and overconfident, he loses the fight. There are plenty of movies with essentially the same story.

And we all understand this principle in ordinary life. Lawyers have to apply themselves to pass the bar exam. Doctors have to apply themselves to get into and through medical school. Olympic athletes practice for hours a day because the smallest edge can make the difference between winning and losing.

Hebrews sums up the difference by saying that God ‘rewards those who earnestly seek him’ (Hebrews 11:6).

We know what it means to diligently pursue something that matters to us. We should not expect life with God to work according to a completely different principle. If we seek after God half-heartedly, we should not expect to experience the fullness and fulfillment that come from knowing Him.

And this brings us back to the problem of being stuck.

When we are stuck, there is often a component of having lived apart from God. And when we live apart from God, we do not experience the fullness of life with Christ. We do not have the fulfillment for which we were made, and so we begin looking for fulfillment in a thousand other places.

We look for it in our spouses. We look for it in success. We look for it in approval. We look for it in sex, pornography, alcohol, food, money, work, entertainment, achievement, comfort, or control.

And those things may give us something for a moment. That is precisely why we keep returning to them.

But they cannot give us fullness.

So we return again. We repeat the argument. We return to the addiction. We make another resolution. We try once more to force another person to give us what we think we need. We seek relief from depression through something that gives temporary comfort but leaves us emptier afterward.

And eventually we begin to feel stuck.

The tragedy of Satan and Ahab is that both of them have moments in which they can see what has happened to them. They glimpse another road. But the habits, desires, pride, and obsessions that brought them to that point are still there.

Seeing the problem is not yet the same thing as becoming a different person.

Getting unstuck therefore requires more than a moment of insight. It requires turning toward the source of fullness and then, as Paul puts it, straining toward what lies ahead.

The Christian life is not merely about being forgiven for where we have been. It is about becoming what we were created to be—‘attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.’