RAGE

“Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, Rage against the dying of the light.” - Dylan Thomas

Rage is the gasoline on which I run. Conformity, mediocrity, the System – there are many such big words against which I rage, but in the end, they just poorly conceal a shame and hatred of self. This is what drives me to create and perform, to reach upward toward the face of God, to get out of bed. This raging discontent has led to my greatest achievements, such as they are. Without it, I would be placid and boring. 

There’s a mythology we tell of the suffering artist: only broken, hurt, angry people create the most glorious art. Art is a torturous burden where only those who remain broken can share the beautiful shards of themselves with the world. This is unsustainable, but even in death they become a magnificent comet burning itself out across the sky. A long lineage of self-destructive artists from Beethoven to Brando perpetuate the legend. So I foster my brokenness and feed my rage because this is what makes me powerful and special.

But for all the years it’s fueled me, rage hasn’t gotten me to the place I want to be. Discontent breeds discontent. It promised to be my salvation, to fill the hole inside me, but after so many years I realize it is the hole inside me. It is what I need to be saved from.

I know I have access to satisfaction and contentment in Christ. He said, “Come to me all who are tired and burdened and I will give you rest.”* But I’m afraid of this rest. It is alien to me and would take away the thing that gives me motivation and uniqueness. Better to stick to the devil I know. What if God takes this burden and with it the ability to be Brando? But would this be such a bad thing if I no longer feel the need to be Brando? What would it look like if creating art was no longer a torturous, self-destructive burden, but rather a dance – an overflow of worship?

The longer I endure this journey, the fewer things I seem to know. Everything is shot through with questions and doubts. Rage has failed to give me the fulfillment it promised. Christ offers fulfillment and wholeness, but it is a terrifying and disorienting thing to switch gods. It means acknowledging one’s previous effort, achievements, and values are rubbish and letting the new and unknown god chart one’s future course. 

I don’t know what will happen to me if I let go of rage and hold on to Christ alone. I don’t know if I will find in Him the satisfaction and contentment He promises. But the only ship I’ve known is already under water, and either I abandon it or drown.

C.S. Lewis suggests that wanting Christ is enough, even on the shabby grounds of having no other option: “The price of Christ is something, in a way, much easier than moral effort – it is to want Him. It is true that the wanting itself would be beyond our power but for one fact. The world is so built that, to help us desert our own satisfactions, they desert us. War and trouble and finally old age take from us one by one all those things that the natural Self hoped for at its setting out. Begging is our only wisdom, and want in the end makes it easier for us to be beggars. Even on those terms the Mercy will receive us.”

Grace is a terrible thing. It means having nothing with which to commend ourselves, no remaining shred of dignity or effort. It demands we abandon previous achievements, values, and motivation. It takes everything. Only later are we able to see that what we lost was not worth having – a bundle of false narratives failing to deliver what they promise – and what we gained is immeasurable and eternal. It is simultaneously the hardest and the easiest choice we could ever make. 

J.

*Matthew 11:28

Aug. 10, 2021