Meditation on Contentment

 "I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength. Philippians 4:11-13

There is a common sentiment today that says that contentment is being at peace with who you, but not necessarily with your circumstances or experiences. Accept yourself, but don't accept your station in life. Be okay with who you are, but don't be okay with where you are. Is it possible that these people have it exactly inverted? Could it be that contentment is accepting where you are, but not who you are? Could it be that true contentment is being at peace with your life circumstances, but never being at peace with who you are--that is, your state of moral, intellectual, relational and emotional development? Could it be that this notion of accepting ourselves is yet another example of the culture's runaway narcissism?

It seems to me that the only contentment available to the Christian as it relates to the self is total confidence in Christ and no confidence in the self. I am at peace with who I am only insofar as I am assured that Christ's perfection is granted graciously to me by his singular work in my behalf. Were it not for this assurance, there could be no peace, no quietude of mind and soul, about my desperate condition. This other, and obviously worldly, confidence begins with a sinful person's generous and illusory appraisal of himself. Given enough time, he deceives even himself about his standing. He may still affirm the need to learn French for life enrichment purposes, but when it comes to his moral condition and the condition his personality--the core of who he is--he is quite sure that he is as finished as he ever need be.

The odd thing about this worldly contentment is that it thrives off the inherently counter-intuitive claim that I am "okay the way I am." The reason I call this inherently counter-intuitive is because of the testimony of Romans 1. We are without excuse. We all know that we have not arrived--that indeed there is perhaps a lifetime of moral development ahead for us, and we even suspect that a lifetime of development will not necessarily do much to make us appreciably better people than we were before. But surely in our hearts we know that while this may be true, it cannot be okay. How can one be content (in the sense of accepting and being at peace) with deeply broken humanity? As the introductory passage indicates, the apostle Paul said that he had learned to be content in all circumstances; not that he was content with himself.

But the contented modern narcissist is okay with who she is! She pretends that this stagnation of the self is wholly acceptable; that it is just "who she is." Her soul no longer needs to be in motion towards some truer moral center, for everything now orbits her. She has "suppressed the truth of God in unrighteousness" by denying the testimony of her conscience that she is not "okay the way she is." She is changeless, and now it is her expectation that the universe change to suit her needs. Her activity is not towards some higher goal or principle or God. Her activity is towards an endless dance of the new; new experiences, new conquests, new emotions, new companions, new purchases, new gods even. In short, her soul is motionless while all spins around her. She has become the center of her own universe.

But there are those whose lives have little external stimulation, but whose souls are furious cauldrons of constant creative activity. I think of Lewis' description of his life as one lived "in dark rooms with endless dusty books." He was silent. He was alone. And yet all the silences and all the spaces were filled to overflowing with magic and near suffocating wonder. These are people who listen to God in the stillness, and because of it they can find no circumstance that is richer than the stillness. And because of it they restlessly pursue the One who changes them at every encounter. God has met them in their simple worlds, and because of it they are in a state of metamorphosis. Others sense the lifelessness of their own souls, and so they work at filling the externals with endless variety.

Consider Paul, boasting of the joy of Christ in poverty and prison while there are so many bored and disillusioned rich people all over our world. No one would call these people idle, but that is precisely what they are in the most important ways. Their "acceptance of self" (their brand of contentment) is little more than metastasized idleness. In all of their busyness, they are vacuous people. Their days are filled and their souls are empty.

Here is another way to think of this. Are you ready to die, even if you are relatively young? The worldly man who defines contentment as peace with self but not peace with the externals will never be ready to die! There is always a new experience, always a beach in Italy that was missed, always a new way to fill the yawning and itching boredom.

But if one possesses an eternal perspective in which Christ burns so brightly that all other worldly pleasures lose their vibrancy in comparison, then one can say truly that one is ready. The man or woman of contented faith in Christ is not ready for death out of some sense of perverse self-abnegation or lack of ambition. It is not that those content in Christ are sad and empty and that is why death seems appropriate. It is quite the opposite. What has life on this earth failed to provide? It gave Christ and the promise of new life, and that is enough.

Perhaps that phrase captures the essence of contentment. Is it enough? Is your life circumstance, which is filled to overflowing with Christ, enough? Is what has been provided for you in Christ enough? You may not be enough as you are, but you know that you are "hidden in Christ," and He is most certainly enough. Do you believe that He is enough to make you enough for God? And do you know that every resource of the eternal sovereign has been pledged to make you whole? Is that enough? Is the promise of heaven enough? Or must one have another trip, or thrill, or another thing to be whole?