Relax Don't Do it!

Days 4&5   Life has its own plans….so don’t be a legalist about it.

The last two days have maxed me out. Day 4 was really busy at work, but uneventful for the most part. I worked a 12 hour day and was stopped from my exercise plan because it was raining when I got back to the hotel. Yesterday, I worked 7:00 am to 10:00 pm and was just a little too beat to go run at that hour. I could have forced the issue, but why am I doing this to begin with?  To be more healthy, not to cause stress by  forcing myself  to do it every day.  Here comes some more ramblings...coherent or incoherent. Its something to think about.

Legalism ties into my egg theory. If one gets too legal about anything it falls under rule#3. Excessive rules keeping creates stress on the shell of my life. Egg shells do not like stress and crack in due time. Your life will not be far behind in this regard.  Ultimately stress comes down to this concept of legalistic control.  Someone (perhaps you) has failed to meet your standard of right and wrong and you are afraid you can't be in control.

My children are growing up and are out on their own.  I could fret and call them every ten minutes, but it just demonstrates that I want to be in control of something that I am not and nor should I be.  At work my boss micromanages everything and even after working for him for 9 years he still doesn't trust me.  Its his prerogative to not trust me so why should that stress me out?  Only because I want to force him to trust me and conform to my rules about when a person should or should not trust someone.  The love of my life just had a wreck with the car this week.  Yep, I had a moment and expressed my frustration at not being in control in the direction of my poor wife (bless her heart).  Stress caused by more lack of control and my own innate notions about how life should be controlled by me and me alone.

One of the most stressful periods of my life was a time when I hated my job, hated my boss and increasingly blamed God for it. Like many driven people, I like to be in control of most aspects of my life. Being in control is comforting on the surface, but in truth it is a fool’s errand. If you have a spec of realist in you, Christian or otherwise, it does not take an entire portion of life experience to come to the conclusion that little to nothing about life is truly controllable.

Christianity would apply this principle to wanting control….being anxious is no more than fretting about not being in control. Let me sum up without too much of the detail

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.



Christ is quoted by Matthew as saying the following:


“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life …. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

The point being that if I try to control every aspect of my life and flip out about missing a day of exercise I am going beyond being self-disciplined and being legal about it. Legalism brings misery to everyone. It does not matter what extreme one goes to in their personal conduct, it is rare that it is truly beneficial to them or to anyone around them. Bear with me as I use Christianity as my examples since for starters I am a Christian and it is what I believe, but it is also what I know. As an atheist or nonbeliever you can be all legalistic about yourself and refuse to read any further if you choose, but the principles I am talking about here can and do apply to most things you are trying to control that cause you stress.

Some tend to live life with a “better safe than sorry" mentality when it comes to grey areas of morality. This will work for engineering, but it does not work where human life is applied…at least in my Christian world view it does not. For a Christian, to “add to or take away” from truth are equally the same error. So by being overly legal one risks not being true. Instead of being safe this person has strayed off the path just as much as the person they deem to be too free with their interpretation of truth, because they have created a law where there is no law...added to the truth so to speak. The problem is that unless it is plainly declared or empirically known a legal interpretation can be as much as a departure from truth as a liberal one. So for every grey area in life there is a singular truth (at least I believe so) and based on that idea ( I know you may not agree) let me continue.



A simple diagram that illustrates my basic understanding of truth as applied to an absolute.

The next illustration has been a hotly debated topic in Christianity for at least five generations. There have been arguments back and forth that continue to this day. Some admit a grey area and decide that being safer than sorry is best and adopt a policy that it is as sin for anyone to have alcohol. Others go too far the other way and think and use grace as a cloak to permit anything they want. One has made a law that does not exist in our Bible and the other has explained away several that do exist.

Both can be sources of stress. One gets stressed by the idea that God will curse them for sinning for consuming alcohol and the other stresses in the presence of the first that he may judge him for being too free which oddly enough is its own legalism. There is plenty of room in this world for both people to be wrong if they would just leave each other alone.

In the end I have said this to point out that we are our own stressors and breakers of our own eggs. It is usually our legal desire for control of everything (the actions of others, what God may or may not do, fate) and the desire to obtain the approval of others (what will people think of me?) that creates our stress. Some people stress about the smallest things like flubbing up and missing their day(s) of exercise, others like me get wacked out about the ability to pay their bills. In the end neither is in control of anything. I could have an aneurysm tomorrow and be alive, but completely disabled the rest of my life, not one more day of exercise, not one more day of working my guts out to pay my bills. I would have to accept what comes.

So try to relax. Enjoy the day, enjoy your life. Work it out for yourself, not for everyone else. Just because someone else has a standard that you don't have does not necessarily mean they are judging you. Life is in truth very short and in the end it is what you do for someone other than yourself that is going to count the most.

So the tension of truth is summed up by not working for your salvation, but working out your salvation (sanctification). Or in non-Christian terms, not everything is black and white, figure out that grey stuff for yourself and don't be a dick to people who don't see it the way you do. You'll just stress yourself out to no fruitful end. Quit the worrying, quit the controlling.

Goosfrabah!!!