The Relentless Beast
“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” Romans 12:2
There is a spectre and demon that haunts the good man. This demon screams loudest when good men stand tallest. He pushes and drives and urges towards weakness and depression. He presses and drones to destruction and passivity. Hold! Yes: his destructive purpose is passivity, for gray twilight makes bats blindest.
He is a tedious beast who never rests until you give in—he is the cousin to busyness, only differing in tactic and style. When you rise to speak for a worthy cause he shouts you down, when you walk to carry out a plan and purpose he whispers your inadequacies, and when you set your face like a flint he laughs at you and causes you to doubt.
He always stands on the mid-cliff, calling you down from the heights and up from the depths; never desiring either your joy or sorrow, but only sharing in your boredom.
He was there before Adam’s fall, and he urges you towards yours. He is the younger weakness to an older strength, purpose, but lulls it to sleep through half-baked dreams and cockeyed schemes. He is relentless when you are tenacious, and he never stops until you ever cease. He is busiest until you are laziest. He is life’s paradox, its worst paraclete, and its greatest para-dink.
He advises the causes to life’s greatest sorrows, and is present to all their births. He himself is neither life’s greatest wrong nor right, vice nor blessing. He stands taler than the others but shorter than the rest. He is only just so-so.
When you walk slow he tells you to walk fast, and when you walk fast he tells you to stop. When you take the lead, he shouts that the back is best. When you slouch in the back, he says the front is better. When you whisper in gentle counsel, he softly says, “Harder!” When you point out another’s weakness, he screams, “Softer!” All is better elsewhere, and everything is nothing unless you have something else.
He is Mediocrity and Malcontent: a two-faced and double-minded fiend. When you point the finger at him, he points it at someone else. When he is to blame, another carries the shame. He is man’s first sin before his first fall, and the cause of man’s first great divorce.
