THEARTOFCHRIST — Issue 24: Serotonin
The Steadiness That Is Not Manufactured
How Christ brings about life, and how He supplies it more abundantly.

Anchor: The Soul Quieted

A psalm speaks of a soul quieted, not a soul quieting itself: like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me (Ps 131:2, paraphrase).

The herald announces the order of that sentence, because the order is the whole lesson. The child is named first, in the nearness, in the held place, in the flesh. The quiet is named second, and it follows the nearness. The quiet is not the child's achievement. It is the child's position. A weaned child no longer strains for what it once demanded, and the stillness is real. But the sentence does not rest on the child's self-command. It rests on the child being with its mother. The steadiness is given before it is felt.

The world sells serotonin the other way round. Serotonin is the body's signal for steadiness — the chemical that rises with daylight, with rest, with food eaten well, with movement, that teaches the body when to be calm, when to sleep, when to eat, when to be at ease among others. The world reads that signal and builds a program around it: raise the serotonin, and the steadiness follows. Get the morning light, eat the right foods, move the body, guard the sleep, lower the stress, and the mood steadies. Calm becomes a level to manage.

There is a grain of observation in it, and that is why it sells. A man does feel steadier after sleep than after a night without it. A man does feel more even when he has eaten and moved than when he has not. The body does settle with light and rest, and does fray without them. But the world's program turns an observation into a ladder, and a ladder into a verdict. Manage the inputs well, and you are becoming someone. Fail to manage them, and you are failing at yourself. The mood becomes a dashboard to monitor, and every dip becomes a judge.

That is where steadiness turns cruel. The man whose mood has sunk reads his heaviness as proof that he has managed himself badly, and the proof deepens the heaviness. The man whose mood looks even reads his managed calm as proof of his discipline, and the proof curdles into pride. A calm manufactured by effort alone always frays again.

Apart from Christ, steadiness is a master, and a master always ends in one of two places: pride in the calm kept, or despair at the calm lost. The man is alienated from the life of God (Eph 4:18, paraphrase), and so even his calm becomes a place where he is cut off from life — the steadiness wanted, the evenness always somewhere else, the verdict waiting underneath.

Scripture bears witness to a different answer to steadiness. The connectors reveal the movement: the steadiness is real, the created steadiness cannot hold it, and the frayed steadiness is not the end of the story but the shape of the creature waiting for its Keeper.

Elijah ran, and then he broke. Under a broom tree he asked for his life to end. God did not answer the broken man with a program for managing his mood. An angel touched him, and gave him bread and water, and let him sleep, and gave him bread and water again, and the man walked on the strength of food he did not provide for himself (1 Kgs 19:5-8, paraphrase). The rest came before the next road. The steadiness was received, not raised.

In Christ, the steadiness is held, then given.

The man hears that he is held before he steadies himself, and the hearing itself is the gift — God gives hearing, and God gives growth, so that the held man learns to live held. The steadiness is not a level for securing calm. It is a Person received, and the Person reorders what the man's body does with its days. The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guards hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Phil 4:7, paraphrase) — the peace named first, the guarding named second, the guarding running from God's giving to the man's receiving. Paul says he learned to be content in plenty and in want, and that he can do all things through Him who strengthens him (Phil 4:11-13, paraphrase) — not the contentment the man manufactures to calm himself, but the contentment learned in Christ, because the strength has somewhere to come from.

The steadiness left to itself runs the other way, and Scripture names it plainly: the heart left to its own keeping deceives (Jer 17:9, paraphrase). The same steadiness, held in Christ, runs the other way: given, received, held, turned outward. The difference is not the strength of the man's grip on his mood. The difference is the Keeper who does not forget.

Steadiness Reaches the Day

Every topic in this workshop relates to physical life, and serotonin is bodily through and through — the sleep that comes without bargaining for it, the appetite that eats without ruling or being ruled, the mood that does not set the day's verdict, the patience that holds when a conversation goes long.

The world's program counts the steadiness: the hours slept, the foods eaten, the steps walked, the stress avoided, the mood scored. Apart from Christ, the count is the verdict: the man who is alienated from the life of God (Eph 4:18, paraphrase) treats even his calm as a work to perform, and so his steadiness becomes another place where he is cut off from life.

In Christ, the steadiness is a steadiness already held and already being given. The sleep taken without needing the sleep to prove the sleeper, the meal eaten without the meal becoming a proof, the low day carried without the lowness becoming a verdict — the body does what a held creature does: steadying in a shape given to it, not earning a shape withheld from it. The calm does not make the man acceptable before God. The calm receives a life already given in Christ.

This receiving also reaches the neighbor. A man who is held does not need the neighbor to regulate his mood, and so he can turn toward the neighbor without demanding. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Gal 5:22-23, paraphrase) — not a list of levels to raise, but fruit borne where the Spirit is at work. The patience that does not snap at the slow answer, the gentleness that does not use a low mood as a weapon — these are not performances of calm. They are steadiness in bodily form, the held man sparing his neighbor what he can spare him, because Christ first held him when he could not hold himself.

That is life, supplied more abundantly (John 10:10, paraphrase): a man whose steadiness is no longer a project of self-manufacture, whose calm is no longer his verdict, whose sleep and appetite and mood — wanted and given on a given day — are a steadiness Christ has held, received in Christ, and turned toward the neighbor, in Christ.