Follow Jesus Christ

Whether your life is running downhill or you’ve reached enlightenment and are levitating in the air — that won’t last forever. Everything changes; every new day must be begun anew, battling difficulties and battling yourself. Life itself is arranged so that a state of rest is unattainable. Earthly life is a place of enforced instability. It is a place where all people are engaged in “Sisyphus’ toil.” That phrase comes from the ancient Greek myth of the crafty Sisyphus, who cheated the Olympian gods. As punishment he was condemned to roll a huge stone up a mountain for all eternity. Each time the stone nearly reached the top it would tumble back down, and Sisyphus had to begin again.

Imagine a heavy stone sphere on the slope of a mountain or even a cone. A person is somehow tied to that sphere; they cannot leave it, cannot forget it. Why is it given to each person? This sphere is remarkable in that it is at once the heaviest thing in the world and the only thing a person can truly carry out of this world. Perhaps this sphere is not stone at all. Perhaps it is a great egg containing a secret.

Some people take a step back and the stone rolls down under gravity. Yet a person’s consciousness will always roll with that stone, experiencing its fall. Most people do this: they find a temporary point of support and sit beneath the stone, holding it in place. They have found a system that keeps the stone from rolling. This might be an ideology, a religious system, a political idea, money, family, a profession, or any other source of identity that one makes the final foundation of life. Here the person does not develop. The main thing is that the stone does not roll. Nevertheless, despite the outward success of the millions who sit under the heavy stone propping it up, they always feel constant tension, a kind of longing and subconscious anxiety. There will never be stability, whatever a person does or however much money they have. The stone can always slip and tumble down.

Human personality is such that static equilibrium is not its natural state. If external tasks disappear, it begins to seek or create new ones, because development requires tension. Sisyphus’ labor must go on. A person always thinks about their stone, which hangs over their head and presses on their shoulders. Some people conclude that if there is a mountain and a stone, the point must be to get it to the summit. So they set to work. Pushing the stone uphill is certainly harder than sitting with it in one place. It is a challenge, a continuous task that requires complete concentration on every movement. But life becomes more interesting. The secret of the ascent is that if a person is committed to it, their success is far more likely than that of those who do not want to do it.

Imagine a resolute, strong person who reaches the top of the mountain and with the last of their strength heaves the stone up to the very peak. What does he see? Although the stone now has a point of support, although far less strength is needed — only to keep it there — the stone still has no real equilibrium. The person feels greatly relieved, yet they must still watch carefully so that the stone’s balance is not lost. They cannot forget about it and go off to their own affairs; the struggle continues. What is this stone? Why is there not a single minute’s rest in our lives?

Jesus taught that one should store up treasures in heaven, not on earth. Earthly life is very short. Jesus taught that achieving perfection and following Him is very hard, quite comparable to “Sisyphus’ toil.” Even bearing the cross and ascending Golgotha very much resembles the daily process of lifting a stone to the top of a mountain. This work requires full concentration and complete dedication. Jesus invited the weary to come to Him, yet He did not promise freedom from struggle and labor; He promised to make them easier.

In the context of Jesus’ teaching, this stone is not a pointless burden. A person dies, and something remains that can exist forever. The heavy and awkward stone that we hold with the last of our strength or lift to the top is the person’s eternal “I” — something that will exist when the person is no longer on earth. A person struggles with themselves, with their eternal self, which may not yet be formed or have appeared. One of the remarkable conclusions from Jesus’ words is that spiritual growth produces a fruit: a new human “self” that will live forever, while the old self dies. The old Sisyphus will die.

Sisyphus’ stone must, sooner or later, be delivered to the summit. But that is not enough. Jesus pointed out that a person must lose interest in earthly things. That loss of attachment makes it possible to think about and form one’s future new “I.” Jesus’ words “the human body has no particular importance” (or “is of no use” in the Synodal translation) should be understood in the context of the mortality of all things earthly. Everything earthly is temporary. Even the body belongs to this age. Therefore Jesus continually redirects a person’s attention to what survives death. This inconvenient stone, which interferes with living on earth, is of the greatest significance.

Perhaps the legend of Sisyphus is not finished and needs a contemporary reinterpretation. So that the stone is not experienced as a burden, so that it does not roll down again, so that the work need not be endlessly repeated, a person must identify with this stone as if it were their personal lifeboat for a future space flight into interstellar space. One must think of oneself as a new creation inside the stone. This stone is not a stone at all. It is a great egg in which a new personality is gradually being born. Your personality. This object requires very careful handling.

All our lives we think we are rolling a heavy stone. But one day it will turn out not to be a stone at all. It will be the shell of our future being. We are not hauling a load. We are gestating ourselves. That is why we are tied to this stone and can never simply drop it and go off into the unknown. If we want to live, we must continue to struggle and to work. Sisyphus’ labor in reality cannot be without reward. The striving for perfection will certainly be rewarded.