The Perfection Trap
One of the most persistent challenges in my life is reconciling the things that I can do with the things that I can’t do. I feel very fortunate and very blessed with the various abilities that God has given and nurtured within me. In any given day, I could accomplish a lot of things in many areas of my life. The shadow side of this ability is the expectation that grows within me that I ought to be able to, in turn, fix everything that goes wrong in my life. This is an insidious growth…it begins slowly and imperceptibly until one day I realize that I’m living with the expectation and feeling of entitlement that I ought to be able to fix everything that goes wrong in my life and my world. I feel as though I ought to be able to quickly and effectively troubleshoot anything (and by extension, anyone) operating outside of factory specifications. When it is proven that I am unable to accomplish these fixes, I get stressed, I get angry and I find myself seeking to exercise greater control over other areas of my life both to keep other things from falling apart and to prove, if only to myself, that I’m not a hopeless failure. I know…that all sounds pretty pathological…but as I learn more about this blind spot in my life and listen to others share similar struggles I am convinced that there are many of us in the world who labor in the shadow of this image of personal perfection.
So here is what I’ve learned: I can’t fix everything that goes wrong in my life, in my ministry, with my own father or with a Little League umpire. The question I’m learning to wrestle with is “how can I learn to be faithful to my calling in Christ when there is challenge and adversity in my life?” I have to come to terms with what faithfulness requires of me in these myriad situations. To talk about faithfulness rather than "fixing" in these situations takes me out of the realm of evaluating my actions and attitudes based on the world’s standards of success and failure. Whether or not my efforts to bring change, growth, healing, etc into any or all of these situations are “successful” are not what is at issue. What good would it be for me to “win”, to be successful in these situations if it came at the cost of my soul? What would be the consequences to my soul if winning brought spiritual death through acting in ways that are in opposition to the Gospel and my calling in Christ?
The human condition is to strive, to achieve and to get ahead. This is how we are wired. However, this becomes damaging to us when the drive to get ahead becomes the be all and end all of our existence. One of the things that feeds that drive is a fear of loss, rejection and emptiness. We are averse to these feelings of emptiness and loss, for the most part, because we equate them with absence. However, Easter teaches us that death and emptiness are not signs of absence; rather they are pregnant with possibilities for new life, new growth and new hope. The emptiness of the tomb that the women encountered on Easter morning led them to fear. They saw only the loss of the body of their crucified Lord. Instead the emptiness of that tomb was not loss; instead it was the first sign of the resurrection. It became the tangible anticipation of a new hope. In the emptiness of the tomb God is present and already at work.
This becomes a source of inspiration for us as we face loss, illness, death, experiences of failure or whatever emptiness is born out of the experiences of our life. We need not fear the emptiness. We need not become consumed with the unhealthy and unholy efforts to control or fix everything that is wrong in our life. We can’t fix everything. We can’t cause the sun to shine through the night. Instead we are called to labor through the darkness and emptiness in anticipation of what new life God will reveal when the sun breaks through the darkness and a new day begins. This labor is a work of worship and prayer. It is a work of silence and hope. It is the expectant waiting, trusting that God does not abandon us to the darkness.
One of the most persistent challenges in my life is reconciling the things that I can do with the things that I can’t do. I feel very fortunate and very blessed with the various abilities that God has given and nurtured within me. In any given day, I could accomplish a lot of things in many areas of my life. The shadow side of this ability is the expectation that grows within me that I ought to be able to, in turn, fix everything that goes wrong in my life. This is an insidious growth…it begins slowly and imperceptibly until one day I realize that I’m living with the expectation and feeling of entitlement that I ought to be able to fix everything that goes wrong in my life and my world. I feel as though I ought to be able to quickly and effectively troubleshoot anything (and by extension, anyone) operating outside of factory specifications. When it is proven that I am unable to accomplish these fixes, I get stressed, I get angry and I find myself seeking to exercise greater control over other areas of my life both to keep other things from falling apart and to prove, if only to myself, that I’m not a hopeless failure. I know…that all sounds pretty pathological…but as I learn more about this blind spot in my life and listen to others share similar struggles I am convinced that there are many of us in the world who labor in the shadow of this image of personal perfection.
So here is what I’ve learned: I can’t fix everything that goes wrong in my life, in my ministry, with my own father or with a Little League umpire. The question I’m learning to wrestle with is “how can I learn to be faithful to my calling in Christ when there is challenge and adversity in my life?” I have to come to terms with what faithfulness requires of me in these myriad situations. To talk about faithfulness rather than "fixing" in these situations takes me out of the realm of evaluating my actions and attitudes based on the world’s standards of success and failure. Whether or not my efforts to bring change, growth, healing, etc into any or all of these situations are “successful” are not what is at issue. What good would it be for me to “win”, to be successful in these situations if it came at the cost of my soul? What would be the consequences to my soul if winning brought spiritual death through acting in ways that are in opposition to the Gospel and my calling in Christ?
The human condition is to strive, to achieve and to get ahead. This is how we are wired. However, this becomes damaging to us when the drive to get ahead becomes the be all and end all of our existence. One of the things that feeds that drive is a fear of loss, rejection and emptiness. We are averse to these feelings of emptiness and loss, for the most part, because we equate them with absence. However, Easter teaches us that death and emptiness are not signs of absence; rather they are pregnant with possibilities for new life, new growth and new hope. The emptiness of the tomb that the women encountered on Easter morning led them to fear. They saw only the loss of the body of their crucified Lord. Instead the emptiness of that tomb was not loss; instead it was the first sign of the resurrection. It became the tangible anticipation of a new hope. In the emptiness of the tomb God is present and already at work.
This becomes a source of inspiration for us as we face loss, illness, death, experiences of failure or whatever emptiness is born out of the experiences of our life. We need not fear the emptiness. We need not become consumed with the unhealthy and unholy efforts to control or fix everything that is wrong in our life. We can’t fix everything. We can’t cause the sun to shine through the night. Instead we are called to labor through the darkness and emptiness in anticipation of what new life God will reveal when the sun breaks through the darkness and a new day begins. This labor is a work of worship and prayer. It is a work of silence and hope. It is the expectant waiting, trusting that God does not abandon us to the darkness.
2 comments:
I confronted my limitations when I was 24 years old and attending West Point. I was struggling with classes and with my own character flaws and I thought that with just a little more effort I could succeed. When I failed by just a few demerits my world caved in. I couldn't do anything I put my mind towards. I had limitations and more importantly, God would not pull me out of the hole if I sinned and did not seek repentance. Since that time I have walked more humbly but from time to time the old fleshly urge to work out my own problems rises. God has blessed me richly with gifts and it is so easy to start relying on those gifts and forget who gave them. Each time I crash the impact is a little softer and I get up relying just a little stronger in His power and not my own. I look forward to the day when there is no crash because I am fully in His arms not relying on my own strength at all.
There is indeed something very seductive about keeping it in our own hands. Power does indeed have a very intoxicating affect.
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