As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me. You are my help and my deliverer, do not delay, O my God!
Psalm 40:17
I’ve been helped recently to see with renewed clarity the deficiency of my understanding of this verse and others like it. It only takes someone a few minutes with me to notice a perfectionist attitude. Perhaps over the years it has matured to simply a desire for excellence…but my definition of excellence exceeds what should normally be expected at times…maybe even most of the time. My attitude has always been, “If I can’t be great at ‘X’ then I don’t want to do it at all.” There are many times that I will gladly celebrate this desire to be great at things, and I don't think that it in and of itself is a sinful desire. In fact, we see spiritual leaders like the Apostle Paul striving with all his energy to please the Lord. Paul certainly cares about excellence…just look at the book of Romans!
But what happens when that desire consumes a person’s thoughts? Well, I may have an expert perspective on that question! What happens to me is a collapsing of self. I cease to be who God meant me to be. When I get wrapped up in excellence, my default focus is on self, which means one of two things. Either I will be very glad when I achieve the desired result and feel a great sense of accomplishment, or I will become very angry and bitter that I have failed to measure up in some way. The bitterness (I think) is a sign that I’ve placed far too much confidence in my own abilities. I’m finding that I’m more likely to turn to God when I succeed with a measure of thanksgiving than I am to turn to God when I fail thanking him for a reminder of my weakness and neediness.
I feel a lot of tension with this, because I’m wired to want success! And so verses like Philippians 2:12 which tells me to work out my own salvation naturally resonate with my disposition. I’m stirred by Paul’s example of relentless suffering for the Gospel and seemingly endless energy for serving other people. I get a similar motivation when I observe great athletes or really bright professors. What’s wrong with the desire to be great at something?
Sadly, I think what happens for me a lot of the time answers that question. When I place greatness above contentment, I’ve idolized greatness. Then when I fail…and I often do…I rage or I withdraw or I give up. All because I didn’t accomplish what I set out to achieve.
I suppose I could try and rewire my disposition. But I’d probably get discouraged when I fail at that too! So I think it’s far better to rewire my understanding of self. Psalm 40 has been helping me do that this week. Certainly there is a long way to go, and I really really need God’s help to transform my understanding, but I know there is grace for the journey.
I am poor and needy. I need to let this be my first thought about me…at least when I’m tempted to rage at failures…and probably way before I even set out to accomplish anything! Because David is the one writing this, it seems obvious to me that the great military leader who killed Goliath isn’t assuming a lack of God-given talent, but rather a position of dependence upon God for all things. To use a personal example, if I can throw a frisbee well, it’s because God has given me the motor skills to do so, the discipline to practice, the professionals to learn from, and a wife who lets me go play the sport I love! If I can learn Koine Greek and improve my understanding of the New Testament, a similar set of realities are present. In and of myself, I am poor and needy. I don’t possess autonomous power, skill, intelligence, or competence in anything. But I am overjoyed that the Lord takes thought for me! That’s really good news for a perfectionist who will never ever measure up to the standard I am inclined to set for myself.
I haven’t quite put my finger on why I have such a strong desire to excel. To put it another way, I’m not sure I could explain why I want so badly to succeed. Maybe it’s because so many people from my youth told me that I was a failure and I want to prove everyone wrong. And there are certainly times that I want others to think highly of me. But most of the time, it seems to be an internal drive so that ultimately even if everyone else thinks I suck, I get the last word. If only I can measure up to my standard, then others’ opinions don’t matter. If I can affirm myself through success as I define it, then I’m free from the burden of others’ opinions of me. After years of being crushed by peoples’ opinions of me…at least the people that I esteemed most highly…I think my desire for excellence is rooted in a need for self-affirmation.
Sadly, the plan that I’ve laid out to free myself from the burden of not measuring up is a broken one. In the anxious toil of excellence and the striving after the wind of self-affirmation, I’ve shackled myself with bonds that often are too overwhelming to cope with in a rational manner. So I have set myself up in a prison without a key. Even if I ever do measure up, I’ve just moved to a different cell of maintaining that level of success to keep from watching it all unravel.
The answer is not to stop caring about excellence. The answer I don’t even think is to lower my standards, for I (potentially from my own immaturity) maintain that there can be goodness in setting the bar high and striving to be great. Rather, the answer is to lower the value of excellence to a God-pleasing level. To worship excellence is to be enslaved by it. To cease caring about excellence is to be enslaved by something else.
But to place it under my desire to please God is right and good. If I succeed, God be praised for gifting me with the abilities for that task or for developing that fruit of the Spirit in that moment! If I fail, when I care more about my heart attitude towards God than my lack of success, excellence is subservient to my pleasure in Christ. I am poor and needy…of course I won’t succeed all the time! And my failures don’t define me; Christ does.
The thought of the freedom that comes with flinging away the need for me to affirm of myself is hard to imagine right now. There is fear in the thought of ceasing to value personal excellence so highly. But I realize that I’ll never experience the fullness of life that Christ offers if I don’t let go of self. I can’t go on ascribing deity to self-affirmation. All I have to do is look back at the wreckage to see the fruit of that idol.
Lord, Set me free!
As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me. You are my help and my deliverer, do not delay, O my God!
Comments
Post a Comment