I’m a fairly competitive person, but my drive in competition is often fueled by a fear of losing rather than a love of winning. In fact, if you tune in to the internal Spotify playlist I have playing to motivate myself, you may be reminded of Full Metal Jacket’s Gunnery Sergeant Hartman.

Most days, I feel like I only know how to push myself by berating and belittling myself. If I win or perform well, sure, I’m happy, but maybe it’s more a sense of relief from not losing. Fear of failing next time looms behind every victory. This same cloud hangs over my professional career – particularly in sales. After closing a deal, I’m slow to celebrate the win and instead spend time sighing that nothing blew up in my face. The momentary relief doesn’t last long though, because the next opportunity to screw up could be right over the horizon.

While I aspire to be this crazy athletic stud and super successful businessman, my fear of coming up short and failing means that I don’t go all out. I‘m afraid that if I leave it all out on the field or in exercise terms “go to failure” there will be no place to hide if I come up short. Put differently, by refraining from pouring myself out, I can hold on to my delusions and keep my fantasy alive.

Some days I feel like I’m running all over trying to keep the cracks in my fantasy from spreading and having my ideal self come crashing down. It’s on days like this when my internal playlist is the loudest and loops for hours, not just when working or exercising. If I spill water while doing the dishes, I’m a failure. If I forget to get an item at the grocery store, I am an idiot. If my car is low on gas I am a f***ing idiot-failure who can’t get anything right. Those are just a few of the classic hits.

By my own ideals, I continually fall short. The standards I have for myself prove to be a curse upon my life and self-condemnation repeats over and over in my head. When reading Scripture, I identify strongly with Moses, who had no shortage of anger management issues. I wonder if my internal monologue is similar to the anger and frustration he felt when he first brought the law down to the Israelites and found them worshiping an idol they made for themselves: 

Moses said, “It is not the sound of a victory shout, and it’s not the sound of a shout of defeat, but it’s the sound of singing that I hear.” As Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, he became angry. He threw the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the base of the mountain. Exodus 34:18-19

Whenever I read this story, I see myself on both sides. I’m the one angry about the failure, and I’m the one chasing after false gods. But recently, I’ve begun to hear a new and better playlist, but it took failing and dropping out of a marathon to hear this new music. 

Marathons take months of committed training: getting up early to beat the summer heat, long runs every weekend, and an insatiable appetite. During training runs, I fought to switch the playlist in my head to something more encouraging, “You can do this! Just have fun.” But hollow cliches rarely do anything for me.

When race day finally came around, in the most anti-climactic fashion possible, I suffered an injury and had to drop out of the race after only seven miles. As I hobbled to the spot where my wife and daughter were supposed to be cheering me on to my glorious victory, my failure was on full display and my anger was in complete control.

“God, why would you shame me like this in front of my family? Why the hell did I try to do this in the first place?”

Deeper and deeper I spiraled as I limped for what seemed like a marathon in itself. And who were all these happy people on the side of the road with their stupid signs? I now know with certainty that the “press here for boosters” sign does not work, at least not for me.

But as I turned the corner, I saw my daughter waiting for her dad. 

In terms of the race, she didn’t have a clue what was going on. She wasn’t wearing a stopwatch to track my splits. She was just looking for her dad, who she loves. As I stepped off the road and limped towards her, she threw her sign on the ground. Then she trotted towards me and gave me a hug. My daughter was oblivious that race officials put “DNF” (Did Not Finish) next to my name. If you asked her what the winning time was that day, she wouldn’t be able to answer. None of that mattered to her.

I didn’t realize I was hearing from Jesus that day, and I especially didn’t think he was answering my angry questions, but he was – he was there in that moment when my daughter threw down her sign and hugged me.   

Like Moses, and like my daughter, Jesus also throws down tablets. Do you remember that strange sequence in the Gospel of John where we’re told Jesus is writing in the sand? In John 8, the Pharisees drag a woman caught in adultery before Jesus and demand that He pronounce sentencing against her. Just like with the stone tablets, Jesus etches writing into the ground – but we’re only told about the activity, not the words themselves. Or are we? In the story of Moses, God has to rewrite the tablets a second time after they are broken, but now, with Jesus on the scene, He writes a new and personal word, “neither do I condemn you.” At that moment, Jesus is shattering the commandment, but unlike Moses, He is doing so out of love – substitutionary love. The adulterer deserves to die according to the law, but Jesus is going to cover that debt himself when he is shattered on the cross in our place.

On this side of failure, I am learning to trust God when he says “it is finished.” Every day I need to ask him to shatter the albums of my old classic hits because I keep going back to them just like that Top 40 Hit from middle school. I am learning I can give him my fear of failure because he says, “I love you no matter the outcome. You can run because it doesn’t matter how you perform…it doesn’t matter.”

Whenever a coach says, “Now go out there and just have fun,” everyone knows it’s a lie because if you want to stay on the team, you know you have to perform. But I think when God says it, he actually means it. I am beginning to see fear’s grip loosen, and I can’t help but smile when I think of Jesus, Moses, and my daughter throwing signs on the ground never to be picked up again.

The post Marathons and Shattered Tablets appeared first on Red Tree.

And because we live in an age where everyone carries a megaphone in their pocket, it’s easier than ever to go public with any form of news or announcement. Share it, spread the word, tap into the algorithm, release the dopamine. 

And even if we don’t like or use social media, we’re not immune to accomplishments breeding a desire for recognition. We redirect conversations to share the things that we’ve learned or done. It can be like an itch that needs scratching.

Of course, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all, celebrations are meant to be a joint project. Why then does Jesus seemingly always oppose our intuition when he does something impressive? Why doesn’t he go public? There are many examples of when he hushes miracle witnesses, but here are three:

• Mark 1:43-44 – Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning: “See that you don’t tell this to anyone…”
• Luke 8:56 – Her parents were astonished, but he ordered them not to tell anyone what had happened.
• Matthew 9:29-30 – Then he touched their eyes and said, “According to your faith let it be done to you”; and their sight was restored. Jesus warned them sternly, “See that no one knows about this.”

After taking away people’s most significant ailments, Jesus would ask (even command) them to not share the news. Not to go public. Curious right? Why not allow at least one selfie with the miracle worker? 

It’s worth noting that the Apostle John doesn’t include these interactions in his Gospel account, likely because he is much more upfront with his agenda (John 1:29). He’s much quicker to lay his cards on the table than Matthew, Mark, and Luke in pinpointing what Jesus is about and why he came to earth in the first place.

However, John’s gospel is not without parallels to Jesus concealing impressive achievements. The most prominent example is in John 6 when Jesus miraculously feeds thousands on a hillside. The crowd instantly wants to make him king. Their thought process is practically jumping off the page: “This guy can really do something about our problems! Hurry, start the campaign – get this guy into a position of power so we can finally do something!!” 

But Jesus won’t have any of it. He withdraws from the masses. He won’t be crowned on their terms. They are looking for a particular type of king, but the Messiah has other plans in mind. On his pathway to the crown and the throne, he will operate on a different playing field.  

But even here, Jesus begins to show his playbook when he quiets the crowd with a disconcerting invitation: you have to eat my body and drink my blood (John 6:55-56). Without missing a beat, the same people who wanted to put a crown on his head, now want him in a straight jacket. 

But Jesus stands by what he says. He doubles down on this invitation at a dinner party a bit later in the story. The night before he dies, in fact. It’s the eve of his death and he tells his friends to eat bread and drink wine for this is his body and his blood, given for you.  

Here is where we’re given the reason for the prior shushing of all the miracles. Jesus is essentially saying “I am going public on terms that don’t impress people but confound them. I am being crowned in weakness, not strength. By death, not life. With a broken body, and shed blood. And all of this is for you.” His prior privateness reveals the inauguration of a kingdom decidedly not of “be impressive and know all of this information to change the world!” but instead a kingdom wrapped up around Jesus’s self-denial, humility, and one-way love shown most fully at the cross.

Here is what he is ultimately crowned under, namely, the banner of die-in-your-place grace. The first time in the gospel of Mark where he doesn’t tell someone to hide a miracle is when he saves a man from a demon and a herd of pigs hurl themselves off a cliff as a result (Mark 5:13). We can conclude he doesn’t hush the witnesses on this one because this is the story Jesus came to tell — one of substitutionary healing, at the death of another. The surprise is Jesus identifying with the lowly pigs in their rushing off the hill. 

The most public act Jesus ever accomplished was his death on the cross. He broadcasted himself as the Messiah through a public execution. It’s the type of thing we don’t like to have details about. And yet, it’s exactly what we all didn’t know we needed. This is why there is no longer any shyness about miracles after the cross, but instead a “tell the world!” posture towards the miracle of the cross. The parable of the necessity of the death of the Son has given way to the clarity of the gospel itself. But we’re the ones who put it on display. We glory in the act of another, and not in our own.

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As dramatic as this scene sounds, all of us suffer under the very same stressors. What is this force that moves us so? We may not (often) physically throw things across the room when life doesn’t fit neatly in the cutout of our expectations, but the same inner turmoil is present. There’s an emotional pandemic that leaves us trying to claw our way upward through life, well acquainted with a sense of isolation and shame when we get anything wrong. It’s the subtle, but powerful work of anxious perfectionism.

Anxious perfectionism fosters a pervasive lie within us: “If I can’t do it perfectly, I won’t do it at all.” The phrase might come across as overly binary, and perhaps even childish, but we see variations of this innate idea all the time in others regardless of age. Hearing friends and people I work with identify and process this force in their experiences serves as a mirror to understanding my own. 

I might argue anxious perfectionism is, in fact, a product of the fall. A product of the law. Rules and standards create expectations of perfection. I have valued the wisdom of a friend of mine on a similar topic: “Children are great listeners but terrible interpreters.” From an early age, we learn to guard our sense of self and our sense of pride closely. We pick up on little things here and there that reinforce two false, internal beliefs:

1. What others think dictates who we are
2. What we do dictates who we are

We start to enact perfectionistic tendencies early – just like our four-year-old friend who threw up the puzzle because he felt his failure – because if what we do impacts who we are then when we fail, we are failures. And our fragile, child hearts can’t handle the feelings we associate with failure. Unfortunately, this childlike fragility doesn’t dissolve when we become adults. 

The pervasive nature of anxious perfectionism has gotten me wondering: if we do this in nearly every part of life, do we also do this in our reading of scripture? Do we try to perfect our scripture reading, and if it isn’t just right, do we stop altogether?

Let’s take me as a case in point. As a woman in what I would describe as the intermediate, maturing years of her faith (no longer a “baby Christian,” leading out in ministries, but not yet walking with the Lord longer than I haven’t), I have been through many phases of reading scripture and exposed to many different “correct” ways of reading it.

I went through my passionate phase: reading scripture all the time, hungry for more and more because the words of life were brand new to me, not having any theological clue, but relying on the Spirit to enlighten me. Too quickly, the “newness” of scripture wore off and my callous heart got bored. So, I started to learn there are actual tools for reading. Books on Christian living. There is even something called “Theology” and several subsets of theology within Theology. [Insert mind-blown emoji.]

I also learned how bad theology hurts people and I began to love learning and using new tools to glean as much as I can from the Bible. However, because of my sin that distorts beautiful things, these good, useful tools (to protect against this hurt) became rules. Consider a few of the following:

1. Don’t do the blindfolded, finger-pointing approach where you open up the bible and pick a verse and start reading. A verse taken out of context is bad news.
2. Don’t read the Bible emotionally. Jesus isn’t your boyfriend, and the bible isn’t a self-help book for you to get your daily pick-me-up.
3. Do study the text in its historical context.
4. Do consult commentaries, but do not only read commentaries, theological books, or Christian living books– you need to love Scripture the most.

And on and on. These rules, and more, have played on repeat in my mind. Then, I feel stuck. I don’t use any of them. I don’t even pick up my Bible sometimes because I fear if I choose one, I may be offending or not doing the other correctly. There’s a sense of worry that I will be wasting my time because I won’t actually encounter Jesus in my time reading because I think there is a “right way” for me to get to him. Further, both of the false internal beliefs spin out in a way that makes me question my sense of worth and value.

The first one, “what others think dictates who I am” proclaims: If I read and interpret using one of the wrong methods, I will be disappointing one of the people who taught me said tool, and if I disappoint one of these teachers, then I will be a disappointment! If I am a disappointment, then I am worthless.

Or the second internal belief that “what we do dictates who we are,” chimes in even louder: If I read and interpret using one of the wrong methods then I will be doing it wrong.  And if I am doing it wrong, then I am incapable of doing it right, indicating I, myself, am incompetent and even inadequate.

So yes, even in reading scripture, I tend toward wanting to make myself right by what I do and of my own accord. I create new laws to achieve my desired end of being perfect. And perfectionism says, “you can’t do it wrong.” Then anxiety pulls the thread further: “Just don’t do it at all.” 

Here is where Jesus brings a better word to anxious perfectionists like me. 

After his resurrection, he appeared to his disciples and said to them, “These are the words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures” (Luke 24:44-45, italics added). We could use every good and useful tool, read every theological powerhouse book under the sun, even earn a Master’s in Divinity, and yet still have a veil up to understanding the true meaning of the Bible. But, Christ himself is the Word, and his death tore the veil to the barrier of understanding scripture. He was torn on the cross for us, in order to mend our separation from God; and not only is the separation removed, but he actually walks towards us, just like he does the two guys getting this Bible lesson in Luke 24. He doesn’t hide behind the correct tools or interpretative rules, waiting for us to get it just right. He wants to be known and is actively revealing himself now through the Holy Spirit, just as he did to the two men on the road 2,000 years ago. 

When we trust in Jesus and not our perfected reading of scripture, our approach to reading the Word might even manifest itself in surprising ways. In this season of my life, one of the ways Christ has been meeting with me and healing my anxious perfectionism is through The Message (a loose paraphrase of the Bible written by Eugene Peterson). The Message has been a balm to my hard heart and has helped my mom-brain settle and receive Christ. While far from perfect, and not even considered a legitimate translation, it has helped me experience the gospel and move away from simply having a cognitive understanding to having an affective, heart understanding.

If you’re in a season of drought from reading the Bible due to having too many tools in the tool belt, or perhaps don’t feel equipped with any tools at all and don’t know where to begin, hear this: you don’t need to read the Bible perfectly. Take my word for it. My contribution to Bible reading is anxious perfectionism. But the gospel tells me I’m not the only one present when I open up these pages. Jesus is alive and his non-anxious presence casts out fear through blood-bought love. He desires to be known, therefore, you don’t need to employ every tool you’ve ever learned every time you open the Bible. Instead, take up and read knowing that the veil has been torn. He is our rest, even when it comes to reading the Bible.

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It was here, when I first learned that practice doesn’t make perfect. Instead, it simply makes more of whatever it is you’re practicing. If you’re practicing something incorrectly, you will become better at doing said thing, incorrectly.

Bad practice leads to bad results.

The principle is nearly universal but it’s especially true when it comes to reading the Bible – plainly seen in the third chapter of the gospel of John. The chapter begins by getting acquainted with a guy named Nicodemus and his resume: he’s a top dog from an authority standpoint, is well practiced in religious traditions, and knows his way around the Old Testament.

He comes to Jesus at night perhaps hoping to get a professional edge over his peers or maybe to simply engage in some intellectual sparring. In a sentence, Jesus responds with what may appear to be a riddle to be solved:

“Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again”

Puzzled, Nicodemus wonders how someone can possibly be born again when he or she is old? Nicodemus’ response seems straightforward enough, perhaps a bit naïve, but it, in fact, exposes a lifetime of bad practice.

After a brief back and forth on the necessity of being born again, Jesus humbles Nicodemus with a simple question. Don’t miss this.

He says, “you are Israel’s teacher, and do you not understand these things?”

Any who teach Israel do so from one textbook: the Old Testament. Jesus reads and teaches from THE SAME textbook. It’s based on this Old Testament that Jesus challenges his conversation partner’s teaching credentials because he’s failed to understand its core message. Imagine a pilot receiving a license to fly without ever having been inside a plane – he has the title, but it means nothing! He’s never been in the sky, never taken anyone anywhere. Just a person with a piece of paper.

Like many of us, Nicodemus approaches the Scriptures as a manual for what God expects of him. It’s too easy to miss this — look again: God says the way to see His kingdom is to be born again, Nicodemus responds as if it’s part of his job description: “how do I make this happen? How could anyone possibly do that?”

A lifetime of forcing the Scriptures onto a to-do list, has caused Nicodemus to make even this message about himself and what he is supposed to do to maintain favor with God. No one plays a role in their own birth. Of course not!! When we seek to make the Bible about us, we work against the grain of the story God has been telling for thousands of years. Functionally, we form ourselves into little Nicodemi (plural? seems right…) — deaf and dull to God and his word of life.

But Jesus isn’t here to belittle Nicodemus, or anyone for that matter. Instead, he’s teaching that the Bible is not about us. It’s not a life improvement plan, a to-do list, or a religious manual with a set of DIY instructions.

The main character of the Bible and your life is not you — it’s God! This is good news meant to be received. It’s an invitation out of our incessant “I need to do more” feeling. It clears away the fog of our murky understanding of God and helps us see that he is in the business of giving, not expecting; revealing, not hiding. After speaking from behind a veil for thousands of years, God brings unexpected clarity through the person of Jesus, who is the ultimate Word of God. His substitutionary death is the climax of human history, inviting all to see and say back to God, “Now you are speaking clearly.”

If bad practice leads to bad results then the opposite is true. When we take up the Bible, the best outcome is to behold the main character — the one who was lifted up in our place — literally brought to an end that we might be born again. The story is all about him.

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