Skip to main content

Performances

             Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.” (Leviticus 19:2)

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:48)

To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. (I Corinthians 9:2)

Look right. Smell right. Only say the right words. Donate to all the right causes. No matter where you go or what group you’re part of, there are expectations. Scripture is no different. Be perfect. Be holy. Be everything to everyone. I could add love God with everything in you and love your neighbor as yourself. It’s not that all these things are bad things. Many of them are quite good. But they all have performance in common.

Performance is normal, natural, and necessary. It’s like behavior. When people say something about behaving, I point out that they’re either going to behave well or badly, but either way, they must behave. We must perform, and all other things being equal, most of us would prefer that we and everyone around us performs well. “They” shouldn’t perform as well as “we” do. We don’t want competition, but when it suits our purposes, they should be the world’s best at what they do.

Since it does no good to say, “Let’s decide performance doesn’t matter,” we are left with the task of walking the narrow and crooked line between the impossible and the indolent. It’s also a line between stressed out and disobedient, or between burned out and lazy.

This is another area in which we are often attacked. We are not good enough, but we might be better than someone else. It’s not right for anyone to demand such a level of performance from us. There’s not enough time. We’re not strong enough. The list of objections goes on. We…just…can’t. We either try to obey and perform and fail or we rebel. Both take their toll on our relationships with God, with others, and with ourselves.  And the devil’s objective is achieved.

The solution is to keep our focus on the relationships, and to consider the purpose of the performance to be the deepening of those relationships.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Saved?

  I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” (John 10:28-30) “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ ” (Matthew 7:21-23) Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar. As it is written: “So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge.” (Romans 3:4)   What conclusion do you draw when someone who was raised in a Christian family and church, perhaps even playing a significant role in a chur...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Virgin?

           Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)           This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 1:18)           But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”            “How will this be,” Mary asked the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more