An End to Performance Anxiety
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the performance principle, and about how it honestly has dominated my entire life.
The influence of my upbringing and my society has encouraged me to base most of my self-worth on what I do, how I perform, what I achieve.
I know I’m not alone in that!
I sense that God is changing that in me in a “three steps forward, two steps back” sort of way, and I have to tell you, slow as it is, that change is actually incredibly liberating and peace-giving.
I told one of my spiritual direction partners that I’m realizing over and over how much of what I do and what’s going on around me doesn’t matter in any final sense, and far from being nihilistic, that’s a joyful realization.
In conjunction with that strand of spiritual call, I’ve also done a lot of thinking about something that may sound a bit odd.
I’m starting to wonder if part of discipleship is just learning how to put up with the fact that we’re kind of jerks sometimes, and there’s probably a piece of that that we can’t ever grow out of or get rid of.
Does that make sense?
The honest spiritual desire to grow in faith, to practice spiritual discipline and see it effect real change in us, can lead us right back to the worthiness and holiness trap.
It’s the performance principle that used to be focused on the outer world—job, salary, possessions, looks, Facebook likes—translated into spiritual athleticism.
Suddenly we have a false and hollow goal that one day—one magical day!—we’ll have Arrived. We will have “achieved” Being a Good Christian.
Well, what if we never will? Continue reading