hughbiquitous

I tend toward perfectionism. I hate it because it is such a joy-killer, but I love it because I get so much mileage out of it. All in all, though, it’s a flaw. Don’t you love it? Perfectionism is a flaw.

At work: I write software for a living; I like my code coherent and tidy. In the kitchen: I have a pizza dough recipe with the ingredients carefully prescribed — in grams. I like my ideas organized, my reasoning sound, and my words precise. (My desk is a mess, but that’s another story.)

The problem is this: nothing ever works quite so cleanly as I hope it will.

Here’s a line I’ve heard more than once and in various forms: “Good is the enemy of Best” or “Good is the enemy of Great.” Sometimes it goes like this: “‘Good enough’ isn’t.” It starts to sound unhealthy… contentedness has to make an appearance at some point.

Proverbs 14:4 was of some help to me:

Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean,
but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.

I like my “manger clean,” but it seems the only way to guarantee that is to forego the oxen, and thereby forego abundant crops — or maybe any crops at all. It seems that God has ordered the world in such a way that a lot of the most fruitful things in life are also some of the messiest things we deal with. (Loving others comes to mind.)

So now I find in Scripture what numerous managers have told me: “it would be nice if we could do everything all nice and tidy, but we’ve got to ship the product.” I hate it when they say that, because at some level, I know they’re right. Now they have Scripture on their side.

What I’m wondering about is this: How does this relate to worship? The subject of worship seems to be coming up a lot lately: David has weighed in on some of the tensions inherent to orchestrating Sunday morning worship services on the production end of things; John preached on worship in spirit and in truth and in all different forms — but absent from his teaching was any suggestion that our worship ought to be “perfect” — whatever that means. (Any ideas?)

So what does a healthy, God-exalting, excellence-pursuing, worshipful, fruitful, and realistic attitude about these things look like?

Every man dies. Not every man really lives.

William Wallace, Braveheart

The question, brothers, is not whether you will die. The question is whether the death you die will bear much fruit.

John Piper, How Few There Are Who Die So Hard!

Peter has mentioned … that true Christians are aliens and exiles and strangers on the earth. Here in [2 Peter 2:11] he mentions it a third time, “Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers…” He must regard this as important. So we should too.

It will help us restore the weightiness and importance of God in our world if we remember that we are aliens and exiles. The reason we are aliens was given in verse 9: “You are a chosen race a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession . . . he called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” We belong to God, not to the world and not to America. We learn to live from him, not from television or fashion catalogues. We are aliens because we are God’s.

We must cultivate the mindset of exiles. What this does mainly is sober us up and wake us up so that we don’t drift with the world and take for granted that the way the world thinks and acts is the best way. We don’t assume that what is on TV is helpful to the soul; we don’t assume that the priorities of advertisers is helpful to the soul; we don’t assume that the strategies and values of business and industry are helpful to the soul. We don’t assume that any of this glorifies God. We stop and we think and we consult the Wisdom of our own country, heaven, and we don’t assume that the conventional wisdom of this age is God’s wisdom. We get our bearings from God in his word.

When you see yourself as an alien and an exile with your citizenship in heaven, and God as your only Sovereign, you stop drifting with the current of the day. You ponder what is good for the soul and what honors God in everything: food, cars, videos, bathing suits, birth control, driving speeds, bed times, financial savings, education for the children, unreached peoples, famine, refugee camps, sports, death, and everything else. Aliens get their cue from God and not the world.

So one way to make God visible and weighty for the sake of our world is to see ourselves as exiles and refugees from heaven.

– John Piper, The War Against the Soul and the Glory of God, May 22, 1994

Steve Camp sums up the Doctrines of Grace: “God has saved me from Himself, and yet, unto Himself.”

CAMPONTHIS: The Heart of the Reformation: the Doctrines of Grace