Wake Up, Look Up

Hello everyone, and thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch, and in today's episode, we're asking the question, do you demand perfection? And this is prompted by an opinion piece I read recently in the New York Times and called the quest for perfection is stunting our society. And I liked the argument so much, I wanted to talk about it here. The article focuses first on classical music. The guy who writes the opinion piece is saying that he feels like classical music is being stunted by the pursuit of perfection. Students are so concerned with getting a piece exactly right, with replicating classic recordings that they're not finding their own voice. They're not taking any chances. They're not pushing themselves to grow. The fear of failure, the desire to achieve quote, unquote perfection, is actually resulting in an art form that's pretty bland. It's just replicating the same kind of music over and over again. And this is not a problem limited to classical music. School is about getting a 4.0 GPA. Work is about curating your LinkedIn profile. Even our political leaders are so focused on getting reelected on where their approval rating that they're not advancing ideas. The reality is that life is messy. Progress is often two steps forward, one step back. Sometimes two steps forward, three steps back. It to actually grow as a person, as a society, as a company, as a family, means risking failure. It means being comfortable with the mess. And I don't know if you resonate with this, but I think that's where most of us live. I think some of us, you could probably put people into kind of two ends of a continuum. On the one side, those of us that are hardwired to chase perfection, that just have no category for messing up. And so as a result, we take no chances. We don't stretch at all. We stay squarely in our comfort zone. And then others of us who know perfection is not something we either can or have attained. And so we feel stuck. If we can't be what everyone expects us to be, then why bother trying at all? You know, when I read this article, I wasn't just kind of bemoaning the state of society. I kept hearing the words of Jesus kind of bouncing around in my head in Matthew 11:28, where Jesus says, come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And I thought, man, what a message for people chasing perfection. Or what a message for people feeling stuck in their imperfection. You see, what Jesus is saying is that part of what drives us towards perfection or to sit on the couch because we know we can't be perfect, is the weight of everyone's expectations. It's the cultural idea that we either are somebody or we're not somebody. And if we are somebody, we're on the treadmill, pedaling and pedaling and pedaling, trying to keep being somebody. And if we're not somebody, then we just give up. But Jesus is telling us that the cultural expectations, the expectations of friends and family, they are nothing but heavy burdens that in the end leave us feeling weary and stuck. When Jesus says to come to him and he will give us rest, of course the next thing he says is to take my yoke upon you, because it's easy and light. So the gospel sets us free from the need for other people's affirmation. The gospel sets us free from. From the need for cultural validation. Because the loudest voice in any room is the voice of God. And that voice is the one telling us, because of Jesus, that we are loved, that we're accepted, and that our future, our eternal destiny, is secure. When we understand that the byproduct of that isn't just feeling loved or feeling less anxious about our eternal future, the byproduct of that is we can get messy. It's okay to try and fail. It's okay to try to find our own voice. It's okay to lean into the process of growth, where we go two steps forward and three steps back. Listen, if you woke up tomorrow and really believed that your identity was not fundamentally in whether your kids were the best behaved or the best dressed, whether you were crushing it at work, whether your LinkedIn profile was attractive, what your dating status was, if those things didn't define you, you, but the love of God and the identity you have in Christ did, what would you try? What would you be free to chase? What would you be free to become? Listen, if you're feeling tired either of chasing perfection or of being told you aren't perfect, the place to go is not to Netflix or to bed or even to try harder. The place to go is to Jesus. To let his voice reassure you so that you, can be set free to be messy. Because in the messiness is where real growth happens. Hey, thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up, Look Up. If you enjoyed it, please help us get the word out by sharing it with someone you think might benefit from it. And while you're here, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get further content or even download the CCC Apple, where you'll find even more resources to help you grow in your faith and relationship with Jesus Christ.

Have an article you’d like Zach to discuss? Email us at wakeup@ccchapel.com!