Faultless Perfection

I have been praying lately about what God wants me to do in order to advance my career. Do I need to spend more time investing money here, more time volunteering there, more time reading about this topic or that? God’s answer was I needed to love more.

Love? Well, I don’t really know what that has to do with my career, but I decided I might as well try it. But then I froze. I theoretically know how to love my friends, family, and acquaintances but practically? Who knows!

So, I started studying love some. I went to the famous passage in 1 Corinthians 13, “Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, does not boast…” In general, I thought these aren’t a big deal to me- on a good day, I’m fairly patient, kind of kind, rarely envious, and boasting… people say I barely talk about myself- I never do that!

But I have a vivid imagination and for some odd reason, imagined someone blaming me for boasting. I was incredulous at this imaginary scenario, and spent the next 30 minutes detailing how I was not at all boastful. But at some point near the end of this extensive pretend debate, I started to worry I maybe was struggling some with pride.

I am far too often known as “the one who can do anything.” It’s not necessarily because I am that multitalented, but more because my interests are far reaching. From medicine to music, ballet to writing, scrapbooking to hip hop…etc. I just love to learn and that encompasses many different fields. I’ve noticed that this scares or intimidates people, so over the last few years I stopped talking about things. For instance, I was in a bluegrass band for five years, but almost no one knew, because I was also in medical school and never mentioned this very unrelated hobby I had. Boasting became like an unwritten impossibility for me. If most of my life was secrets that I never even talked about, how was I boasting?  And what did that have to do with love?

A few years ago, I was dancing in a production at church and we had a very talented professional join us. She was wonderful, and we praised what she had performed on stage after the show. She started to say thank you, but instead dropped to her knees and started praising God. It was quite awkward. It made sense that she wanted to praise God, but it didn’t seem like the appropriate response to our compliment. It took me years to realize she was in the process of laying down “this is the talent I can do” and switching her thinking to “thank you God for the gift you have given me.” It’s not an easy switch to make, and it takes time. We just happened to catch her in the middle of going from boastfulness to thankfulness. But at least she was aware and letting God change her.

And it finally occurred to me that I was not boasting out loud to others, but I was still proud of myself. I was holding my random accomplishments as things that I would one day boast about. Only when appropriate, of course, or when someone needed me to step forward and share this hidden talent… I was satisfied and fulfilled in what I had accomplished and praised myself for it even if no one else agreed with me. I was hiding my pride, waiting for the appropriate time to release it, amaze people, and get the accolades I knew I deserved. Boasting quietly, but definitely not in God and what He had given me. Boasting in me.  

And why does that matter for my career? And how is that lacking love? We’ll talk more about it next time, but we all know what pride can do to people. We all know how annoying it is to be around the person who talks about themselves all the time. But we also know how awkward it is to get to know someone who won’t share anything about themselves at all! Pride can look many different ways! But it’s that mindset that we are totally self-sufficient, faultless perfection, or “unbelievably more amazing than that other person can currently fathom” that gets us into trouble regardless of how it surfaces. Who else that’s around you feels loved when it’s all about you?

But when you’re safe and secure in the talents that God has given you, you don’t need to boast about them- not today, not tomorrow, and not even in your imagination! You become confident because God defines you- not what you say or do. You are confident in who you are, and neither jealous, nor insecure, nor threatened, nor unappreciative of, nor demeaned by what others bring to the table. And that’s a great place to start to listen, appreciate, serve, and love others much better. And who wouldn’t appreciate a work environment more like that?

Jeremiah 9:23-24a “‘Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know me’, declares the Lord.”