I Am Not 'Good Enough'

I am not good enough.
 
This is the fear that follows me through life like a shadow.  The fear that, no matter what I do, I will always somehow be lacking.  I will never quite be enough.

And so I find myself constantly striving, constantly trying to be just a little bit better.  I think if I work just a little bit harder or a little bit longer, if I get up earlier or go to bed later, I will become "good enough".

But whilst I might be able to do this for a short while, I inevitably fail.
 
I am not good enough.

And I realised last weekend that it's true.  I am not "good enough".  But not in a depressing, self-deprecating way.  In a liberating, bigger-than-I-can-imagine way.

Last week at church we looked at the description of God creating humans in the book of Genesis.  We picked out three key characteristics from the description: we are eternal, we are relational, and (for me, the most significant), we are good.
 
       "God created human beings;
       he created them godlike,
       Reflecting God’s nature.
       He created them male and female.
       God blessed them:
       'Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge!
       Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air,
       for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth.' [...]
       God looked over everything he had made;
       it was so good, so very good!"

       [Genesis 1:27, 31 MSG]


I am good.  Because I am made by a good God who declares me to be good.  Undeniably, irrevocably, unarguably good.
 
I am not "good enough".  I am good.  So very good.

Connected

Last night I found myself watching 'About A Boy' on TV. 

 

I haven't seen it in years and I had forgotten how much I enjoyed it.  Not least because I am a bit of a Hugh Grant fan. 

 

The film primarily follows the lives of Will - a 38 year old single man who has never worked a day in his life - and Marcus - a teenage boy who lives with his depressed mother and struggles to fit in at school.  This unlikely pair find their lives overlapping and discover that they have a lot to learn from each other.

 

At the beginning of the film, Will explains how he sees himself and his life:

 

In my opinion, all men are islands.  And what's more, now's the time to be one.  This is an island age.  A hundred years ago, you had to depend on other people.  No one had TV or CDs or DVDs or videos or home espresso makers.  Actually, they didn't have anything cool.  Whereas now, you see, you can make yourself a little island paradise.  With the right supplies and the right attitude, you can be sun-drenched, tropical [...] And I like to think that perhaps I am that kind of island.  I like to think I'm pretty cool.  I like to think I'm Ibiza.

 

This is an island age.

 

Isn't that the message we receive from the world?  We don't need other people for our happiness.  We can satisfy ourselves.  We can please ourselves.  We can fill our lives with things and experiences and technologies.  We can surround ourselves with people without ever having to really connect with anyone.  We don't have to risk being vulnerable or inconvenienced or uncomfortable.

 

But that's a lie.

 

We all need connection.  The grand narrative of the Bible is a story of people disconnected from God and from each other, seeking reconnection in a whole variety of ways.

 

In his book 'Sex God', Rob Bell writes,

The story [of the Bible] begins with humans in right relationship - in healthy, life-giving connection - with their maker.  All of their other relationships flow from the health of this one central relationship - people and God.  They're connected with the earth, with each other [...] Then everything goes south.  They choose another way.  And they become disconnected [...] We're severed and cut off and disconnected in a thousand ways, and we know it, and we feel it, we're aware of it every day.  It's an ache in our bones which won't go away.

 

Like Will, we can deny this "ache in our bones", this need for other people.  We can live separate lives and never let people get too close.  But we won't really be living.  Whether we acknowledge it or not, we are all connected.  We affect other people and are affected by other people.  The Bible says,

"We are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around [...] Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn't amount to much, would we?"

[Romans 12:4-5 MSG]

By ourselves, we don't amount to much.  We need other people.

 

By the end of the film, Will's attitude has changed: 

Every man is an island.  And I stand by that.  But clearly, some men are part of island chains.  Below the surface of the ocean they're actually connected.

 

We are all actually connected. And that is where we find our meaning.

 

 

Coffee, Cups and the Cosmos

Whilst I like coffee, I'm not one of those people who is completely fuelled by it.  You know, the sort of person who is dangerous to approach in their pre-coffee state, or is completely useless before they've had their morning cup (tea, on the other hand, is another matter...)

However, our church is full of coffee people.

It is in such popular demand that we have come perilously close to running out of coffee on several occasions.  And this has sometimes been coupled with the equally devastating problem of no cups.

Naturally, this discovery, less than an hour before the service is due to start, has led to a panic for the hospitality team and an emergency trip to Sainsbury's for coffee and cups.

However, a few times, even though we have looked everywhere for coffee cups, someone else has gone to "have one last look" and has returned joyfully wielding coffee and/or cups.  Somehow, somewhere, we have found coffee where we thought there was none.  We have found something where we thought there was nothing.

In the same way, Genesis tells us that God created the world from nothing.  In his modern retelling of the Bible ("Word on the Street"), Rob Lacey rewrites Genesis 1:1-2 like this:

"First off, nothing. No light, no time, no substance, no matter. Second off, God starts it all up and WHAP! Stuff everywhere! The cosmos in chaos: no shape, no form, no function– just darkness ... total. And floating above it all, God’s Holy Spirit, ready to play."

Now, whether you see the creation story in Genesis as the literal word of God or an allegory, the message is the same: God has the power and the ability and the resources to create something out of nothing.

Why does that matter?

Not only does it show us God's power, it gives us hope when we feel at the end of ourselves and as though we are stuck in a dead-end situation. 

"When you're between a rock and a hard place, it won't be a dead-end, because I am God, your personal God."

[Isaiah 43:3 MSG emphasis mine]

When we feel that there is no answer to our problems, when we don't have the energy to keep going, when we don't have the money to pay the bills, when we don't have the coffee to fuel the church, God can make something out of nothing.

Hide and Seek

Whenever I re-watch a film that has a plot twist, or a key turning point in it, I find myself feeling tense, even though I know what's coming.  I hold my breath and curl up my toes, just in case it will help to change the fate of my favourite characters.  I silently - and sometimes not so silently - urge them to turn around, or get to the phone in time, or not take that route home etc., hoping that somehow I will have the power to alter the outcome.

It is the same whenever I read the story of Adam and Eve.

We can't ever begin to imagine what life was like for the first couple before that moment.  To know what it was like to live in complete and perfect relationship with God and with each other.  To be "naked and unashamed." 

What I had always understood about this story, though, was Adam and Eve's reaction: when they heard God later in the day, they hid from Him.

"I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

[Genesis 3:10, NIV]

We can all understand and relate to this desire to hide when we mess up, or make mistakes.  We hide from God, we hide from others and, sometimes, we even hide from ourselves.

But why do we hide?  And why did Adam and Eve hide?  They had spent time getting to know God before the events of Genesis 3, building and developing a relationship with Him and experiencing His love and faithfulness.  They had no reason to doubt or question Him, He had provided good things for them and had given them everything that they needed.

So why did they hide from Him?

John Townsend writes,

"Why didn't they run to God, tell Him what they'd done, and ask Him to help them?  They mistakenly saw God as someone who would hurt and not heal them.  So they hid."

They hid, and we hide, because we're afraid, because we're naked.  We are vulnerable and our 'true' selves are exposed.  We want to cover up and pretend that everything is okay.  So we sew metaphorical fig-leaves together to hide behind, so that no one will know the truth about us. 

And we are scared of people seeing our true selves, because we think that there will be judgment.  From other people, and from God.

But God's love doesn't seek us to judge us.  It searches for us to love us and forgive us and heal us and restore us.  And His love casts out our fear.

"There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love."

[1 John 4:18, MSG]

Instead of hiding when we feel naked and vulnerable and ashamed and afraid, let's seek God's love and grace and forgiveness, for we are sure to find them.