waking up

I struggle with the idea of perfection. I mean, I spend hours trying to come up with the “perfect” chord progression, or “perfect” lyric. I sometimes go over old blog posts and feel irritated when I find typos. When I was in first grade, I remember being very close to finishing a writing assignment and making an error; I quickly crumpled it up and threw it away, upset. And then I did it over again, determined to do it perfectly this time.

And nowadays I have guitar students that put that same kind of torturous pressure on themselves. I observe as they make small mistakes, and then I watch as the all-too-familiar look comes over them. It’s a look of extreme disappointment or anger/frustration. It’s as if the whole weight of the world were on their shoulders. Some even cry. And suddenly, learning the guitar becomes the most difficult thing in the world. I see myself in them.

But I also have this one other student… He is seven years old. We’ll call him Tommy. Sometimes, when Tommy makes a big mistake (and there are at least a dozen mistakes/issues I can point out per half-hour lesson), he gapes in surprise… and then he looks at me, as if he is awaiting my reaction. I laugh, and then he laughs. We catch the mistake, and it is somehow a playful thing. And then we move on. And this is the most incredible thing about it all… he just moves on and keeps learning. With the small mistakes he just keeps playing the rest of the song without skipping a beat. He doesn’t feel the need to start all over again from the beginning. And he definitely doesn’t get stuck feeling bad about himself.

Now there is another seven year old that comes in for a lesson right before Tommy. Let’s call him Jeffrey. Little Jeff is smart… very smart. He is one of the fastest learners I have ever taught. He grasps concepts very quickly. He has a tremendous musical memory, and a great ear. But he gets stuck. He is part of the group of students that feel the entire weight of the world on their shoulders whenever they make a mistake. And he shuts down when the pressure gets to be too much.

This week, he shut down on me completely. Somehow, even though we had been working with familiar material for a month, he suddenly got the idea in his head that the material didn’t make any sense. He was utterly convinced that he wasn’t capable of understanding any of it. He kept shaking his head, looking down at his feet, insisting, “I don’t get it. I can’t get it. I’m confused.”

These two students began taking lessons with me at the same time. They work on the same book, and have been assigned new homework at the exact same pace. Part of it was due to my influence, because I was curious to see which one would naturally exceed the other. Maybe the experiment was cruel. But my first bet would have been on Jeff, because I found out early on that he had a little prior experience with the guitar. This should have put him in front. But now, after a few months, can you guess who is ahead?

Tommy has made consistent progress. He has seen steady growth, and has fun with it every week. I always look forward to teaching him. And even though he is not as gifted as Jeffrey, he doesn’t get hung up emotionally like Jeffrey does. I sometimes dread teaching Jeffrey, because the kid is clearly a wreck.

So, yes. I am learning to be more like Tommy, and less like Jeffrey.

And this means that I am learning to fight the pressure of having it all together. Why? Because it’s crippling. I’m sure most people know what I’m talking about.

In my experience with institutional Christianity, there is a similar pressure in the Church (not the case in Haven, my current faith community in San Jose) to be perfect on the inside, and as Elton describes, to put on “a stellar exterior.” On the interior, one feels the need to be “holy” or close to God. There is an expectation to have pure thoughts and to pretty much have faith. And on the exterior, one feels the need to work, to always be doing something to contribute, whether it’s showing up at all the different meetings or signing up to prepare food or lead Bible study or whatever. But I guess I have always caved in to the pressure of this structure, because in this structure, if you say the right thing and impress people with whatever service you provide, you get a reward. You get people’s approval.

But after a while, it gets tiring. It’s just a game of who can wear the best mask. The sad truth is that In this system, no one is actually free to be real… no one can be themselves. And so in this respect, my experience in the Church was no different than in the rest of the world, with regard to putting these soul-killing expectations on ourselves. While this may be quite obvious to most people, it seems rare to me that a Christian will admit this.

And what’s startling is that as I’ve been reading more of the New Testament, I’ve been finding that the 2,000 year old message of the Gospel is directly opposed to this (note: the message of the Gospel being distinct from the message of the very man-made structure known as institutional Christianity). It’s precisely the soul-killing expectations, or what the Bible calls “the law,” that the New Testament explicitly denies when presented with the question of whether or not the law has any power to save.

The former regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless (for the law made nothing perfect), and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God.

-Hebrews 7:18-19

And there’s that word “perfect” again. There was a reason that the people receiving this letter need to be reminded that simply obeying the law does not make anyone perfect. The writer of Hebrews states that the law is totally ineffective at producing “perfect” people. And while most of us will probably think of the word “perfect” as meaning some Greek idea of a chiseled, flawless statue, I think what this writer is getting at seems to be defining perfection more like functions-the-way-it’s-supposed-to, or complete/whole/mature/fully-formed.

And this is huge. We twist even what the Bible says about who we are as people who are “saved.” We are somehow lost on the idea that even though mistakes are made, that somehow taking responsibility for those mistakes is totally distinct from being eaten alive by guilt or shame.

I mean, imagine God himself coming down to you and telling you that you could finally be confident and live up to your potential because of something called grace. He gave you a new life as a gift. It cost him dearly, but it’s now yours. Wouldn’t that be inspiring?

I even scoff at this, because the sad reality is, as much as it is my goal as a guitar teacher to inspire and encourage… some kids just don’t listen. Some people don’t want to be motivated. Some would rather wallow in their tears than be loved when they don’t understand why.

Tommy has cried during lessons with me a few times now, and never was it because of me being hard on him. But each time, I have been patient, understanding the pain, because I’ve been there. I let him cry through it, and when he stops crying, and he is ready to hear something other than the internal voices of crushing expectation, I give him encouragement. I tell him that everything is okay, that I am not mad at him, and I never was. I tell him that I believe in him, and that he will do fine if only he would listen to me, and trust that I know what I’m doing as his teacher. I also warn him about the pressure he puts on himself, and that it is impossible to be perfect, no matter how hard he works. And when I say these things to him, I am saying them to myself as well.

I really think that’s what people need to hear. People need to hear this message… that they are not perfect, but that their Maker never wanted them to feel condemned along this twisted path back towards wholeness.