A good pat on the back feels amazing. There are few things that I enjoy more in life than the praise of one of my peers, or the approval of those I look up to. It’s just a great feeling to be awesome. On the contrary, there are few things I loathe more than criticism, or the annoying experience of sharing an opinion with a friend only to have them play the devil’s advocate and shoot me down.
This is one of the things that really bothers me about Jesus. He’s not very good at validating my emotions or feelings, he rarely agrees with my opinions about things, and worst of all, he’s never very impressed by all the good things that I’ve done in life. In reading the gospels, I get the sense that I’m not alone in this experience.
In Matthew 19, a young man approaches Jesus and instigates a conversation. His question is simple, “what good thing must I do to get eternal life?” Jesus responds to his question with a question (also very frustrating), “why do you ask me about what is good? In other words, Jesus doesn’t like the question. He wants the young man to think more carefully about what it is he’s asking. The young man seems unfazed, so Jesus responds with a cryptic answer, “keep the commandments.”
Anyone on this side of the reformation knows that’s a crap answer. You can’t get to heaven by keeping the commandments because no one can keep the commandments. It’s impossible. This poor guy doesn’t know that so he takes the bait and asks an equally naive follow up question, “which ones?” Jesus throws out a few of the most obvious ones: adultery, stealing, lying, etc. At this point, the young man is feeling pretty good about himself. He’s followed the commandments from the time he was a boy. Unfortunately, he can’t help himself and he asks a third question, “what else am I missing?”
Let me pause here. This is a very courageous question to ask. It’s bold. I dare not ever ask that question of my wife, my staff, or of anyone for that matter, unless I am ready to hear a laundry list of things that I could be doing better. Either this guy was suffering from over confidence, or he was just very stupid. Probably a bit of both. Jesus responds by telling him to go sell everything he owns and give the proceeds to the poor. Mic drop.
Nothing I ever do will be enough to impress Jesus.
If I ever have the guts to ask the question this young man asked, I’m sure to cave under the weight of how much it will cost me. So, where do I go from here? I can keep working until I’m blue in the face to impress Jesus only to come up short, or I can accept that nothing I ever do will be enough and walk away. We all know plenty of people who have gone down one of these two roads. Maybe we’ve even been those people in different seasons of our lives. Both roads lead to dead ends. Is there another way?
I have a picture in my journal that my daughter Gwyneth drew for me when she was four years old. It’s hardly a masterpiece. She drew two stick figures of her and I standing next to each other with our hands raised high (for some reason she emphasized my armpit hair in the drawing). I didn’t commission her to draw the picture. I didn’t even ask her to do it in order to entertain me. She did it out of sheer joy. She thought it would be funny and we’d have a good laugh. She was right. As her father, those are my greatest memories and they leave me with a profound sense of joy every time I think about them.
As my daughter grows older, things get more complicated. She’s grown up in a system that rewards performance. Now she’s tempted to think that if she gets a 4.0 GPA in school, or performs well on the basketball court, she will earn my approval. If she fails to meet those standards then she will suffer my disappointment. Of course, it’s not true, but she’s been conditioned to see things from that perspective.
It’s no wonder Jesus is so troublesome to me. I’m stuck in a performance based system. I’m constantly looking for approval and validation in things that simply don’t matter to him at all. I present him with all of my good works, but when I’m imagining he sees a rembrandt, all he sees are a few stick figures and some armpit hair. It’s not that he doesn’t enjoy it. He’ll probably put it on his fridge, but his approval isn’t contingent upon the level of talent I displayed because I already had it in the first place. I received his validation the moment I drew my first breath. Not a day goes by without him looking down on me with love and affection. I won’t ever get eternal life, validation, or approval because they have already been given to me. All that’s left for me to do is find joy in it.