There’s a popular, but good cliche in the Christian missions community: God doesn’t call the qualified, he qualifies the called. It’s led me to question the striving in my own life, the trying so hard to establish an identity.
I had a country I was planning to visit this summer, but it’s thoroughly locked down right now. I had been studying the language, but since it’s unlikely I will be able to go this year, all my motivation to learn the language has shriveled up. And I’ve felt nothing but guilt over this. There have been so many languages I’ve wanted to learn, and I’ve never seemed to get any where with any of them and it makes me feel pathetic.
But I gave myself the freedom to put it down. I still have the book, but it’s been indefinitely shelved. Even if I learned it, what guarantee would I have that I could keep it fresh in my memory?
It hurts sometimes to feel that my laziness is a part of my own unremarkable-ness. It feels like, to satisfy the desires of my own heart to be loved and admired, the only way to achieve this is to download some god-like discipline. And if only I had that, then I could reach my goals, and then I could be happy.
But how do you explain that with all of the flaws of the characters in the Bible? None of them ever had their stuff together beforehand. Moses wasn’t a good public speaker. Most of the prophets were completely ignored and sometimes hated. Half the disciples were nobodies in the eyes of the world. Many of us have probably heard the list before.
If only…I had everything together…couldn’t I be remarkable?
And yet, I’ve known pastors who almost walked away from their calling because they were deathly afraid of public speaking. I’ve known missionaries who answered the call before they had learned a word of the native tongue. Some people have buried the desires of their own heart because they didn’t feel good enough, when that was never the point.
I’ve had to accept that I always will be a reader and learner. I’m slowly learning to put books down and not feel I have to read them immediately. But I do still struggle feeling I’m good enough at my job, and this still leads me to feel pressured to learn absolutely everything I can. I also feel like all my travel plans have been dashed once again, and I’m scared I’ll never get overseas, and part of me even suspects this is punishment for not being prepared or dedicated enough. I wonder sometimes whether feeling stupid is why I use the world ‘stupid’ so frequently in this blog.
And one thing driving me to learn more programming is feeling like I’m not good enough to go overseas and do that. I don’t know enough, I don’t have enough experience. And if I were to try teaching programming, would that be a joke? Or would I actually be able to mentor someone from the community into my role? There are hoards of people out there who are better programmers than I am. Do I really have something to offer?
All this does, however, is produce striving. Maybe it’s an existential fear, maybe it’s masked egotism. I don’t know. But it hurts. And I wonder when I’ll finally just let go.
That time could be now. This lockdown is forcing me to reevaluate many different things in my life. I know some people have inordinate amounts of discipline in their lives, and I don’t want to bring them down, but I also don’t know how to cope with the areas in which I lack discipline. Sun up to sun down, I simply can’t live a life of constant pressure and requirement. Is that really the answer? Just be more disciplined? It can’t be, because life can’t be about hating myself. It’s certainly possible to improve and make better decisions, but perfection, can that really be achieved? And would you really want to achieve it, if you knew the full cost?
I have spent so much time wondering what it looks like to be qualified, but now I’m curious what it looks like to be called, to walk in an identity that isn’t achieved. That is, after all, who we are in Christ. Not achievers, but sons and daughters of God. How do I treat others when I am called? How do I treat myself when I am called? How do I treat my time when I am called?