Christine Hoover (@christinehoover) is an author, a recovering perfectionist, the wife of a pastor, and a mom of three boys. She writes online at www.GraceCoversMe.com and has contributed to Desiring God, The Gospel Coalition, Christianity Today, Send Network, and iBelieve. Her newest book, From Good to Grace: Letting Go of the Goodness Gospel, offers women biblical freedom from trying to “be good enough”. The following is an excerpt from the first chapter of the book. You can read the entire chapter here.
I’ve been obsessed with being good and performing all of my
life.
Hello, my name is Christine. I’m a
goodness addict.
I was born with a list in my hand, or at least that’s how
early I imagine it started. I came by it honestly—my mom’s response to
everything my sister and I needed as children, whether shampoo from the store
or help with a school project, was always, “Make a list!”
So I did. I made list after list—of library books for summer
reading, of boys that I liked, of songs to record from the radio on my tape
recorder, of necessities to pack for overnight camp, of must-haves in my future
husband, even of outfits for the first month of eighth grade so as not to
repeat and make a fashion faux pas of infinite proportion.
I don’t just make lists. I am that person, the one who adds a task to a list just to experience
the satisfaction of crossing it off, the one who makes lists for my lists.
I’m a perfectionist.
There was a time when I would have said that with pride, but
not anymore. Perfectionism has not been a friend to me. Sure, my house is
organized and my budget spreadsheet is up-to-date, but when perfectionism is
applied to the spiritual needs of the heart, it’s called legalism. And legalism is a fancy word for an obsession
with goodness. It’s a belief that good things come from God to those who are
good. And it’s a belief that you can actually be good enough to get to God on
your own.
I became a Christian at age eight. From that point, or more
accurately from the point in middle school when I started having “quiet times”
according to my youth minister’s instructions, until my late twenties, I spent
the majority of my Christian life striving—striving for perfection, for God’s
favor, for the approval of others, and for the joy and freedom that the Bible
spoke of yet completely eluded me.
At an early age, I fell for perfectionism’s lie that I could
be good enough to win God’s heart and the approval of others. I sought joy,
peace, and love through being good and, instead, found myself miserably
enslaved to my own unattainable standards.
This was my understanding of what it meant to be a
Christian: If I do good things, then God is pleased. If I do things wrong, then
he is angry. This is actually the basis of every religion on earth except Christianity, this idea of a
scale where the good must outweigh the bad in order to be right with God. I had
religion down pat, but the religion I practiced wasn’t true and biblical
Christianity. On the outside I appeared to be a good Christian, but on the
inside I felt unlovable and was riddled with guilt about my inability to please
God.
Unfortunately for me, a large part of a goodness obsession
is an addiction to self. Goodness is evaluated by activity, completed tasks,
responses from others, and results. It requires a focus on appearance and image
and maintaining some semblance of religious behavior. Goodness required that I
control my environment with military precision, hide my weaknesses, and compare
myself with others or my own arbitrary standards. Goodness fed both my pride
and my self-condemnation and kept me relationally isolated.
The other part of a goodness addiction, I discovered in my
twenties, is a faulty understanding of who God is and what he expects from His
children. I only saw God through perfectionism’s filter. He was gray. He had no
patience for my mistakes, forever glaring at me with a scowl on His face. He
sighed a lot. If I was extra-good, He might
manage to crack a smile. He was one-dimensional, disengaged, unaffectionate,
and I absolutely feared him.
I knew nothing about grace.
I knew nothing about forgiveness.
I knew nothing about the true gospel, because a goodness
addiction completely overtakes the heart and mind, leaving no room for truth.
It enslaves and cannibalizes itself. It becomes an all-encompassing religion,
closing tightly around one’s soul. It led me down paths of depression and
despair.
And it became my gospel.
I lived according to that gospel–what I now call the
goodness gospel–for far too long, precisely because I didn’t know the true gospel’s reach. I believed that
faith was effective for salvation but only self-effort could produce my
sanctification. Now I know differently. God has taken me on a ten-year
exploration of grace and sanctification and faith, and I am not the girl I once
was. I live in the freedom that Christ was won for me.
Now that I know differently, I also have eyes to see the
goodness gospel covertly worming its way into hearts of believers, and I see
its destructive effects.
In the Christian culture, there seems to be great confusion
and even pressure that we women feel about what we should be doing and why we
should be doing it. The confusion touches decisions about education, family,
eating and drinking, work, hobbies, community involvement, and even whether one
should volunteer when the sign-up sheet is passed around again at church.
The pressure grows when choices are wrapped in spiritual or
more-spiritual terms. We see it everywhere: Do something great! Follow your
dreams! Make a difference for the kingdom! Be missional and in community! For
the gospel-confused, that too often translates into: I’m not doing enough, what
I’m doing isn’t making a difference, and I’ve got to create my own and my
neighbor’s own and my children’s own and everyone’s own life transformation.
From Good to Grace: Letting Go of
the Goodness Gospel
is a book for women like I was, who long to please God but fear they never
will. It's for the woman drowning in self-condemnation, the woman afraid to be
vulnerable with others because she's so fully aware of her imperfections, and
the woman who craves but can't seem to grasp the freedom and joy that Jesus
promised His followers.
Instead of asking "What does God want from us?", From Good to Grace asks, "What does God want for us?" The book illustrates how
we confuse being good and trying hard--the goodness gospel--with the true
gospel, which is really about receiving the
grace and love that Jesus offers us and responding
with our lives by the Holy Spirit's help. It’s my prayer that through it
you discover it's possible to know God's love, live in peace and freedom, and
serve others with great joy. Because God
has something so much greater for you than trying to be good enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment