Island of Content and Safety

I know I have not posted in a long time. And if anyone does actually read these posts, I apologize. But here me out. Every Christian goes through ups and downs in their faith. That “perfect” walk with Christ that some Christians seem to play off is completely false. Perfection is over rated, relative and non-existant. I have seem to hit a plateau in my walk. I have grown so much since I’ve been at school and I have such a long way to go, but I feel stuck almost. It’s like I’m trapped on this little island of content and safe Christianity and God is testing me to see whether or not I can find my way off. But long story short, I have been searching for something to write about and haven’t felt passionate enough to write an entire post on.

In my writing class we had to read this excerpt from a piece called Bird by Bird. And one of them focused on perfectionism. While it focused mainly on perfectionism in writing drafts, I felt that the content actually had some relevancy to life in general. Here are some of the things it said:

“I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that, if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is, you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you and have a lot more fun while they are doing it.”

“So go ahead and make big scrawls and mistakes. Use up lots of paper. Perfection is a mean, frozen ideal form of idealism, while messes are the artists true friend.”

I feel that so many Christians strive to live like the perfect Christian. But I hate to break it to you, you never will be. That is no way to live. Making mistakes is a part of being human, it is what separates us from the perfect, sinless life of Jesus Christ.

As seen in Philippians 3:15-21, Paul shows us that perfection is no way to live. More specifically, 3:16 states “Only let us live up to what we have already obtained.” If you move forward, great! If you aren’t moving, just strive to better than what you were. Just pray hard and don’t move backwards. Pray you find your way off the island.