The tiger mom says, “‘A’? Why didn’t you an ‘A+’?” And perhaps you were one of those kids who was forced to attain the nonexistent grade on a nonexistent scale just for the love of a parent.
From that moment in the third grade the ever increasing demands of achievement fashioned a mentality of achieving for people so that we could be loved. We continue to build unrealistic expectations and leave real friendships in our dust.
More troublesome than that is achieving things and doing things with no purpose besides receiving another dust collecting piece of plastic for us to look under the dim, lackluster lights of our fireplace mantle.
Only until we we completely burn out and realize we hate everybody because nobody really earned our love through their anemic achievement record, do we realize life was always more meaningful when our attitude towards people was more forgiving and more accepting.
Then again, if we aren’t noticed by our achievements, we shouldn’t be noticed– a mentality only further propagated by teachers and admissions processes. I don’t know whether a parent would really stop loving their kid for being just a “B” student as opposed to an “A” student, but I do bet that we have become conditioned to this mentality of only being noticed through some type of being “somebody you are not.”
It’s culturally ingrained into us that we go and achieve so we can be lovable or redeemable. We have to “prove ourselves.” We have to “earn our stripes.” So the idioms rampantly run abuzz in our psyche, giving a foundation to all our actions.
Where we run into trouble is when this mentality of achievement and status bleeds into our faith like sacred cow. We start believing that the Christian religion requires us to have fix ourselves and do something in order to be accepted by God.
Fortunately, achievement has no part of the faith formula, but attitude toward God is more than enough.
His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse, nor his delight in the legs of the warrior; the LORD delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love. – Psalm 147:10-11
God doesn’t care about your past achievements. Nor does He care about what you can do in your own power. Even more than that, God doesn’t require us to achieve anything for Him to love us in the future. The reason He doesn’t care is because He can create and name each of the billions of stars in our skies at night (v4).
Our God, the God that we worship, or should be worshiping, has His own power that is so abundant that He doesn’t need our power (v5). I am by no means saying that achievement is bad. Nor am I saying that we shouldn’t work hard toward doing things that give us some type of societal approval. What I am saying is that these are not important to God, so we need to stop putting such a big premium on trying to impress God to get His attention.
Just by breathing and being where we are, we have His love and attention. Unlike a lot of the metrics and relationships we have with other people in this world, God puts His premium in the quality of His relationships.
The Psalmist says that He “delights in those who fear Him.” That doesn’t mean to tremble and be afraid of God. Fear does not mean we do things because we are afraid of punishment. Instead, the word “fear” means we are prioritizing having an actual relationship with God, for the sake of a relationship, over earning something from God. To “fear” God is to take Him seriously at His words and not to treat Him like a bedtime fairy tale.
With God, there is no give and take. We have nothing He wants or needs. He simply wants to give you and do for you because of His relationship to you. The only thing He wants from you is to take Him seriously about receiving from Him and walking with Him. But that’s hard to swallow because it’s countercultural and counterintuitive so we don’t do it and we flee from having a real relationship with the only being that will never fail us.
How sad and pitiful are we not accept such a wonderful invitation? The Psalmist writes that in our brokenheartedness, disappointments, pain and sorrows, God wants to give us more and bind up wounds torn open. He wants to do this not because we earned the right or have traded enough things to obtain bandages; but because He takes our relationship with Him seriously.
He clings to us in love and abundantly overflows our lives with power and grace out of His heart for us. Likewise, when we are humbled, because often times brokenheartedness leads to humbling, God wants to lift us up, not so that we can earn something or because we have previously achieved something, but because God’s attitude toward us is everything.
Therefore God takes delight when our attitude toward Him is to put our hope in Him; when we rely on Him for our achievement.
When we rely on God for our everything, we never have to fear failure, we never have to worry about achievement because our God’s attitude toward us is to provide and gather us up.
Realize God’s attitude toward you and gaze upon an attitude worth more than everything we ever dreamed to achieve.