Everyday obstacles, Part 2: Success-driven lives
/Cultural blind spots can cause university-educated Christians to devalue and exclude everyday people without even realising it – as they can, for example, when they innocently ask what a new acquaintance at church does for a living. Western professional culture finds value and identity in work, making everyday people feel ‘second-class’ when their occupations seem not to be highly valued by university-educated people.
The importance of success
Building our identity on what we do and what we achieve, like all idolatry, leads to slavery: the slavery of always needing to succeed.
Failure becomes unacceptable; it threatens our identity, even our very sense of our worth.
Perfectionism can take over, leading to anxiety, workaholism, and neglect of other responsibilities as the person strives to succeed (and to avoid failure at all costs).
But building identity on success can cause hurt in another significant way, too. It can stop us from being honest and real within our Christian community.
The Bible tells us we are sinners. We know that we fail daily to live God’s way. But if a person’s identity is built on success, they will be tempted to not be honest about their failures.
It will be very difficult to acknowledge their struggles. They won’t be honest with God, and they won’t be honest with others or be able to acknowledge their sin. They will feel the pressure to be always doing well, to not have any problems or difficulties.
The impact on others
This has huge implications when interacting with others, making conversations superficial and preventing insight into how people are really going.
Not only does this keep their relationships shallow; it also means they won’t be able to give encouragement to others or seek accountability in the areas in which they are struggling or failing to follow Christ.
As a result, their growth in godliness will be stunted.
Now, what if this slavery to success and reluctance to be real is especially seen in people whose professional culture values high achievement and ‘having it all together’?
The result can be shallow relationships in churches whose members are predominantly professionals – relationships between Christians with lots of knowledge about God but little transformation in character.
(If you are convicted that this could be you, remember that your standing with God is not based on your progress in godliness, but the completed work of Christ on the cross. Confess your sin, cling to Christ, and pray for courage to begin sharing more honestly your failings and sin with both God and other Christians.)
Why must we keep it real?
As well as being harmful to university-educated Christians and their community with each other, keeping conversations superficial and not sharing our failures can be a huge obstacle to everyday people joining our churches.
Some everyday people may see the way people present themselves at church as a façade. They may perceive that these professionals’ lives are not as squeaky clean as they appear. If an everyday person values authenticity highly, they can usually sniff a fake a mile away.
As a result, they may not trust the people in the church – or the gospel that they share.
Other everyday people who don’t see through the façade may actually believe that people’s lives are free of struggle and sin – and they’ll just feel unworthy to belong to such a community.
Feeling unworthy
This was the experience of a young woman who became a Christian in Wollongong a number of years ago when I served among students at Wollongong University.
At first, she was overwhelmed by the love and acceptance offered by Jesus despite her failings and sin. She joined a local evangelical church that faithfully taught the Bible each week. She began meeting regularly with other Christians.
But six months later she came to me and said, ‘I don’t think I can be a Christian anymore.’
‘Why not?’ I asked.
She replied, ‘None of the Christians at church struggle with sin like I do. I don’t think I’m cut out to be a Christian.’
What a tragedy! The very community that God had provided to help her grow in her new relationship with Jesus had failed her because the Christians there did not talk honestly about their struggle with sin.
Through their lack of honesty, they had communicated that being a Christian was more about being a ‘good’ person than trusting in the grace of God in Christ – and their actions spoke more loudly to her than the sermons did.
University-educated Christians need to shake off the yoke of living success-driven and inauthentic lives. We must accurately communicate the grace of God, show the freedom that we have in Christ, and welcome all people to experience the grace, love and forgiveness of the gospel.
And this needs to be something in which we are all engaged.
This article is one of a series that I’ve written about making disciples of ‘everyday people’.
It can be read on its own, but if you’d like to gain a greater understanding of how my thoughts around this important topic have developed, you may wish to read the full series of articles in order.
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™