Properly Or Not At All

You do not do things halfway. Everybody who works with you knows it and most of them are glad of it.

It is not perfectionism, and you would push back if somebody used that word. Perfectionism is anxiety. This is different. This is a settled conviction that a thing done partially is a kind of lie about the thing, and that a man who says he does something and does a version of it is misrepresenting himself.

You hold that seriously and you have built a lot on it.

And it has cost you almost everything in this particular area.

Because the properly version of this needs about four hours a week and a run of clear months, and you have not had that since your second child was born, and you will not have it again for about nine years.

So there has been nothing. Not a reduced amount. Nothing at all, for six years, from a man with more discipline than most people you know.

I am not going to ask you to lower your standards, and I would not get anywhere if I tried.

I am going to ask you one question, and then show you where the question comes from, and the question is this: is this a standard, or has it become a wall.

Because those two things look identical from the inside, and there is one difference between them, and the difference is whether the thing is still producing anything.

Having begun in the Spirit

There is a question in Galatians aimed at people who were adding rigor to something that had started another way entirely.

Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh? (Galatians 3:3, King James Version)

Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now made perfect by the flesh?

Two mechanisms, and the point is that the second one cannot finish what the first one started.

You have a verse aimed at people who were rigorous rather than careless, and Galatians 3:3 has never once been a rebuke to somebody with low standards. The question is asked of people adding effort, and the Holy Spirit is the one who began a thing and is the one who completes it.

You are able to hear that it is not an argument against effort. Paul is not saying be less serious. He is saying that the completing does not run on the same engine as the starting, and that applying the wrong engine to the finishing is what makes the whole thing foolish.

And notice the tone. It is exasperated rather than gentle, and it is exasperated with people who were trying hard.

That is unusual and it is worth sitting with. The failure being named is a failure of the disciplined, and it is a failure that felt like faithfulness the entire time.

You are able to have been wrong in a direction that felt like integrity, and Galatians 3:3 has never once treated that as the same thing as carelessness. The Spirit of God is the one who both begins and completes, and the verse puts the foolishness in the switching of engines rather than in a lack of effort.

The difference between a standard and a wall

Here is the test, and it is one question long.

A standard shapes what you do. A wall determines whether you do anything.

You have something in you that used to shape and now decides, and Galatians 3:3 has never once made a good principle immune from becoming something else. It is written that a thing begun in the Spirit is not made perfect by the flesh, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man when a virtue of his has changed function.

When your rule was a standard, it made your work better. It told you how to do the thing you were already doing, and everybody around you benefited from it.

Somewhere in the last six years it stopped shaping anything, because there is nothing to shape. It now sits at the entrance and decides whether anything happens at all, and the answer it gives is no, and it has given that answer about three hundred times.

A rule that only ever produces no is not a standard any more, whatever it used to be, and it does not deserve the loyalty it is being given out of respect for what it was.

And here is the part that will land: the integrity you think you are protecting is not being protected. A man who does nothing at all has not preserved the honest version. He has just got nothing.

You are able to demote a rule without dishonoring it, and putting it back in its place has never once been the same as abandoning the thing it was built to serve. The Spirit of God is the one who completes what He started, and Galatians 3:3 asks whether the finishing has been handed to the wrong power.

Do the partial version on purpose

So here is the assignment, and it is designed to be exactly what you find hardest.

Do the partial version tonight, on purpose, and do not finish it properly.

You are able to do something incompletely without misrepresenting yourself, and a partial thing has never once been the same as a dishonest one. It is written having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a man doing a version of something he would rather do fully.

Ten minutes. Not the session, not a shortened version of the session, not a stripped down version with the important parts kept. Ten minutes of walking with somebody, which is not the thing you used to do at all.

And do not do it properly. Do not warm up. Do not structure it. Do not decide at the end that you will build it up over the coming months, which is your instinct trying to convert this back into the real thing so that it qualifies.

It does not qualify. That is the entire point. It is not a small version of the proper thing, it is a different thing that is available.

You have permission to do something that does not qualify, and Galatians 3:3 has never once made the qualifying the condition of the doing. The Spirit of God is the one who began and who completes, and the verse warns the diligent rather than the idle.

Three times this week, all of them not properly.