Being very aware of our inadequacies, we are flooded with invitations, sales pitches, and demands to be better. In the age of algorithmic emotional manipulation, we can easily confuse the project of Christ with the grindset bros, the influencer girlies, and the self-help gurus. Do you feel too fat, too lazy, too poor, too sinful, too needy, too alone? Follow my commands, buy my merch, purchase my course and you will be satisfied. This should not be hard for us. We should just laugh at them and move on, except for one problem. These social media personalities are right.
We are too fat, lazy, poor, etc. We absolutely need salvation. In fact, if you follow these influencers, you might even become less fat, lazy and sinful. So why not? What’s the catch? You will trade any external gains for internal poverty. You might stop drinking, have better physical health, get more done, earn more money, but you will simultaneously realize that the god you serve cannot fix you. No amount of health saves you from death, no amount of money makes you less alone, no amount of productivity gives you the worth you crave.
Of course, we should absolutely learn from those who are farther along than us and many of these influencers are experts in their field. You will most likely learn more about running a business from Alex Hormozi than your parish priest. The problem comes when we buy salvation from the person who can teach us the best workout routine. It’s always a problem of ordered goods. “Seek first the Kingdom of God” is not just a pithy phrase. It is the organizing principle of our life. “All these things” flow from this one thing.
When Christ is not in the highest place, the foundation, and the center (all classical ways of marking the same idea), then the competing pressures of social media, cultural pressure, and inside our own deceitful hearts will inevitably pull us out of alignment. The process of forming an idol is as follows: when you give something or someone your attention, you will give them your devotion, when you give them your devotion, you will give them your worship, and what you worship, you become. This is why we look not to influencers in the Church, but to saints. We look to those who became icons of Christ. Those who we can say, like Paul, “become imitators of [them] as they imitate Christ.”
Keeping Christ our focus requires our attention, our devotion and our worship. This is one of the revelations of the Incarnation. Jesus became the image of the invisible God that we might give Him all our attention, all our devotion, all our worship. That we might become like Him.
We all fall short, we all fail, we all feel our frailty, our inadequacy, but two images have been comforting and encouraging me lately.
First, is the image of a ship. James makes use of this imagery when he tells us that the tongue is like a rudder, “Look at the ships also: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs.” (James 3.4) He goes on to say that whoever can manage his speech is perfect. Lord, have mercy! The image of a ship at sea is a common Biblical image. We can view the Christian life like this. We are the ship. We have been made seaworthy in our baptism, the Holy Spirit is the wind in our sails and our compass. As we navigate the seas of time we look to Christ that: “we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ...” (Ephesians 4.14–15)
Like a ship, we are constantly adjusting our heading to point to our North Star and our destination, Jesus. We might even take various routes that look like detours but are brought into proper alignment through repentance and the power of the Holy Spirit. Ships never start in perfect alignment with their aim and it is foolish to believe that we could do so. The complexities and storms of our life are constantly pulling us this way and that, but we trust the work of the Spirit to guide us to that true destination.
The enemy would love to make us believe that we can get there on our own strength, as if the wind and the compass were merely our abilities and our will, but Jesus reveals our weakness as the place of His strength. Surrender, repentance, and alignment with Christ are the ways to fulfillment and transformation.
The second great image of our discipleship to Christ is that of a guitar. We have been made of exactly the right stuff, we have been equipped and purposefully molded to fit a particular scale, a particular tonality, and a particular intonation. However, our life is played by the maestro, our story being pulled up into His. As we go through our individual and unique movements, we are constantly being tuned by the God of all beauty. We sometimes strike dissonant chords, we are often out of tune and we are being fitted into the orchestra of humanity to play the celestial hymn of praise to our God.
If you have ever tuned a guitar, you will know that this process is not glamorous. It can be unpleasant and defeating. One of the proper methods is to overcorrect and then come back to the center, stressing the string from flat to sharp and back in a dance of infinite play. The resonance and the harmonics of a well-tuned instrument can bring us to tears of joy in one moment and fall hopelessly into despair and atonality in the next. Our trust is not in our abilities to align with the Center, but in the hands of our Maker to tune us to Himself.
These two images help to insulate me from the pressures of the modern machine. Yes, I am not who I am called to be. But also, no, my deficiencies will not be solved by effort, education or money. They are all completed, restored, fulfilled in the person of Jesus. This is why Paul can write that inconceivable (yes, the word means what I think it means) verse, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12.9).
So as you are confronted endlessly by your own inadequacy, let us lean more into Christ and less on our own strength. Let’s look more to Him and less to them. Let’s trust the work of the Holy Spirit, even when the note we resonate is out of tune or the vector we sail is blown off course. We can trust His providence, His care, and His love.