I hope this blog hasn’t been a stumbling block for you. More than anyone, I struggle with the idea of all or nothing… 100% or 0%... and no room in between, no room for failure... the idea that “if you’re not prepared to sacrifice everything, don’t even try!” completely paralyzes me.
I found out yesterday that the reason it haunts me is because God is not like that. God is not the 100% God…
J.B. Phillips explains it best, please read on...
(This is an excerpt from the book “Your God is Too Small” pg. 30-2)
“This one-hundred percent God standard is a real menace to Christians of many schools of thought, and has led quite a number of sensitive conscientious people to what is known as a "nervous breakdown." And it has taken the joy and spontaneity out of the Christian lives of so many more who dimly realize that what was meant to be a life of "perfect freedom" has become an anxious slavery.
A young, athletic extrovert may talk glibly enough of being "one-hundred percent pure, honest, loving, unselfish." But being what he is, he hasn't the faintest conception of what "one hundred percent" means. He has neither the mental equipment nor the imagination to begin to grasp what perfection really is. He is not the type to analyze his own motives, or build up an artificial conscience to supervise his own actions, or be confronted by a terrifying mental picture of what one-hundred percent perfection literally means in relation to his own life and effort. What he means by 100% pure, honest etc. is just as pure and honest as he sincerely knows how, and that is a very different matter.
But the conscientious, sensitive, imaginative person who is somewhat lacking in self- confidence and inclined to introspection, will find the 100% truly terrifying. The more he thinks of it as God's demand the more guilty and miserable he will become, and he cannot see any way out of his impasse. If he reduces the 100% he is betraying his own vision, and the very God who might have helped him is the Author (so he imagines) of the terrific demands! No wonder he always "breaks down." The tragedy is often that the 100% god is introduced into the life of the sensitive by the comparatively insensitive, who literally cannot imagine the harm they are doing.
What is the way out? The words of Christ "Learn from Me," provide the best clue. Some of our modern enthusiastic Christians of the hearty type tend to regard Christianity as a performance. But it is still, as it was originally, a way of living, and in no sense a performance acted for the benefit of the surrounding world. To "Learn" implies growth; implies the making and correcting of mistakes; implies a steady upward progress toward an ideal. The "perfection" to which Christ commands men to progress to is this ideal. The modern high pressured Christian of certain circles would like to impose perfection of 100% as a set of rules to be immediately enforced, instead of as a shining ideal to be faithfully pursued. His short cut in effect, makes the unimaginative satisfied before he ought to be and drives the imaginative to despair.
Yet even to people who have not been driven to distraction by 100% Christianity, the same fantasy of perfection may be masquerading in their minds as God. Because it is a fantasy it produces paralysis and a sense of frustration. The true ideal, as we shall see later, stimulates, encourages, and produces likeness to itself.
If we believe in God, we must naturally believe that He is perfection! But we must not think that he cannot be interested in anything less than perfection!
Christians may truthfully say that it is God's ambition to possess the love and loyalty of his children, but to imagine that He will have no dealings with them until they are prepared to give him perfect devotion is just another manifestation of the god of 100%. After all who, apart from the very smug and complacent would claim that they were wholly "surrendered" or "converted" to love? And who would deny the Fathers interest in the prodigal son when his spiritual index was at an all time low?
God is truly Perfection, but he is no Perfectionist, and the 100% is not God.”
