The other day I was talking with a student who quoted a great passage out of Rob Bell's book, "Velvet Elvis."
In the book, Bell was talking about his early struggles as a pastor. One of them was that he felt the pressure to perform. He tried too hard to be super-pastor. "But super-pastor had to die."
Indeed, my friends. This is not just a problem for pastors. Many of us have super-us's in our imaginations. Those super-sized us's do not bless us. They are figments of our imaginations. They are "us" blown up exponentially beyond our ability to produce or perform.
Super-you must die. If she or he doesn't die, she or he will tyrannize you your whole life. And in the end, you're the one who dies. Cause of death? Suffocating under the ridiculous expectations of the super-sized you, a product of your own imagination.
Super-you must die. Otherwise, you play-act your way through life, trying to perform for that super-sized image, to live up to it. No genuine relating to anyone around you. No genuine relating to God.
Not a good way to spend your life.
1 comment:
Thought I should round out my comments with a third and final for the day.
This is a great section of that book, which really helped me in my college struggle to not try and be everything, but instead to let the LORD be the superhero and I his faulty sidekick. Still a struggle, but thanks for teaching this principle, Alex, and speaking that into our lives!
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