Robcast: Good vs Perfect

I tried to type out most of one of Rob Bell's podcast episodes. There was a lot of pause, rewind, type, play, repeat. But I thought it was really beautiful and potentially life changing: 

//Good vs. Perfect//

Death and birth are natural, organic processes through which new life comes into the world. 

The sun rises and sun also sets. There is light and then darkness, God says that it is good. Tov (Hebrew for good).

Death and birth.

Burying in the earth and then rising in the earth.

Seasons with a gradual planting and harvesting and explosion of life, followed by a gradual tapering off into a death and a stillness and a winter hibernation, to be usurped, essentially, by a new spring. Seasons are good. It's good. The Hebrews gave us this idea of an affirmation of life in all of its death and rebirthness, in all of its darkness and light. In all of its seasons that come and go. It's cold and then it's warm. 

Tov (good). Good is sweaty and dirty and dark and light and death and birth and It's sexy and it's wine and it's food and it's friends. Tov is of the earth. Tov isn't interested in nice, neat, right angles. Tov isn't really interested in everything being spotless, and shining and polished and glossed. Tov is about life in all of its bristling authenticity. 

Hebrews gave us good, tov. But the Greeks (essentially) gave us this idea of perfect, the ideal... A perfection and ideal that can never be reached. 

Tov has a dynamic built into it that life, the universe itself, the planet, you, are in the endless process of becoming. There is a movement, a motion, a flow to good. Things are one day a certain way, but tomorrow they will not be the same way. That tree will keep growing, it will keep producing. That person will be moving forward or they will be moving backwards. That person will be growing and maturing and flourishing or they won't. 

Life. 

Think about the food you bring home from the supermarket. The more life it has the fresher it is. The closer it is from the source from which it came the shorter it's period within which it can give you life before it begins to go stale. The worst food for you, like a twinkie, you can leave in the cupboard for a year and nothing's going to happen to them. They're static, they're frozen. But life is changing, it's morphing, it's becoming. You are becoming somebody. Your energies and direction and trajectory and arc of your life are headed in a direction. The idea that we're static, frozen people simply isn't true because the universe itself is in the endless process of becoming. Often times what happens with perfection, perfect, is that it gives us a static view of the universe. You just are, you just arrive. How many people had a goal that they were like, "when I reach that goal everything will be perfect". Then you reach the goal and there was this profound let down. You found yourself even bored. Because life is this dynamic reality that demands that we engage upon it. Sometimes perfection, or perfect, comes with these categories. Basically perfect is that which cannot be improved. The moment there is nothing more to do, something within us is like "ughhh." it loses its vitality and heart. So in some ways good and perfect could be seen as a static unchanging fixed view vs a dynamic, flowing, becoming view of the world. 

Good is going somewhere. It's sweaty, dirty, sexy, wine and friends, it's stumbling down, it's falling flat on your face. For the world to actually be a world it actually has to be a world. For it not to be a simulation, for it not to be an intellectual exercise in the abstract. For the world to actually be a world, it has to be free to be a world. It has to be free to be bloody and dangerous, or it isn't a world. Do you see why this is so important? You have to be able to make a mess of things. If you don't have the kind of power that can really make a mess of things, then how can we ever have the kind of power and freedom and choice to make something really beautiful? For the world to be a world it actually has to be free to be a world. And for us to be people, we actually have to be free to be people. For us to be human, we actually have to be free to be human. We have to have enough power and choice and will to make a complete mess of things. Which means we have enough power and will and choice to make a new kind of world, a better kind of world. Something beautiful. You as a human being, it's not about you running from that power, from shrinking from it and avoiding it. Which by the way, is most of the comments on YouTube. All that Internet hate and all those people who seem to have tremendous energy to shred what other people are doing when they don't seem to be doing anything themselves, that's what happens when you shrink and run from the power that you have. As long as I'm pointing at the flaws of what somebody else is doing and making then I don't have to deal with how I have been shrinking and running and avoiding my own power to do something in the world. People shrink and avoid that power because it's painful and bloody and frustrating. 

So we're here, and we're human beings and we get to work in harmony with it. Taming it, moving in sync with it, finding its groove. The problem with perfect, is when you have this ideal in your head of perfection, as often times perfect tries it and if it doesn't immediately work out, perfect bails. Perfect is totally flummoxed. You had this thing in your head, you tried it, immediately it didn't go how it was supposed to go or how you thought it was supposed to go, or whatever the ideal was announced to you. And so we just quit. I tried, but it wasn't awesome so I quit. 

But tov (good) understands that everything is in the process of becoming and things take time. Everything in your life that matters takes time. And it takes intention and it takes energy. And you wrestle with it and you dance with it. And It knocks you down, but you get back up. See, it's all part of it when you're seeing life through the tov (good) lense. The eb and the flow and the seasons and the struggle. It's all part of what makes the world a world and it's all part of what makes you a human. It's all part of what makes you, you!

Think about a sculptor working with clay. It's about the fingers digging into the clay and moving it around, and trying this, and that didn't work so you go over here and try this and then you try that way, and then maybe you add a little water, then you turn it around and maybe look at it from a different direction. It's working with it. And all of the miss cues, all of the things you tried that didn't work are all part of it. 

Good is ok with flaws. Good celebrates all those roads you went down that you found out were a cul-de-sac. Good celebrates all the miss turns as part of it. Perfect often doesn't know what to do with our humanity. Perfect endlessly flogs itself for its imperfections. For all the ways that it sees itself falling short of the ideal. But good sees that it's all part of the bloody, difficult, strange, exotic, beautiful, mysterious thing that we know to be life. 

Quick tangent on afterlife, somebody asked ,"can't we just skip through all of the difficulty of this life and the not knowing and get to the part where we die and then we know everything?" 

No! No, we can't. Here's why: first off, where did you get the idea that when we die we'll know everything? Do you realise that the not knowing, the wonder and the mystery and the search, exploration and the hunt, the discovery, that's where the life is. That's good. For many people, the vision they were taught was essentially a very Greek afterlife. You're down here, sort of screwing it all up and then someday you die and then everything will be perfect. Perfect?? You mean that which cannot be improved upon. You mean that which is static and unchanging? In other words, that which is so boring you just want to die? 

You don't want perfect, trust me. You want good. You want process, becoming, exploration, learning. You love this sense, that you don't know what today will bring. Your moments of greatest joy are when you actually have a sense of anticipation. Where's this going to go? It's that sense of "I don't exactly know what's going to come, but I know it's going to be good." Let's disabuse ourselves of these ideas that somehow the goal is to get everything set and perfect, that which cannot be improved upon. That is the recipe for boredom. There are elements of excellence, of perfection, that are healthy and beautiful, but I'm talking about the unhealthy side. 

Now let's talk about the voices in our head. "Why can't you get everything right the first time" "why can't you be like so and so? They just skate, they float, they glide. They just make one good decision after another." 

It's a voice in your head that tells you, "you should nail this on the first try." Anything that is perfection out of the gate, means there's something wrong with you. 

Everybody, is at some level, stumbling through it. Everybody is doing the best with what they got. 

See, tov is good, it's about direction. It's about where you're headed, it's about your heart. Tov (good) had room for the flaws, for the missteps, because it's all part of it. The power of tov, and the power of Genesis ch. 1  is the light and the darkness both belong. The death and the burial and that new fresh seedling rising up out of the earth all belong. The season ending and a new season beginning; summer leading into fall, leading into winter when everything is dead, and then the explosion of new life in spring is all part of it. 

Do you have a static, fixed view of the universe? A perfection based view of the universe, where everything is the way it is, you get it nailed and then it stays exactly like that forever. That is not reflective of the world we live in. 

Tov acknowledges that there is a pain  when one thing ends and another thing begins, when one thing runs its course and then another thing starts. There is a pain of winter. Ever felt like it's like winter and a bunch of things died, and it's cold and lonely? Tov (good) has room for that. And God said, "it's good." It's all part of it. 

I wish somebody would have told me this, I wish somebody would have said, "all of the ways you're going to fall flat on your face, all of the regrets, all the shame, all the humiliation, all the embarrassment, it's all part of you becoming you." So just stop taking it so hard on yourself, stop beating yourself up, stop flogging yourself for the end of seasons, beginnings of seasons, for all the wrong turns. It's all good. 

Birth, man it's not perfect, but it's good. Cause it's all good. It all belongs. That's not a cliche for a tshirt it is a truth about how the whole thing works.

I wish somebody would have said to me years ago, "What's the Bible? Oh yeh, the Bible is this fascinating story that begins with the affirmation of life in all of its bloody imperfections. It begins with this resounding, joyful, embrace of all the messiness of life. All the times when seasons end, all the winters, all the changing of the tides, all the terror and drama and fragility of birth, all of those moments when you feel buried in the dirt and it turns out later that it was simply the burial for the resurrection."

Some translations in English say that Jesus said to be perfect. That word in the Greek means to be more whole and mature. So when some translators say that Jesus said to be perfect, I think he's saying to be whole, be mature. Pursue your health and wholeness. Line yourself up with the Divine and how the Divine moves through the world. So, for many people religion and even views of spirituality handed them a whole checklist of perfection that just had made them so miserable. Think of how many addictions, think of how many bad patterns come from "you're supposed to get it all right the first time." So here's the deal, you don't have to get it right the first time. What you do in Tov is you simply learn. You fall flat on your face, you get up and then you ask yourself a bunch of questions about what you can learn, cause you're discovering. Thank God you don't know it all, that'd be so boring! 

Good vs perfect? Welcome to Good.