Here’s what I hold responsible for the oppressive, unreasonable demands that I place on myself.
By Jason Lim
A
s an idealist, I struggle with perfectionism. I am not just my own harshest critic but a withholder of grace. I mistake self-destructive talk as humility, telling myself it’s better to err on the side of being hyper castigatory.
This is most often realized in the realm of teaching in the college ministry I lead. The cruel cycle that is the weekly responsibility of preaching to my students is a repeated reminder of my failure to clear the self-imposed (and highly arbitrary) bar of success.
Time and time again, I enter the doors of the room to preach yet come away saddened by my perceived failures. The walk back to my car after every large group session is one of the darkest moments of my week. I go over the sermon with a fine-toothed comb, dissecting and second-guessing. I rue certain phrases. I suddenly doubt the logic and outline. I cringe at the forced jokes.
Sometimes, I don’t even start the car. I just sit there, enveloped by the darkness and accompanied by the silence, wondering what I just preached.
As a way to dampen the downer that is my own critical voice, I try to read as much as I can. Though many authors have left indelible marks on my life, few have impacted me as profoundly as Anne Lamott. Both as a Christian and a writer, she has challenged and changed the way I view the daunting process of writing. In an especially arid season of creative congestion, a friend handed me a copy of Bird by Bird, a quasi-autobiographical exhortation on writing.
Though it is ostensibly a book about developing the craft, Lamott also writes candidly about her struggles with perfectionism and the oppressive obsession to impress people:
Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life...Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up. (28)
Lamott’s commentary on the cleanliness of perfectionism ties in with Asian Americans’ image-obsessed, shame-based culture. Though perfectionism is hardly unique to Asian Americans, it is very much a fruit of our upbringing. We love and look up to our elders, and when the cacophony of criticisms are more frequent and prominent than the balm of affirmation, the small seed of insecurity eventually becomes an immovable oak of self-doubt.
The collective narrative of immigrant parents with nothing but the clothes on their backs for a better future for their children is both a badge of pride and a baton of shame. It is a strange confluence of gratitude and guilt. While I’m thankful for my parents’ sacrifices, I am also crippled by the pressure to perform.
My parents would offer me unsolicited reminders that they didn’t show up to my concerts and games because they were working extra hours to support the family. My dad, in particular, would admonish me that he gave up his prospect to be a successful engineer in South Korea to sell frozen yogurt so I could have a better life.
Today I have many friends whose parents worked 12-16 hour days at a cleaners or a teriyaki shop to provide for the family. The problem was not the noble sacrifices of my parents but how it was lorded over me to be perfect.
To be completely honest, my parents aren’t why I struggle with perfectionism. They might have enhanced my problem, but they are not the source of it. The real problem of perfectionism doesn’t not lie in the self-destructive lens through which I see myself. In fact, to call perfectionism “problematic” is a euphemism; perfectionism is a sin.
I can’t blame this propensity on my parents or culture but instead diagnose it as an act of rebellion against God. Perfectionism is a tacit and subtle ideology of self-reliance. Prayerful piety and doxological dependence are exchanged for futile diligence rooted in self-righteousness. As each day passes without having struck gold, I dig myself into a deeper pit of despair. So what shall I do?
Lamott proposes a helpful change in perspective:
Clutter and mess show us that life is being lived. Clutter is wonderfully fertile ground--you can still discover new treasures under all those piles, clean things up, edit things out, fix things, get a grip. Tidiness suggests that something is as good as it's going to get. Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation, while writing needs to breathe and move. (28-29)
I can easily switch out writing for living and the principle still applies: I need to embrace the mess. I mustn’t, however, love the chaos so much that it becomes the goal. Rather, I take life day by day--or bird by bird--and learn and grow from it.
It’s out of this mess that I realize I am ultimately not defined by my depravity. The mess might be my present reality but hardly the ultimate truth. And the truth is, I can’t attain perfection by my own means. Through Christ and Christ alone, I know that I am made perfect through and in him. And in that light, the mess seems less damning.
Messes humanize me. We aren’t TI-83+ calculators, able to flawlessly spew out answers and measure asymptotes. The tensions create space for creativity and growth. The mess releases us from the prison of self-reliance and puts us back in the intended context of complete dependence on God.
I believe this is a gaze issue. We, as Christians, shouldn’t rubberneck and focus on the mess but fix our eyes on Christ as the one who will make all things new.
The hardest thing about perfectionism is to show myself the grace that has already been given to me. Though I preach on the freedom we have in Christ, I still, to this day, feel bound by the chains of perfectionism. I delude myself into thinking that I can reach the zenith of it all.
But when I look back at the trail of failures in my life, I realize that I cannot do it on my own. Ministry is the clearest microscope slide of this truth. It has exposed me to the folly and sin of it all. If I compare my successes and failures on the ledger of perfectionism, I will walk away feeling discouraged.
Only when I look upon the perfect work of Christ can I be both free and completely dependent upon the grace of God. I suppose that’s the beautiful and backwards irony of the gospel: it is only when I relinquish the delusion of self-engineered perfectionism that I can ultimately realize it in Christ.
I am now in my third year at my current post. As if being hard on myself wasn’t enough, COVID-19 has introduced a new wrinkle into the art of self-denial and Christ-dependance.
On paper, this new year seems like a failure. I wasn’t able to recruit new freshmen into our fellowship. Attendance has taken a precipitous hit across the board. Assessing the year through a less sanctified and more self-obsessed lens, I would have already chalked it as a sunk cost.
But, by God’s grace, I don’t view the weekly responsibility of preaching to the same students as drudgery. Rather, as soon as I end the Zoom meeting, I pray a silent prayer of thanks. The quality of sermons and the state of the fellowship has remained the same, by I am experiencing release from this Sisyphus-like pursuit of perfectionism.
It is all about the gaze--really. I no longer ascribe a certain numerical value to myself based upon the momentary wins and losses. I’m okay with the mess and look to Christ, the author and perfecter of my faith.
For me, perfectionism is not even the white whale anymore. It simply doesn’t exist. The only explanation of this newfound perspective within increasingly corroding circumstances is my willingness to concede and believe that apart from Christ I can do nothing.
