WHEN NOT TOO BAD IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH

Poor English notwithstanding, whenever someone asks us how the meal was or how we did on an exam or how we are feeling, we inevitably reply (or at least I do), “Not too bad.” It should be “badly,” adverbs grammatically modifying verbs. “Not too bad” (or “badly”) has come to be a synonym for “good enough” That is fine, perhaps, when it comes to meals (when some anonymous person has prepared it, of course) or exams (if our passing the course is not in jeopardy) or our own well-being (because the questioner can’t do anything about it anyway).

But “not too bad” is not good enough when it comes to our spiritual life and how we live out that life. If asked about that life, most of us would reply that it could be better, but, all in all, it’s not too bad. We could pray more, read the Bible more, do more in the way of sharing our time and talent and treasure. We know that. Granted, we are not perfect, but, when we think about it, we’re not doing too badly.

Then we run up against Jesus’ command that we be perfect as he is and are forced to face the truth that not too badly is not good enough. When perfection is demanded, anything less is not good enough even if the life we are living is truly not too bad. Not too bad never, ever, leads to perfection because it settles for something less. It never leads to a transformed life because life as it is seems not too bad.

Granted, we will never be perfect, not in this life anyway. We will never come close to being perfect. Sin gets too much in the way every single day of our lives. Perhaps that is why we can so easily accept a spiritual life that is not too bad. It certainly could be worse, much, much worse and it will never be perfect. In this life, it seems, a spiritual life that is not too bad certainly seems to be good enough.

In order to transform our lives from not too bad towards perfection, we have to work on them and work on them daily. We have to remove practices that hinder growth and replace them with practices and disciplines that enable spiritual growth. A transformed life is the result of a spiritually disciplined life and is only the result of such a life. Transformation does not happen accidentally or by osmosis. It happens because we do what has to be done to make it happen.

Lent is upon us and is an opportune time to begin to do what needs to be done to transform our lives into the lives Jesus call us to live. Even if what we are doing is good, it is not good enough, perfection being a ways off, a long way off. Lent is a time to practice disciples of prayer, fasting, self-denial, reading and reflecting on God’s word, giving of our time to serve others. It is a time to learn more about different ways to become more disciplined and transformed. Lent is the time to begin to make a spiritual life that is not too bad but is truly not good enough into something even better.

We know that, do we not? But it is not enough to know what we should be doing. That’s the easy part. The hard part is actually doing something. The very personal question is, “What am I going to do this Lent to make myself a better person?”