Editing

I'm writing all of these things down just for myself, and I'm not sharing them with anyone. I like to think this is so I can speak freely and all that. I guess that's true, but it's mostly because I don't want to edit. If I knew other people were going to read this, I would go back through, re-read, check for typos, try to make it funnier, spend MUCH more time trying to be much more impressive and say things much better than all of this. Mostly I know, if people were going to read this, it wold be stressful, take way more time, and I'd quit doing it. This makes me ask two questions:

1. Why do I feel like I'm wasting my time when I do something that is not for anyone else? Why, as I write these entries, do I feel like this is a waste since no one will see them but me? Why isn't doing something for no one else but myself good enough? Why isn't just wanting something, just for me, just because I want it, a good enough reason to do it?

2. If I knew someone would read it, why would I suddenly feel such an urge to edit? Why is just speaking what I think, without trying to be funny, without a read-over, typos and all - why do I feel like that is good enough for me but not for anyone else? Why would someone else's involvement make what I have here suddenly not good enough? Why the sudden need to gloss and edit and reframe and perfect?


I don't really have a lot to say other than to ask the question and wonder about it, but I do wonder, how much of my time and my efforts are spent editing everything? One of the delightful things about children is that they just blurt out their exact evaluation of the situation - no apology, no hedging, no diplomacy. I'm not suggesting that a better society is one with no filters at all because there is obviously a great deal to be said for wisdom and tact, but there is something lovely about being able to show exactly who you are and what you think indiscriminately. I also think that we often use the words "kindness" and "wisdom" and "diplomacy" and "tact" to justify behaviors that are really only hiding and pleasing and image-management. I know that's true of me. In the name of being a "peace-maker," I just indulge my own cowardice and refuse to challenge or confront.

In Galatians 2, Paul says,

"It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not "mine," but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.
Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God's grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily."

The part I love is "It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion ... Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God?" I see in myself a bad tendency to do just that - to work things out so that I appear righteous, have people's good opinion, practice peer-pleasing religion, and what's worse is that when the Spirit or some other loving person tries to challenge me on that, I brush away the conviction by packaging the behavior as "being all things to all people" or "being a light" or "limiting myself for the weaker brother" - all things that are good when they're actually true, but that are just excuses when what you're really doing is image-management.

Like I said before, I probably couldn't write these things down and just post them like I do if I thought lots of people would read them, because I would need there to be no typos (what if they think I'm an idiot?) and I would need the have more jokes and cleaner points and better metaphors (they need to know I'm a good writer, right?) and with all of that, it would take way too much time to do this and I'd let it fall by the wayside. Something good that I was doing for myself would be lost because I just couldn't stomach the thought of presenting anything imperfect, rough, flawed, or unedited to anyone who might be forming an opinion about me. Can't have that.

How many things do we have no time for because all of our time is taken up editing and making sure everything is coming off right? How much of our freedom is Christ is wasted because we don't take advantage of it because we're afraid of whom that freedom might offend?

I do not mean to say we can always do exactly whatever we want. There is definitely something good to be said for making sure that we're being good examples for Christ and for limiting our own freedom to help the weaker brother and all of that. But what I am saying is that I think we should be honest about how much we're actually doing those things for the sake of the kingdom and how much we're just managing our images and reputations, and we just happen to be smart enough to give it a more palatable name.