The Vanity of Performance
Not to get all “in my day” about it, but I’m thankful to have grown up in a time largely before social media. To quote comedian Nate Bargatze, “whatever I did in high school is a rumor, it can’t ruin my life.” By now it’s probably obvious to all of us that, whatever positives social media can bring, it can be equally cruel and damaging to take finite human brains and make our lives, actions, and decisions perpetually public and open to vicious scrutiny from virtually infinite peers. Social media has created a world where, as Bo Burnham (apparently I interpret my life through comedians) put it, “we perform everything to each other all the time for no reason. It’s a prison. It’s horrific.”
Social media is really just an outlet for something we already do. That is to say, this problem is less an internet problem and more a human problem. Performing for each other “all the time for no reason” is an expression of hearts that crave acceptance and peace. This song is about the gospel’s answer to that constant need we all seem to have for approval.
I truly believe that every human mind and heart, to some degree or another, has an internal voice that consistently tells them, based on some vague standard, they aren’t good enough. Reinforcing this feeling, our culture assures us that we can be good enough if we just work a little harder. It promises that we can hack our lives into peace, that we can work, rise, and grind our contentment into existence, that if we just do a little more, just order the pieces rightly, then somehow, someday we can reach the horizon. The message is that we can justify our existence by doing. Home Depot exists so “doers get more done.” I don’t even need to quote Nike’s motto. Every day my finance, diet, and fitness apps all team up to notify me, “YOU’RE NOT DOING GOOD ENOUGH.”
But at the bottom of it all, it’s vanity; it’s Gatsby’s green light, it’s Sisyphus’ boulder, it’s a goose chase without a goose. And yet we keep reaching, boats beating against the current, borne back ceaselessly into a world full of critics. And the truth is that often the biggest critic is myself.
This song is about the answer of the Gospel, which is the only answer there is. And what I love about the Gospel’s answer to our fallenness is that it’s brutally honest. It doesn’t just provide self–help or self–justification. It looks us right in the eye and says, “Nope, you’re not good enough. Not even close. You were dead in your sin, and there was nothing you could have done to make yourself alive. But Christ was good enough for you, and in Him God has paid your debt and made you His beloved child.”
No matter how many times we hear it, we need to hear it again: In the Gospel, God takes joy and delight in you. He’s not just sitting up there grumpy and ready to take you down a peg. If you’re in Christ, your wickedness and failure is fully known but fully paid for. In Christ, you are fully seen and fully loved.
The Gospel gives us the grace of silencing all critics, ourselves included. The harshest accusations that are leveled against me, even by my own brain, can’t shake my foundation anymore despite the fact that some are true. The reality is that I’m not good enough. But that doesn’t destroy me, because in the Gospel my value is completely fixed in an act I did not do and, equally important, cannot undo — Christ on the cross in my place.
Written by: Danny Nathan, Worship Director