October 10, 2012
Bringing Your ‘A’ Game
President Obama’s performance in the recent presidential debate is
described as lackluster, unprepared and disengaged. I can imagine he is
somewhat embarrassed and ashamed at taking the debate so lightly. I feel we can
learn something from the President’s overall dismal showing. One should never
be deceived into thinking that their public speaking skills and charismatic
personality can somehow replace being fully prepared and equipped for
presenting a message. “Do your best to
present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be
ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.” (2 Tim 2:15 NIV)
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Gail;
-----I don’t think you could have picked a better example to illustrate your point about preparation and presentation. Of course, the metaphor breaks down in the fact that our current preparation to present ourselves to God indeed is a presentation of ourselves to Him as we are preparing. President Obama and any good speaker prepares to speak to his fellow humans making no presentation until the time for it arrives. I’ve heard stories that the President daily dodged his duties to prepare right up until time for the debate. I’ve heard reasoning that the President understood Mitt Romney had the reality of truth on his side and there was no preparation that could insulate the President’s deceitful messages from that truth. I am in the middle of reading two books on the psychology of deceit. One point both books make is that maintaining deceit involves an incredible amount of mental activity, more than most people can make to deceive thoroughly. I often wonder if that is why he can not speak without his tell-a-prompter.
-----I realize my efforts to present myself to God are not perfect. In fact, when I meditate on the nature of perfection, then I begin to notice how incredibly short of even good the best of my efforts are. The fact I can always say I could have done better is testimony to the fact that I have never done my best.
-----But doing our actual best is not the point. The point is that the effort we try to elevate to the best is an effort to do things right, to get things right, to rightly handle the Word of truth, rather than an effort to deceive requiring careful crafting and prompting and performance. No. Our very preparation to get our stuff right is a presentation to God verifying our desire to be perfect amidst our confession of not doing our best. All the more than preparation this desire requires to eventually be fulfilled is God’s grace, the only reason our efforts succeed though they fail perfection.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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