Quit trying to be good enough. you already are.

​The simple message of the gospel is that our best isn’t good enough and our worst doesn’t disqualify us.

Simple?

Maybe, but we live in a culture that often complicates that message beyond any recognition. And sadly, it complicates it beyond the love it was intended to offer, beyond the love it was intended to move us joyfully return.

I would argue almost all of our lives have been conditioned to believe you have to be good enough to get in.

Your grades have to be good enough. Your job skills have to be good enough. Your yard has to look good enough. Your online profile picture has to look good enough.

Oh, Keith, you’re just talking about expectations. You’re talking about standards in life that help us identify who is best suited for college and not. Who can do a particular job and who can’t. You’re talking about a homeowner’s association that has an obligation to keep the neighborhood nice. You’re talking about someone who just wants to put their best foot forward on social media.

Only, I don’t think that is what I’m talking about.

From an early age, our relationships get flavored with expectations. We have a bullying epidemic because friends groups get to decide who is in and who is out. We have an loneliness epidemic, closely connected to drug overdose and suicide epidemics, because too often we decide who is in and who is out. I’ve worked enough with families to know there are no shortage of parents and grandparents placing expectations on their kids and grandkids, not expectations for success, but for love and acceptance. We bat about 50% in this country with marriages – because at some point they begin to focus on what counts you out instead of what got us in.

No, I would argue our relationships are largely built on the idea we have to do something good enough to have them and keep them.

All that makes the message of the gospel radical. Hard to buy into. This idea that God said I’m creating you because I loved you long before that creation. I’m sending my son to personally deliver the message: I don’t need your works and behaviors nearly as much as I long for your love. And if you don’t believe me, God said, I’m going to ask my son to die on the cross for you as an exclamation point.

God has this radical idea about relationship. He says let’s start with love and see what naturally overflows from that. Us, too often us, we start with let me see how hard I can work, how good I can be, how much I can achieve and please, and who knows, maybe someday that will look like I am loved.

In a culture that too often tells you that you have to be good enough – a measure you will never ever live up to – find some refuge today in a simple message that says you already are.

I know you feel like it's more complicated than that. I used to. But it's not. It really is a simple and life-changing message.