How Do I Know If I'm Doing A Good Job?

The Paradox Paper #39

February is waving goodbye, which in Fort Worth means Spring has arrived! Our dog has gone back to work as Squirrel Foreman, our bird feeders are crowded, and our allergies are kicking in.

Spring is an invitation. Try a new hobby! Make something good! Our problems are solvable, we just need to look at them from a new angle! We can find a solution!

My oldest son has really opened himself up to the creative energy of Spring. His buns have apparently been suffering long under (or over) the terror of the Unpadded Toilet Seat, and without mentioning this oppression (or impression) to anyone, he took matters into his own hands. He marched those hands down the hall to my bathroom and set them on just the right supplies to fix this cheek-creasing menace for good. A perfect (and expensive) solution.

May Spring soon grace your home with the same warmth, vigor, and ingenuity as we got going on over here.

Welcome to The Paradox Paper, a monthly newsletter that honors the everyday paradox of a life with Jesus. If a friend forwarded you this email, click here to subscribe:

In this edition:

• A show that doesn’t know how its views on humanity are rooted in Christianity

• A book that reminded me how profoundly we impact one another

• A word on spiritual success

• A song based on St. Patrick’s Breastplate

Severance, Season 2, Apple TV+
I’ve talked about Severance before. I said to a friend the other day, “Not every show has to be visually and conceptually beautiful to be worthwhile entertainment, but this one is.” It follows the lives of several employees who work for the mysterious, cult-like Lumen company. For their own reasons, they have elected to undergo the “severance” procedure, which splits their memories between work and home. Their home versions, or “outies” as they’re called, have no memory of their work life. Their work versions (innies) have no memory of their home life. It is as if two entirely separate individuals are sharing one body. Season 1 follows the characters as they come to realize that perhaps Lumen is not as altruistic as they were led to believe, and seek answers about how their innie and outie lives connect.

Season 2 delves deeper into the impossibility of truly splitting ourselves into pieces, and the harm done when we attempt it. Integrity is not just a good personality trait possessed by upstanding people—it is integral for human flourishing. We were made to live whole lives before God—one, body and soul—even when doing so exposes us to grief and pain.

Anxious People, Fredrik Backman
I pulled this book off my shelf, where it’s been sitting for almost three years, as part of a 2025 effort to read the books I already own. My only previous Backman read was his heartwarming and funny collection of letters to his son, Things My Son Needs To Know About The World. I went into this one totally blind. Maybe it’s the cover, but I assumed it was a romcom. Combined with the title, a romcom about people who were nervous that the other person wouldn’t return their affections? I was wrong. At its roots, this is a story about human interconnectedness. The book begins with a hostage situation. Backman retells the same series of events over and over, from different character perspectives, giving the reader the God’s-eye view of how they have unwittingly shaped each other’s lives, and how that influence has led them all to be held hostage in an apartment together. It is funny, beautiful, and heartbreaking at times. I went back and forth between the audiobook and the hard copy, and both were enjoyable.

The worst part of student ministry is that you eventually have to tell a kid they’re wrong. The second worst part is that you have to stay up past your bedtime, but that's another essay. Sometimes it's the screw-you kid with a chip on their shoulder, and you have to say something like, “Bro. Love you so much. You cannot chuck other people’s phones out of a moving bus.” Sometime it’s the fresh, spiritually hungry kid who simply hasn’t learned this part yet. I was once told, as a young and eager storyteller, that perhaps my account of successfully using a urinal without peeing on myself was not an appropriate story for the Sunday School version of Two Truths And A Lie. Hilarious and impressive, yes. But perhaps not appropriate.

Part of growing up (in life and in Jesus) is learning to receive the truth of your own mistakes. Kids who are never told they're wrong become adults who cannot maintain healthy relationships. I don’t want that for my own kids, or those I help shepherd. These conversations have to happen sometimes. Still, I hate it.

On the drive home from one of these less-than-pleasant conversations, I asked the Lord out loud (solo driving is one of my favorite venues for prayer) “How do I know if I did a good job?” It's unfair to expect that either party enjoys a “you messed up” conversation, so in the absence of enjoyment and immediately evident results (which there almost always aren’t), how can I tell if I did my part well?

A lot of Christians I know ask this question. Within the understanding that God’s love for and acceptance of me does not rest on my efforts or performance, how do I know if I’m doing a good job? If all the right actions are nullified by wrong motives of the heart, and all the right motivations get you nowhere apart from right actions, how can I tell where I am? What is spiritual success?

I asked some of my students this question. To my joy, most of them shared some version of “Being with God in relationship.” After restraining myself from jumping off the couch with double fists in the air, I pushed. “Sure sure, but what does that mean? How do I do that?”

Crickets.

In her rich and honest biography of Elisabeth Elliott, Ellen Vaughn wrote, “To her [Elisabeth], the only measure of any human action came down to one thing: obedience. She’d look at an interviewer as if the ‘success’ question was dull. Yes, yes, of course. After all, they [the group of men, including her husband, who were slaughtered by the Waroni tribe] knew God wanted them to go to the tribe, and they were obedient to His leading. Next question.”

I think Betty was onto something there. To be spiritually successful is to obey the will of God, never mind the outcome. Cool. Glad we cleared that up.

Except how do I know God’s will? Sure, I can read the Bible. But there’s no Scripture for which medication to try or how many classes to take or what dollar amount to allocate for generosity. How do I know that stuff?

The Apostle Paul writes, “And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” (Romans 12:1-2 NLT)

Knowing the will of God, according to Paul, is not some abstract thing that you can only catch hold of if you're on just the right mountain top at just the right time. It is daily, practical, embodied. Paul did not make a typo here. He did not mean to say “give your minds,” or even “give your souls.” God asks for our bodies. This is good news, because we have no other means of obedience.

Take the hands, for instance. Whom do they touch, and in what spirit? What words do they type and text? What images do they enable my eyes to behold and my mind to meditate on? What food do they prepare, and with whom do they share it? We need only consider one or two body parts and what tasks they perform in the course of the day to see the practicality and specificity of this command.

We measure spiritual success by obedience to the will of God. I learn to do God’s will in a specific situation by knowing God specifically in all my situations. There is no quick fix. There is no one-time solution. There is room to be unskilled beginners. We don’t have to do this perfectly. In this daily, embodied surrender we are learning to do the will of God. This is sanctification—the life-long process, fueled and led by the Holy Spirit, by which Christ rubs off on us.

Here are the beautiful lyrics:

When my work takes me places I don’t want to go:
Christ before me
And my heart aches with sorrow as I hit the road:
Christ be with me

When the care of my family takes all that I have:
Christ within me
When I’m worn and exhausted, ashamed that I’m mad:
Christ defend me

I rise up today in a strength that is not my own
I’m held by the promise of God that I’m never alone

When I’m tossed to the side and I want to give up:
Christ beside me
When I’m busting my ass but it’s never enough:
Christ beside me
When I work hard but someone else gets the reward:
God’s eyes see me
I ask for promotion and they shut the door:
God’s ears hear me

When I climb the first steps toward a long-held dream:
Christ above me
And I leap out in faith and I hope to find wings:
Christ beneath me

Hold the paradox. Don’t panic. See you in next month!

-Steph

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