Perspective: Weeds and Fig Leaves

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Weeds and Fig Leaves

The Lord God called to the man and said to him, "Where are you?"

The man replied, "I heard your sound in the garden; I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself."

Genesis 3:9-10 (CEB)

I am not a stranger to the dark

"Hide away," they say

"'Cause we don't want your broken parts"

I've learned to be ashamed of all my scars

"Run away," they say

"No one'll love you as you are"

From "This Is Me" by Pasek and Paul

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells a story about a landowner who plants wheat in his field.  One night, someone hostile toward the landowner plants weeds in the field.  One day, the household servants report that weeds are growing alongside the stalks of wheat.  They ask the landowner if he wants them to pull up the weeds, and he replies that, if they pull up the weeds, they will inadvertently uproot perfectly good stalks of wheat as well.  He decides that the best course of action is to wait until the harvest and to have the harvesters separate the wheat from the weeds and dispose of the latter.¹

Jesus tells the Disciples that the field represents the world, that the stalks of wheat represent children of the Kingdom of God, and that the weeds represent the children of the devil.²  A lesson we can glean from this parable is that we need to leave the judging to God.  If we take it upon ourselves to decide who is a child of God and who is a child of the devil, we will end up hurting children of God.

I've found that this parable, when applied in a different way, can also serve as a good analogy for perfectionism.  Suppose that the field represents not the world but rather your life.  The wheat would represent the good things in your life, while the weeds would represent the things in your life you don't particularly want other people to see.  When you try to make your field more presentable by pulling up the weeds, you risk uprooting the wheat as well.  In other words, when you try to hide the parts yourself you don't want other people to see, you run the risk of preventing others from appreciating the best parts of you.

Perfectionism, I think, is one of those problems in life that are best viewed not as problems but rather as attempts to solve deeper problems.  Perfectionism is actually a strategy some people use for dealing with shame.  Shame is essentially the fear that, if we allow other people to see us as we are - "weeds" and all - we will be ridiculed, rejected, or abandoned.  Perfectionism then is the idea that, if we can at least appear to do everything right, nobody will ever have any reason not to accept us.³

Researcher Brené Brown, who has written at length about things like perfectionism, shame, and vulnerability, writes,
Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving to be your best.  Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth.  Perfectionism is the belief that if we live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame.  It's a shield.  Perfectionism is a twenty-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us when, in fact, it's the thing that's really preventing us from taking flight.⁴
Brown goes on to say that striving for excellence is concerned primarily with how one can improve and that perfectionism is concerned primarily with what other people think.⁵

I suspect that for many of us, myself included, perfectionism is less about correcting our imperfections and more about hiding them from others.  In my own experience, my fear of being deemed unacceptable has kept me from being seen at all.

Perfectionism doesn't work, because - aside from the fact that perfection is unattainable - no attainable degree of perfection, be it real or faked, can entitle a person to be accepted.  If someone doesn't want to accept another person, he doesn't need to find some imperfection in the other person.  If he cannot find one, he will make one up, turning any part of the other person into an imperfection.  If we're going to be rejected by others, we may as well be rejected for who we are and not for who we pretend to be.

When it comes to the "weeds" in our life, maybe it's not our job to fix ourselves but rather God's job to transform us into who we were created to be.  Maybe we're not always the best judges of what needs to be changed in our lives in how it needs to be changed.

In the Book of Genesis we read that, when God creates the first humans, God makes them the caretakers of a garden.  God tells them that they are allowed to eat the fruit of any tree in the garden, with the exception of one particular tree.  Naturally, the humans do the one thing they are forbidden to do.  When they eat the fruit, they suddenly realize that they are naked.  In other words, they feel vulnerable or exposed.  In their shame, they try to cover themselves with fig leaves, and, when they hear God walking in the garden, they hide.  God calls out, "Where are you?"⁶

In the Gospel of John, we read about a woman who meets Jesus at a well.  This woman, who has a string of failed marriages in her past, has walked to the well at the hottest part of the day because she is trying to avoid the other women in town.  Jesus offers her "living water" that will never leave her thirsty again, and, when she expresses an interest in this water, Jesus tells her to go back home and bring her husband to the well with her.  She says that she has no husband, and Jesus says, "You are right to say, 'I don't have a husband.'  You've had five husbands, and the man you are with now isn't your husband.  You've spoken the truth."⁷

When the first humans hide from God in the garden, God calls out to them.  When the woman at the well tries to keep a certain part of her life a secret, Jesus drags it out into the open.  God's response to our shame is to call us out of hiding.

The walls we build to protect ourselves, including perfectionism, inevitably become the walls that imprison us.  There is no proverbial silver bullet that can kill the monster of shame.  To quote the refrain from a certain children's book, "We can't go over it.  We can't go under it.  Oh no!  We've got to go through it!"⁸  Our only hope to overcome shame is "exposure therapy."  In other words, we must become vulnerable.  We must allow ourselves to be seen for who we are and risk being rejected in the hope that we are accepted.


Notes:

1. Matthew 13:24-30
2. Matthew 13:36-43
3. I think it is only right to note that I owe my understanding of shame and it's relationship to perfectionism to Brené Brown.
4. Brené Brown.  The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are.  2010, Hazelden Publishing.  p. 56
5. ibid.
6. Genesis 2:15-17; 3:6-10
7. John 4:7-18 (CEB)
8. Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury.  We're Going on a Bear Hunt.  1989, Walker Books.

The photograph of the wheat was taken by Magnus Rosendahl and has been released to the public domain.  The photographer is in no way affiliated with this blog.