I believe that  kingdom excellence is not contingent on achieving perfection; however, perfection does play a significant role in excellence. You can be excellence without being perfect.

What I’ve come to realize is that the kingdom perspective of perfection is that although perfection can never be attained by our human effort, it must be our goal nonetheless.

By striving for a God’s standard of perfection that is never within our reach we must acknowledge our utter reliance on God. Furthermore, we are able to see the expanse that separates our best effort from God’s perfection and it is then that we begin to recognize the enormity of what Jesus Christ has done for us by achieving perfection in our place. We see that God is both just and merciful. We are set free from ourselves because we do not hold on as tightly to our own success or failure.

It is only when we are freed from the illusion that we can achieve perfection we receive the power to try.

Kingdom excellence means hungering for perfection. Kingdom excellence means constantly striving for perfection in a way that reflects the truth that it is Jesus, not me, who has attained it. Kingdom excellence is trying my best and when I get knocked down, kingdom excellence is the power to get up and try again.

I am grateful for C.S. Lewis for his understanding of this and his unique ability to explain it to me:

We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastity — like perfect charity — will not be attained by any merely human efforts. You must ask for God’s help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given. Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often What God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.

– C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Most people spend their lives trying to make their heart’s fondest dreams come true… We never imagine that getting our heart’s deepest desires might be the worst thing that can ever happen to us.” –Timothy Keller

Counterfeit Gods by Timothy Keller

I have a fondness for Tim Keller primarily because he was the first preacher that I ever heard preach the Gospel. Granted, that is an exaggeration. What I really mean is Tim Keller was preaching when Jesus Christ opened my eyes, ears, and heart to the truth of the Gospel. My wife (girlfriend at the time) had started attending Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan because she was familiar with his preaching. I had grown up going to church but had fallen away through college and my early 20′s. It was a period when God persistently and forcefully reclaimed his rightful place as Lord of me, unraveling years and years of my own effort to replace him (primarily done out of spite after my mother passed away). So I consider myself quite fortunate that I got to hear Keller preach every Sunday during the crescendo of God’s redemptive work in my life. Anyway, I digress.

Keller has tremendous insight into the truths of the Kingdom of God and Jesus’s redemptive work in the world. And he has a remarkable ability to speak those truths in a away that clears away a lot of the clutter (be it our own baggage or the religiosity of many parts of the church) creating a clear path from your eyes (for his books) or your ears (for his preaching) into your brain and deep into your heart.

Counterfeit Gods is no different. In it Keller tackles the subject of idolatry – the tendency of the human heart to “take good things… and turn them into ultimate things.”

Why idolatry is a problem.

According to Keller (well, according to Jesus, the Word of God, and revealed to us through the Scriptures), humans were made to worship. We are designed to reflect and be filled with God’s glory. (Simply stated) that is the point of creation.

Because of sin, we chose to exult ourselves to the supreme position that is God’s and thus are separated from God’s glory and love. However, our nature has not changed, we still need to worship. It is how we are.

Separated from God, our heart establishes idols, focusing its worship on something, be it a career or relationships or money or approval. We all worship something. And our blind pursuit of these “false gods” draws us farther and farther from God’s presence, opening us up to more and more sin.

Only God’s love can truly satisfy our heart’s desires, can truly fill us. Everything else ultimately leaves us empty (and in the process, further remove us from God’s love). This is idolatry.

What to expect from the book

In the first five chapters, Keller describes some of the most prevalent idols in today’s culture: Love, Money, Success, and Power. In each chapter, he provides current examples and shows how different people in the Bible struggled greatly with these idols. He ends each chapter pointing out that these Bible stories are stories of redemption from idol worship, that God’s grace and mercy is the only thing that can break the power these idols have over us. The exclamation point of each chapter is that God’s grace and mercy have been manifested in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, alluding to the hope that he represents for the reader’s struggle with their own idols.

Starting at chapter six, Keller turns his attention to applying our new awareness of the dangers of idolatry. He then proceeds to address how to identify your personal idols and how faith in Jesus will transform your heart, freeing you from the bonds of slavery.

Implications for a Kingdom Strategist

Idolatry is a force that affects every person. Personally, we must be on guard because we are susceptible to this tendency in our own lives. Even though we, as Kingdom Strategists, are striving to serve God, our hearts are still idolatrous. Counterfeit Gods is helpful to draw our attention to the areas of our lives that are most susceptible to idolatry and to help us to constantly focus on the cross of Jesus Christ, which sets u free.

In our work as Kingdom Strategists it is beneficial to think about the challenges we’re working to overcome in terms of idolatry. Thinking about the idols in peoples’ lives can help shine light on their motivation. All of which make us better at anticipating challenges and outcomes from our efforts. It also helps to orient our solutions to the underlying problems of the heart which will increase the effectiveness of the solutions we develop.

I highly recommend Counterfeit Gods (or any of Keller’s other works). If you’re interested you can purchase the book here.

…Just so you know, all the links are affliiate links. So if you click them and purchase the book, I’ll get paid… like $0.04.