Can I tell you something embarrassing? …I’ve been working up to this.

When I was a super-young mom, I was thinking about writing a novel. (I have a different one on my hard drive that will likely never see the light of day.)

But initially I thought maybe one character would be a great mom. Because if people saw a great example, that would help a lot. Who knows the great families that could result?

Anyone else see the vast horde of problems with not only the idea, but me?

Fast forward several years, to me standing by my gate in Africa–the only place on our property that got cell signal, other than shimmying up our water tower. I was relaying to a friend through the phone how I’d blown it with my kids.

“I mean,” she said, “parenting’s not about our perfection, right? Just that our whole family needs Jesus.”

Let’s play “spot the poser”

As a firstborn, somehow the idea of “being a great example” lodged inside me deeper and more potently than it should. (There are more confessions to be had in “The Pitfalls of Being a Good Example“.)

First of all, I mistakenly thought that all people need to know are the right ways to go, and they’ll go.

Yeah. Forehead-smack emoji.

But secondly, I realized how a lot of the ways I’d become a “good example” were shellacking over my own brokenness than really dealing with the deep sin and distance from God in my heart–or even my own emotions.

Perfect kids–and the problem with our lives being “on display” for Jesus

Yesterday I interviewed a man who expressed his dislike for the idea of Christian marriages being “on display” for the world, to give them a picture of God.

I mean, yes. But no.

Yes, our marriages grant the world an intimate view of who God is; Ephesians 5 talks about how it plays out God’s sacrificial love that makes us beautiful, how we submit to one another out of our worship for him.

And even sex, Dr. Juli Slattery points out, shows God’s covenant love to our holistic selves in four crucial ways: Faithfulness. Intimate knowing. Sacrificial love. Passionate celebration.

But the idea of marriage “on display” isn’t some shiny, sugary version that fakes it till it makes it. 

Part of the potentially shocking wow-factor in marriage is the forgiveness, the perseverance through the ugly and sore, the patience and the need to reach toward each other over mountains of humanness.

My friend realized the way he pushed past uncomfortable, negative emotions–like anger, sadness, fear–actually drove him farther from God. It drove him to unhealthy eating habits and sexual proclivities, and to hiding from others.

His fakeness for the sake of the outside made him a worse Christian on the inside.

What we get wrong about our “testimony”

People talked a lot when I was a kid about your “testimony” or your “witness.” It’s legitimate, scripturally-speaking.

I mean, Jesus himself tells us, “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).

And Peter, too, writes, “Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation” (1 Peter 2:12).

The idea of “walk[ing] in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called” (Ephesians 4:1) is doused all over the Bible.

So are we called to holiness? Yes.

Is it partly to show the world Jesus? You bet.

But sometimes, I was a lot better at showing the world what would look good rather than my need for Jesus, and the way he was changing my brokenness. 

Of course, there were people in the Bible who did that, too!

They were called the Pharisees.

Spoiler: The world can find squeaky-clean moralism straight-up suspicious.

…Because it is, people.

A lot of people who would think themselves moral don’t know how to interact with the broken, the washed-up, the addicted, the promiscuous. (Jesus did.)

And we’re typically not as moral as we think we are.

We’re arrogant and (we think) self-saving. We’re top-notch parents and top-shelf spouses with picture-perfect kids, and we certainly don’t need help. Much less a therapist. We are the helpers, the blessed, the grateful-we’re-not-like-them.

Why a broken world needs way more than perfect kids

I historically shoved the cart before the proverbial horse, thinking what people saw mattered more than what Jesus was doing inside of me. I even excelled at a curated imperfection. And at times, I’ve wanted that for my kids.

But the world needs my perfection, or my perfect kids, a lot less than it needs Jesus.

And more than simply moral, perfect kids, it’s compelled by kids who know how to travel through people’s brokenness with them.

Can my kids empathize? Can they listen well? Are they full of an irresistible, genuine humility?

God doesn’t just save me or my kids so we’ll do the right thing–as if we’re of much better use that way. If all he needed were a bunch of good examples, there might have been more efficient, successful ways…?

God saves us to restore him to himself, to reconcile a lost relationship.

And that friends, is what a bleeding world needs a lot more than someone who crosses over to the other side of the road to avoid soiling themselves by “those people.”

Yes, our kids’ example and our holiness matter. They don’t need to be swan-diving into the dung heap with everyone else.

But compassion–and the ability to witness every day our collective, equalizing need for Jesus?

Now that’s eye-catching.

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The Pitfalls of Being a “Good Example”