Strength

Perfect, Great, Good

By Justin Long ⋅ July 12, 2009 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

While perusing this article about Oxford University and the Google Book Settlement, I ran across this quote from Voltaire: ‘Le mieux est l’enemi du bien’—the perfect is the enemy of the good. I was struck by how much this can tend to apply to any human endeavor, not least the sending of apostolic missionaries.

On the one hand, potential missionary candidates often seem to think missionaries must be perfect, and thus they cannot be one. They envision missionaries to be ‘super-saints’: we often read to many biographies of ‘great’ people and not enough biographies of the typical missionary. Or, we read shallow biographies of ‘greats’ instead of the deep biographies that look at the complexities of the missionary life. (Take the situation with William Carey’s wife, for example.)

On the other hand, missionary candidates and missionaries themselves can too often settle for ‘good’ (as suggested by some of Jim Collins’ work, and its many spinoffs, here). Good in this instance means, possibly, that converts are made but not in an exponentially growing way, that the church is growing but not faster than the overall growth rate of the country or even the city, that evangelism is being done but not in a way that results in significant conversions, etc.

The struggle is not to be hamstrung by an expectation of perfection which keeps us from ever getting off the mark to begin with, nor to settle for ‘good enough’ which rarely is. The solution is to understand both what your plausible promise is—and how to measure it. Because a promise is measurable, you can determine your personal ‘rate of speed’ and ‘direction’ (toward the promise, or away from it), and whether you will reach the promise in time for your deadline.

If you don’t think there’s a chance of reaching the promise to begin with, then it could be you are striving for perfection and your promise really isn’t plausible at all. On the other hand, if you think you’re not going to reach it in time, it could be you are settling for ‘good’ rather than ‘great.’ So I tell you gently, friend—it’s time to pick up the pace!

Readers who viewed this page, also viewed:

• Global Christianity = American Christianity?
• New Martyrs in Somalia: 7 killed