Posted on by Abe Austin

Faulty Overcorrection

I believe that societies generally strive to align with truth and reality, but being mortal, we inevitably get some of it wrong. It takes time, but eventually we do catch on to these errors, but unfortunately it is then our tendency to overcorrect in the other direction, and another generation goes by before we realize it. Letting go of the last generation’s mistakes is so pleasant, that we do not recognize the new harm we’re causing until we’ve already passed it on to the next generation.

I see this very keenly with my own millennial generation, which recognized the folly of mandatory morality, but which overcorrected into licentiousness. Mandatory morality can also be described as “perfectionism.” It was the pattern that many millennials were raised with, where we were given this notion that we had to do all of the good things. We had to go to church. We had to get married and have children. We had to grow up and act responsible. And yes, all of these are objectively good things, the very things that every society should have as its top priorities. The problem, though, was that “had” that came with them.

Millennials hated that had. We balked at the notion that our agency was being stripped from us, and we were hellbent on proving that we didn’t have to do anything that we didn’t want to. And prove it we did, by abandoning all the best things of society. We became atheists, we deconstructed the nuclear family, we refused to leave our adolescence. All to prove a point to the prior generation, we ruined our own sense of purpose and happiness, and demanded that the next generation should also be raised with no duties or obligations.

It would have been a great sign of wisdom and nuance, if we could have instead corrected the error while still preserving everything else that was good. I do wish that millennials had said, “you’re wrong, we don’t have to do the good things, but we do choose to.”

Of course, it’s not as if my generation’s story is over. Perhaps we went astray, but we may still have time to get wiser and set things right.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Perfectionism vs Shamelessness

The world today tells us to be shameless. It insists that we are always good, and that any flaw does not condemn us, but that it is actually a worthy part of our own, unique, perfection. The world today thinks that it rejects yesterday’s perfectionism, but it is just as obsessed with being flawless. Not by purging our sins, but by denying their very existence.

Shamelessness is very seductive, but it only soothes those that are able to stay in denial. Once a person is woken up to the reality of their own guilt, and are seared in their hearts by it, they are beyond the power of false comforts. Once we have truly seen our own unworthiness, our own deserving of hell, it doesn’t help to just pretend it isn’t there.

The message of the gospel, however, is neither perfectionism nor shamelessness. It does not call us to live in our shame, but neither does it call on us to repress it. The message of the gospel is based around fully acknowledging that we are flawed, and that it is serious, and that it does damn us…but also that we are loved by God anyway and He offers His life to cover us. Only the gospel message allows us to both fully embrace our guilt and fully embrace God’s grace.