Good Enough

I'm a person who tries to pursue excellence in everything I do. It's a personal value, and a value of most of the organizations I've ever been a part of.

On its face, there's nothing wrong with valuing excellence. We usually talk about how we serve a God of excellence and therefore strive to pursue excellence in everything we do out of a response to him. Those are right sentiments, but sentiments that can pretty quickly become perverted in the hands of a perfectionist person who needs a way to justify his obsessiveness.

Sometimes I think we could honor God by valuing "good enough" as much as they value excellence.

When the pursuit of excellence in one area causes other important areas to be neglected, that doesn't honor God.

When the pursuit of excellence causes us to denigrate the gifts of others because they aren't as "good" as ours, excellence doesn't honor God.

When "excellence" is a code word for "control" and leads us to value programs and production above people, excellence isn't necessarily the best thing we can pursue.

Excellence is important, don't get me wrong. But "good enough" might be good enough when it comes to truly honoring God.