Excellence Within Reach

A couple years ago I spoke at a Christian family camp, and one night just before dinner, my wife Margie and I approached a little girl walking toward us wearing a great big medallion. I stopped her to read it.

“Wow,” I admired, “your medallion says you were in first place in your class. That’s great. What did you do?”

“Oh nothing,” she beamed, “all the kids got them.”

Ah self-esteem! Ah America!

What’s that little girl going to do when she discovers a world in which all 30 co-workers don’t get “first place” medallions at work?

We want none of our children to grow up feeling lesser than anyone in the crowd. We want them all to feel highly prized. But the real world — unlike the little girl’s school — sorts our citizens into hierarchies of worth based on their ability to perform and produce. The more creative, industrious, talented, intelligent, educated or persistent the person, the more capacity he or she has for personal advancement.

While we can try to equalize opportunities for all people, even equal opportunity cannot guarantee equal talent, equal results and equal rewards. Inevitably, the more talented, gifted and advantaged will perform better and be rewarded as more valuable.
This is inescapable, but also repugnant to our spirit of democracy. So, to compensate, our American culture has drowned out the call to excellence with deafening assertions that each of us is just as good as the next person, and deadening policies that spurn excellence in favor of minimum standards. Excellence is the No. 1 casualty in the quest for equality.

In his seminal 1961 book, Excellence: Can We Be Equal and Excellent Too?, John Gardner writes:

If a society holds conflicting views about excellence — or cannot rouse itself to the pursuit of excellence — the consequences will be felt in everything that it undertakes.

When I fly, I definitely want a jet that is being maintained and flown by a crew committed to excellence! I don’t ever want anyone to say, “Oops!”

When we buy our next package of ground beef at the store, I will be counting on meat packaging and inspection processes that stamp a “Grade A” rating only when it is earned by excellent quality control. I don’t want meat that’s been graded on a curve.
The next time I turn on a light bulb or drive my car or connect my computer to the Internet or use my concordance … I will be benefiting from the efforts of people who invented or improved these and a thousand other daily tools, only because they were committed to excellence. How foolish it would be to stall human progress just because excellence can be a stress-producing standard.

If the world expects excellence, you can bet that God expects excellence as well. No matter how mauve-colored we want to paint God to make Him feel all warm and homey to us, His prime command for us is that we love Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. This is not just a call to devotion, but to excellent devotion. His grace may be amazing, but so are His standards.

And the next time you want to worship God, bear in mind that emulation is the highest form of worship. The higher I value a person, the more I want to be just like that person. If God is excellent in all His ways, then true worship can be nothing less than pursuing excellence in all my ways.

And the next time you want to witness for God, remember that the way God witnesses about Himself is to display the excellence of His character in what He creates. Like stars and trees and birds. Excellence in creation is how God signs His name. It should also be how we sign our name if we want to bear witness to His nature and glory.
If excellence is this important, yet so under-promoted in our egalitarian society, then the church must step in and help restore the passion for excellence. But is the church also slouching in the direction of minimum standards? Has our view of grace been captured by our culture? Is it most important for people to feel good about themselves? Is this the good news — that a loving grandpa God has pinned “first-place” medallions on everyone regardless of our moral quality?

Or, isn’t this the good news: that all those who aspire to moral excellence — regardless of accident of birth, paucity of talent or degree of intelligence — can put off the “old corrupted self” and put on a new self “created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

Let’s love people enough to proclaim what they need more than medallions of self-worth: Through the work of the Holy Spirit real excellence is now within everyone’s reach.