Self-Clarity and the Need for Competence
By Kyle Mallard
Have you ever agreed to a job or task you weren't qualified to do? Whether it was your blind optimism, blatant pride, or lack of self-awareness, it likely ended in failure. How did that experience make you feel? Maybe you felt fear about future consequences, guilt for doing the job poorly, or shame for pretending to be something you're not. It is also likely that this experience resulted in the hurt and disappointment of others. The experience and feelings I just described demonstrate why we must have self-clarity in our pursuit of competence. At our core, competence is something we all long for. Even as I write this blog, I wish I felt more competent in my ability to write. I want to know and believe that I can communicate clearly (and succinctly) enough to share something that’s actually meaningful to those who might read it. Whether you are a pastor, doctor, lawyer, therapist, architect, teacher, student, mother, or father; I would guess that you too long for the competence to fulfill these roles with excellence. At some point or another we all deal with insecurities about our own abilities to carry out our responsibilities in our personal, social, and work lives. If you haven’t experienced the fear, guilt, and shame that comes with incompetency, you might be lacking self-clarity.
Competence as a personal need is the result of living into our giftings and accepting our limitations. As we live with true competency, we get to witness our vocational and relational impact. Why might we need competence in our lives? Because God declared it good for us to be gifted and limited creatures who are capable of cultivating truth, beauty, and goodness in His world. This is what it means to be made in the image of God. In Genesis 1 creation was good, but not static, complete, or unchanging. We were uniquely designed to join God in his work and were given the capacity to do so with excellence. We were made to be competent, capable, and simultaneously limited in the ways we carry out this cultural mandate. What an honor it is to partake in this work with God and our fellow image bearers. Take a moment to pause and reflect on the partnership that God has created you for. How does that reality make you feel? What might it look and feel like for you to live competently and limited in your day-to-day life?
We all long to live in this way, but at times the fulfilling life of competency that God designed us for feels just out of reach. Why? because Satan always tries to destroy what God has put together. In a sinful world we can try to fulfill our need for competence without truly having to be competent. A counterfeit exchange takes place. We trade the limiting yet fulfilling for a fleeting reward rooted in a lie. We try to shortcut the slow cultivation of our giftings while ignoring our limitations to try and get the fulfillment of competence without the work and humility it takes to truly be competent. Ironically enough, a healthy pursuit of competence in life begins with the self-clarity to see our limitations and the humility to accept them. When we lack self-clarity, we wind up in places that superficially fulfill our need for competence, while internally we wither away, desecrating the spaces we touch with our pseudo-competence. Without self-clarity and humility, we find ourselves in places, jobs, and relational circumstances that leave others wounded. This happens because we desire the accolades associated with competence beyond our own limitations. We lie to ourselves and others instead of accepting the goodness and potential pain of an honest evaluation of ourselves. To keep up a façade of competence we self-deceive or willingly choose to fake it till we make it. Thankfully, God invites us into a better way. A safe place in his presence to honestly admit our vulnerabilities, own our limitations, affirm our giftings, and live in competence.
God in Christ invites us into a journey of grace-based transformation through faith in his Son. We get to partner with his Spirit to put back together what Satan and sin have torn apart. In Christ the wall of our pride and self-preservation strategies can come crumbling down as we experience what it’s like to be fully known and fully loved in Christ. This transformational journey always includes self-clarity in service of cultivation, connection, and communion. I need to see and own my stuff in the safety of Christ because whatever I disown winds up controlling me at the expense of myself and others. Thus, self-clarity as it relates to competency is crucial for personal maturity, relational vitality, spiritual integrity, and vocational calling. So, what should we do in order to healthily fulfill our need for competence? We must pursue self-clarity in the presence of Christ and His community. We need to discover our giftings, vulnerabilities, and limitations, knowing that God through his people will guide us in truth and keep us safe in his love.
As you begin to see how you have lived beyond your giftings and unaware of your limitations, you might be feeling the guilt and shame of past mistakes, or possibly the fear of future failure. What’s important is that we listen to these feelings and experience them as a gift from God. If we listen, they will point us towards full living. Think about it this way: What might it look like to let the guilt of past mistakes drive you towards ownership of them and reconciliation with those you’ve hurt? What might it look like to let the shame of living as someone you're not lead you to humility, honesty, and freedom from self-contempt? What might it look like to let the fear of future failure lead you towards wisdom regarding your giftings and limitations? When we ignore these feelings, we live in their impaired states resulting in pride, self-hatred, and constant anxiety. I want to encourage you to let these feelings take you towards the abundant life of Christ, which is marked by his grace, love, and peace. As you experience and listen to these feelings, I want to challenge you to do two things: look to Christ and live in His community. These two things will help you love your gifting and listen to your limits. First look to Christ and abide in his love. Believe the grace of God for you and be grateful for the ways he gifted and uniquely created you. Despite your flaws, he receives you with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control, thus empowering you to do the same. There’s nothing to prove, and nothing to lose for those who are in Christ. Finally, live and be loved in community. You can only get so far on the journey towards self-clarity by yourself. Ironically enough, we need wise others to see what we sometimes don’t see in ourselves (both good and bad). We all have blind-spots, and we need a Spirit-filled community to help gently remind us of our limitations and affirm us in our giftings.
My hope is that you have seen your need for self-clarity in your pursuit of competence, and that you may do so while looking to Christ and living in His community.