This Is Not That: The Problem

The other night, Eli—my eight-year-old—was working on doing a backflip.

Now, Eli is a sharp kid. Funny. Creative. Curious. He’ll lose himself in drawing, or building Lego contraptions, or narrating elaborate stories about space explorers and pirate ships.

But when it comes to backflips? If he doesn’t get something right away, the wheels come off.

That night it was acrobatics. He sat there with “how-to” videos, gripping the couch so tight his knuckles went white. His whole body tense, shoulders hunched, like the tutorial itself was against him.

“Why can’t I do this?” he groaned. “Other kids can do this. Why not me?”

I did the classic parent move—jump in with reassurance. “Buddy, you’re fine. Other 8 year old kids are learning to do this like you, and they’re not stressing over being perfect at it.”

But he didn’t buy it.

He turned to me, eyes wide and glassy, and fired back: “But I’m not like other eight-year-olds, dad. How can I possibly be something I’m not?”

And I just sat there, stunned. Because that’s not a kid whining about his struggle to do something. That’s a kid articulating what most adults feel but don’t dare say out loud.

That ache of I’m behind. I’m different. I don’t measure up.

So I scrambled. Repeated the line again, softer this time: “No one’s perfect.”

And Eli—sweet Eli—let out this long sigh. The kind of sigh you’d expect from someone decades older. He said, almost to himself, “I guess I just need to keep reminding myself that no one is perfect.”

And in that moment I realized something: that repeated line…was my second failure of the night.

Because the truth isn’t “no one is perfect.”
The truth is: no one was ever supposed to be.

Do you see the difference?

One says, There’s a standard of perfection, and you’re failing at it—but don’t worry, everyone else is failing too.

The other says, There was never a standard of perfection to begin with. You weren’t built for that game. You were built for something else entirely.

Jesus never once made perfection the platform. He never stood in front of a crowd and said, “You know what your problem is? You’re not flawless enough.”

That’s not the story He told.
That’s the system we built out of our religious anxiety.
And that’s the ladder we’ve been climbing ever since the Garden with foolish statements like “nobody is perfect.”

But here’s the thing about solving problems:

If you get the problem wrong, you’ll get the solution wrong too. And if you keep applying the wrong solution to the wrong problem? You don’t fix anything. You just stack more problems on top of problems on top of problems.

Like taking pain meds for a chronic condition caused by bad habits. It numbs for a bit. Until it doesn’t.

And so we live with this low-grade hum under everything—pressure, shame, anxiety.

Sometimes it sounds like: be more, do more, know more. Other times it masquerades as spiritual growth or “discipleship.” But it’s all the same hum.

And when life gets quiet? That hum gets loud.

So we either collapse into a kind of madness we call “happiness”…
or chase the next fix.
The next self-help plan.
The next podcast.
The next church program.
The next book.

But that’s because, like Adam and Eve, we bought a delusional idea about who God is, and have experienced the present hell of our distrust of Him.

Here’s what we’ve missed.

At the center of reality isn’t a throne demanding performance. It isn’t a system requiring obedience. It’s a table.

A Father, Son, and Spirit—laughing, loving, delighting in one another.
A friendship. Not a hierarchy. Not a program.

That’s the Trinity we find in Gensis. And it’s not just a doctrine to memorize. It’s your origin story.

We were created in the image of this God—not to climb ladders, not to become flawless, but to share in what they already share. To live in the freedom found in dependence on Him.

But that’s not the story we were handed, is it?

Instead of a table, we were given a ladder.
Instead of presence, we were told to perform.
Instead of trust, we were told to chase knowledge—
as if knowing enough or controlling enough would finally make us “okay.”

It’s the oldest lie in the Book. Literally.

In Genesis 3 we find two trees. One gave life. The other? Knowledge.

And notice—the one that led to our demise wasn’t called the Tree of Rebellion. It was the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

And just like Adam and Eve, we all bought the lie. We imagined God as someone to appease. That delusion gave birth to distrust—what Paul defines as sin in Romans 14:23. That distrust gave birth to disobedience to everything God declared good for us. And that disobedience led to the death God warned of—making us strangers to the very life we were created for.

Do you see it? The real problem wasn’t badness.
It was blindness to who God really is.

And here’s why that matters: When we choose control we don’t have, we see ourselves, and the world, as it is not. Not because we’re dumb. But because we’re starving, and vulnerable. Which is what makes us susceptible to the plausible lies peddled by insecure people trying to prove they matter.

But according to the One who made us, who holds us, who sustains us (Col 1:15-20): You already belong.

That’s not a fairy tale. It’s the one truth that makes every other truth…true.

Forget it—or reject it—and you end up with the problem of separation from a loving God, and solutions that never lead to freedom. Not because they aren’t sincere, but because they hang freedom on our doing.

Enter the Gospel

What the Bible calls “Good News” isn’t a new religious option. It’s not a strategy for better living. It’s an announcement.

God isn’t your manager.
Or your moral coach.
He’s a gracious Father.
A good one.

And His grace? It’s so free it feels immoral.

But what else could it be? Anything less is just another exhausting game where we try to achieve a belonging that was never up for negotiation.

God isn’t playing that game.

Because He alone is the covenant-maker and covenant-keeper. And Jesus? He came to help us se the God we’ve been conditioned to miss.

Contrary to everything religion pushes, He didn’t come to help you win. He came to end the game.

So here’s the scandal:
If we think our problem—and everyone else’s—is disobedience to God, then Jesus becomes irrelevant to our daily struggle to do what we know is right.

But if we start with Jesus as the solution for us all, we discover the real problem was never our weakness, lack of knowledge, or failed performance. It was our delusional idea of the God who holds us.

Turns out, we didn’t need a better program. We needed a God to come to us a Person—crucified and risen. (Romans 5:10; Galatians 2:20)

No one expected a Savior who would die at the hands of the religion we wanted more than God—not so He could finally love us, but to show us He always had. (John 19:30; Romans 5:8; 1 John 4:8)

And no one expected the Messiah’s resurrection—let alone that He’d return with the scandalous announcement that His resurrection wasn’t just His. (Rom 6:5; Col 3:1-4)

It was ours. (Col 1:20; Gal 2:20)
The world’s.
All along.

In Him, God and humanity—right now—are more united than we’ve ever dared to imagine.

In John 14:20, Jesus didn’t say we can become one with Him if we believe. He said, “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” Union is a reality to wake up to, not a reward to achieve.

In Acts 17:28, Paul wasn’t offering the Athenians a way back to God if they believed correctly. He told them the “unknown God” they longed for was already the One “in whom we live and move and have our being.”

And to make sure the point wasn’t lost, Paul went on to say there is “one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph 4:6). Union isn’t reserved for the spiritual elite; it’s the reality of everyone—because in Christ, God has already made peace and holds all things together (Col 1:20).

And that changes everything.

So the invitation today is simple.

Stop solving the wrong problem. Stop telling yourself and others that “no one is perfect.”

And remember instead: no one was ever supposed to be.

Because at the center of everything isn’t a ladder to climb. It’s the lark of grace. A table. Already set. And your seat has always been there in Jesus.

As you take that in, don’t miss what it means for the people around you too. Every neighbor, every stranger, every friend you share life with—their seat is already set beside yours. That’s the Church Jesus imagined: a feast of grace where we discover together what’s already true.