Yesterday I wrote about Panda Theory, the idea that we are loved without having to earn it. I gave the advice to “be more panda”, but today I want to explore that a little further.
Pandas are wonderfully clumsy creatures. They roll off platforms, fall out of trees, and, at least judging by the videos online, seem to get stuck in the most ridiculous situations. And yet they don’t seem particularly bothered by it. When a panda tumbles out of a tree, it doesn’t sit there questioning its life choices. It just climbs the next one. They are clumsy, but that doesn’t stop them living.
I wonder if we could learn something from that.
There’s a certain cultural instinct, especially here in England, to want to be proper. We like to know the rules. We like to do things correctly. And we definitely don’t like looking foolish. That probably isn’t uniquely English, but it does mean we often hesitate before doing something new in case we get it wrong.
Maybe “we” should really be “I”.
Even now, with plenty of experience of different styles of worship, I still feel a little hesitation when I walk into a new church or service. What are the unwritten rules? When do you stand? What if everyone else knows what they’re doing and I get it wrong?
This week in class our lecturer tried something that gently exposed this instinct. We were talking about joy in worship, particularly the idea of expressing joy through movement or dance. So she played a worship song and invited us to stand and move.
You might imagine the room erupting into joyful dancing. What actually happened was more of a polite shuffle. A bit of swaying on the spot. Nothing that might risk looking undignified. None of us danced with reckless abandon.
And it made me think about how often that instinct shows up in faith. There are things we don’t say, things we don’t do, and places we hesitate to go because we might get it wrong.
Take praying out loud, for example.
How many times have we stayed silent in a prayer meeting because we’re worried we might “pray wrong”? We worry our words won’t sound wise enough, spiritual enough, or polished enough. So instead of risking clumsy words, we say nothing at all.
But when we read the Bible, God doesn’t seem particularly concerned with polished prayers or perfect performance. I might go as far as to say the opposite is true…
Paul writes about hearing God say to him “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” God’s power doesn’t wait for us to become graceful and perfect before it works through us. Quite often it shows up right in the middle of our awkwardness.
Maybe faith sometimes looks a bit like a panda climbing a tree. A bit wobbly, a bit undignified, occasionally ending in a tumble.
But the important thing isn’t climbing perfectly. It’s climbing anyway. Perhaps part of growing in faith is learning a kind of holy clumsiness. The courage to try something new. The freedom to get it wrong. The confidence that God’s grace is bigger than our awkwardness.
Pandas fall out of trees all the time. And yet somehow they keep climbing. Maybe that’s not a bad picture of the Christian life.
The Reason for my Hope Blog 