The Pursuit of Significance
Samuel Ho looks back at the time he spent at architecture school pursuing significance and reminds us that we are justified in Christ alone.
As I reflected on my time back in architecture school, I asked myself: "What made it so hard?" I thought about the long hours and workload. Fair enough, there really were so many deliverables every week—drawings, renders, physical models—and those took lots of time to produce. But as I thought further, I realised that those were not actually what made it so hard. Underlying all that, what drove me was… a pursuit of significance.
Let me explain.
What really made architecture school hard for me was not the work in itself but how I felt as I did the work. I would be pulling all-nighters, trying to put together something decent to show the next day, looking at my progress, panicking, and looking up to my friends, shaking my head and going: “Die already…”. Days were filled with anxiety, and panic, and well, shame. And for me, it boiled down to the fact that, at the end of the day, I wanted to look good in front of others. I wanted to produce something that would get praise from the professors, my peers, or even better, the invited guests. Or at least I didn’t want to look bad in front of anyone. I wanted to have significance… I wanted to know that I was okay.
My experience, I think, reflects the way we try to find significance, to know we’re okay—by seeking the approval of others. You might not experience it exactly the same way I do but is your mood often significantly affected by what others say about/to you? Do you get anxious and fearful about your results on… anything? School grades? Your performance appraisal at work? Even your driving test, maybe? How about what others think about your kids?
Dane Ortlund writes in his book Deeper,
What we all tend to do is walk through life amassing a sense of who we are as an aggregate of what we think everyone else thinks of us. We walk along, building a sense of self through all the feedback pinging back at us. We don’t even realize we’re doing it. And when others are critical, or snub us, or ignore us, or ridicule us, that builds our sense of who we are. It inevitably shapes us.
This is what happened to Peter, isn’t it? Paul writes in Galatians 2:11-13,
But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.
I’m sure we can relate to what Peter must’ve felt in that moment—the need for the approval of others and the fear of losing it. But it was this that caused him to walk out of step with the truth of the gospel, such that Paul opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. This stands in contrast to Paul who writes in Galatians 1:10, “For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.” Ortlund helpfully points out what had happened to Peter, and what happens to me: “Peter had allowed the approval of people to erode his grasp of the approval that the gospel gives and the settled status that justification provides.”
In architecture school, we used to sometimes call the day of final review “judgement day”, when we bring our work in front of the panel for review. We know the expectations, and we know the consequences of not meeting the expectations. The few weeks leading up to that was usually the pinnacle of anxiety, filled with tears, meltdowns, a panic attack or two—haunted by the fear of the disapproval of others.
Well, the Bible tells us that, with God, there is a real judgement day, where we bring our lives and whatever we’ve done before Him for review. We know the expectations of this final review with God—absolute perfection. And we know the infinitely bigger consequences of not meeting the expectations—eternal damnation. How should I feel going into this final review? Well, to be honest, more doomed than any final review I’ve ever been to in my entire life. Romans 3:23 says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”.
But that’s why Romans 3:24 is so glorious—“and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus”!
To continue with the architecture school analogy—it’s like I worked the whole year but my work was so bad that I knew I was going to fail my master's, but on the final review day, the best student of my batch—who happened to be an absolute prodigy in architecture and the best that Singapore has ever seen—came up to me and said: “Here, take my project, take this work of perfection that I’ve worked all year for, take it and present it. I’ll take yours.” That’s like what Jesus came to do—but better! Jesus was the only one ever to live an absolutely perfect life without sin, but by dying, he took our place to face the consequences of all our failure on our behalf. And the Bible tells us that when we believe in what Jesus did for us, when we trust in that, God looks at us and sees Jesus’ perfect work instead of our utter failure. And He gives us the best review we could ever get—a perfect review. We are justified. And this “according to the will of God the Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.” (Gal 1:5)
This is the gospel that I need to constantly remind myself of. I need to do that because I’m so prone to turning away from it. I am prone to turning aside and looking to my results, my work, my abilities, my achievements, my appearance, my everything else but Jesus, to be justified, to feel settled in my heart, to feel okay—very honestly, even in writing this article. Ortlund writes,
…at conversion we walk out of the courtroom, but throughout our lives of discipleship we suffer from gospel amnesia and keep walking back in… We are freed, but we find subtle ways of returning to the prison of self-established standing before God in the divine courtroom…(but)…as the gospel becomes real to us, the need for human approval loses its vice-like grip on our hearts, because we’re no longer putting our heads down on our pillows at night medicating our sense of worth with human approval. The doctrine of justification frees us not only from the judgment of God in the future but also from the judgment of people in the present.
Let’s not throw away the glorious freedom we have in the gospel. It is only in the gospel that the judgement comes before the performance. Otherwise, the performance leads to the judgement. Which means everyday we’d always be trying to achieve that approval, and we never actually know if we will ever make it.
But we in Christ are justified. We are free.
I’ve probably quoted Ortlund one too many times but here's one last time,
But what if we went into the interview, the conversation, the classroom, the game, already okay? Already justified. Not just theologically but emotionally. Not just in our mind but in our gut. We would be world shakers.