I remember sitting in the back of my mom’s Volvo station wagon when I first realized that all rock ‘n roll bands were not created equal. On the bottom tier were the one-hit wonders, the “My Sharonas” and “Spirit in the Skies.” Then, there were the steady constants like The Guess Who who delivered a number of solid of hits. The third tier were those so prolific you wondered how so many songs could come from one source (The Rolling Stones, Creedence Clearwater Revival). At the top of the echelons stood the ultimate singularity: The Beatles.
If God was a sower scattering seeds of inspiration, it was as if the bottom of the seedbag had fallen out right over John, Paul, George, and, by God’s grace, even Ringo. Ever since the Fab Four burst onto the scene, we have been trying to make sense of their genius.
Talent is one of the mysterious coincidences of life. It functions in a completely different realm than, say, a skill like computer programming. Even non-Christians will call talent something that is “God-given.” The writer Fran Lebowitz once said, “Talent is randomly distributed throughout the world. You cannot buy it, you cannot learn it, you cannot inherit it. It can come up anywhere. People are looking for explanations for success other than talent because it’s infuriating.” Lebowitz hits a nerve by pointing out the major controversy about talent: its lack of fairness.
As a culture, we often insist that hard work is the key to success because it suggests a sense of fairness. Fifteen years ago, Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers (which sold over a million copies) introduced the “10,000 hour-rule,” which was his theory that famous success stories like The Beatles were not simply a matter of giftedness, but sheer determination. The real reason for the band’s success, he argued, was due to their four years in Hamburg, Germany, where, in dark and mostly empty nightclubs, they played well over a thousand concerts.
People loved the 10,000 hour-rule. It was empowering to think that success was available to anyone who was willing to put in the time and effort. If time was money, success was something that could be purchased or earned.
Throughout the Bible, however, we find that God is not interested in the payment economy, but in the gift economy. The Apostle Paul tells the Corinthians that every spiritual gift is “empowered by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.” In other words, God’s approach to giftedness has more to do with divine volition than it does with work ethic or drive or discipline or any other measure of fittingness and worth. Every person’s unique ability, be it wisdom or discernment or knowledge or even faith is given, not earned.
To be clear, life is a challenge and most of us have to work hard just to stay afloat. And yet, there are areas in our lives where things come a little more naturally. You may be a gifted listener, for instance, who can listen to someone attentively without interjecting your own experience. Or maybe you are one of the few who doesn’t take themselves too seriously and can help the rest of us lighten up. Chances are, you’re not even conscious of your ability — which is often the beauty of it. These are the places of spiritual giftedness, where God is actually providing you with the means to love people.
A few years ago, in an article for Vox, Brian Resnick announced that the 10,000 hour-rule had been debunked. Two different studies — one with violinists and one with baseball hitters — confirmed that, while practice accounts for some level of success, it’s not the key factor (I happen to know a handful of guys who have logged 10,000 hours on the guitar and are still no George Harrison). Practice, it turns out, is not guaranteed to make perfect. And yet, the book Outliers is guaranteed to always be popular because we live in a society that insists we can make it if we try, that, with enough foresight and determination, our lives can turn out exactly how we want them to.
If practice doesn’t make perfect, why are we working so hard? If mastery is beyond our control, all that is left to do is simply to enjoy those 10,000 hours. For Resnick, the debunking of the 10,000 hour-rule was a profound relief. All along, its implied rule was that “if we fail to achieve greatness, it’s our own damn fault.” Resnick continues, “To this day, I am a slow, clumsy hiker. But I love being outdoors. I’m an okay painter. But it’s just nice sometimes to get out a canvas and engage the nonverbal parts of my brain. I find when I free myself from the expectation that I can be great, I can start having fun … I wish I’d heard more of this growing up.” I’m sure many of us can relate.
The 10,000 hour myth promises a world of perfect fairness, where willpower alone can achieve whatever one desires. That failure is just a setback on the upward ascent toward whatever you manifest for yourself. That life is a talent show and that you can eventually be perfected with enough time. The myth assures us that we are the author of our own stories, blank pages of infinite potential limited only by your imagination.
In the story of our lives, our name may appear on the dust-jacket in large letters next to our picture, but we are not its author. The story is indeed ours, but the plot has been ghost-written by Another. This ghost-writer is, to borrow a phrase from J.R. Moehringer, “inherent and nowhere; vital and invisible,” an author whose signature is hidden on every page. For whatever gifts the author has given along the way, the end of our stories is the one thing we all need: undeserved love that never dies.
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[…] and countless hours of practice cannot keep us from the embarrassment of losing. Sam Bush, in his recent piece for Mockingbird, brilliantly wrote, “If practice doesn’t make perfect, why are we working […]
Sam – so good. Practicing just for the fun/joy of it – what a gift. Thanks!!!