This video from the Mormon Channel is currently making the rounds on social media. It depicts a mother going through a day of frustrations, failing to accomplish the items on her to-do list, failing to meet other people’s expectations, being ignored and/or taken for granted, and ultimately having to cancel her own plans (which she had clearly been looking forward to all day)because of the tornado of things that got in her way. At the end, crying and hopeless, she hears her son pray his goodnight prayers, and suddenly she realizes all the good she actually did that she didn’t realize she had done, because she had been focused on what she was unable to do.
“You Never Know” is clearly intended to encourage and give hope to mothers (and others!) who feel like they just are never able to measure up, to do everything they are supposed to do and still take care of themselves. The message is, “hey now, don’t get so discouraged, you did better than you thought you did!”
Most of the criticism I’ve seen focuses on the absurdity of the specifics (that project really won the science fair?), the parenting problems (making your kid a second meal after they reject the first), the gender issues (why are there apparently no able men anywhere?), the value judgments about life choices (the career-oriented and accordingly selfish sister) and the terrible modeling of interpersonal relationships (COME ON WOMAN, LEARN TO SAY NO TO SAVE YOUR SANITY).
In other words, the critics say, the problem is not the concept, but the execution. But the thing is, the problem is definitely the concept, and it’s a big problem.
Even looked at as charitably as possible, the message of this video is still firmly built on the premise that your value is based on your merits. Whether its the things you know you do or the things “you never know” that you do, at the end of the day, the question is still, what did you do? Folks, that’s what we call the Bad News. Spoiler alert: you will never do enough. You will always fail. You will never measure up, ever. Even if you add in all the good you do that “you never know,” you still fall miserably, wretchedly, abysmally short.
But the Good News is that Jesus Christ did enough, Jesus Christ never fails, and if you will put your trust completely in him and nothing else, He offers grace to you that is truly amazing: in him, you have also done enough. In Jesus Christ, you have already succeeded.
You don’t deserve God’s grace. You could never deserve God’s grace. And that’s precisely what makes it grace: you have failed, and God is under absolutely no obligation to do anything other than to subject you to his unbearable wrath, but even so, God gives eternal life to those who believe. Not because they earn it or deserve it, but because Jesus Christ earned it. Jesus paid it all.
That’s the good news: at the end of the day, the answer is that Jesus did everything.
And that’s also why criticism based on the need to set healthy boundaries is misplaced and will fall on deaf ears. As long as someone believes that they have to earn their salvation, your plea to them to do less for their own sake is completely and utterly vain. They know perfectly well that God demands nothing less than absolute perfection and unbounded righteousness, and they know perfectly well that God demands sacrifice.
People don’t need to be told to give themselves a little break, fall a little short, and God is okay with that (even if you actually did “more than you know”). People need to be told that Jesus already did everything.