Several years ago I was talking with a Christian friend whom I had long admired as a person of integrity and intensity. We got on the topic of parenting and that’s when she stunned me with this baffling pronouncement: “Ken, parenting is a daunting, minimally-20-year challenge, where God has appointed you—an imperfect sinner—to be the primary shaper of your child’s worth, outlook, values and beliefs. It’s such an immense and overwhelming responsibility that at times I feel completely inadequate and over-matched. But that’s when I simply tell myself that anything worth doing is worth doing poorly, and then I rededicate myself to raising our children, hopefully to bless them and to be a blessing to God and others.”

Back then I wasn’t a parent yet, so my initial reaction was to attribute this contradictory piece of advice to the mysterious realm of parenthood. But the more I chewed on this, the more I began to appreciate that this paradoxical proverb could be applied to just about anything. In fact, I am now convinced that the failure to act on this truth is one of the main reasons why many of us are afraid to try something new and unfamiliar, or why we can never seem to tap into our Creator-like inspirational reservoirs. Far too often we are stopped by the cynical voice of self-criticism.

My wife and I have been parents now since 1999, so I’ve had a front row seat as our daughter’s self-critical inner voice has been evolving. When she was almost two years old, she seemed devoid of any self-critical thoughts. Instead, she eagerly explored the world around her, taking risks, accepting failures and then tackling the same endeavor with fresh resolve and fervor. Now four, she is still quite curious and bold, but I’ve noticed her growing tendency to throw down a puzzle piece in disgust when she can’t find the perfect fit soon enough. I don’t think she’s just being impatient; she’s exhibiting the emergence of this inner voice of self-criticism.

I’m not that far from being fifty, yet I can still attest to ignoring my own inner voices that prevent me from persevering through hardships or tackling something that I don’t already know how to do. When I’m faced with any kind of household or automotive repair, a voice in my head says, “Hey, you’ve never been mechanical. Every time you’ve tried to fix something yourself, you’ve only made it worse.” Or I can be out on the golf course, hitting several horrible shots in succession, and I hear, “Give it up! Sell those sticks! You’ve never been very athletic, so you’ll never improve at golf.”

That self-critical voice was screaming full blast in my head after I accepted the assignment to be the main Bible expositor at Urbana 2000. There was the nasty voice that kept telling me I wasn’t qualified. “Who are you trying to kid? The way you teach and preach is completely inappropriate for that venue. None of your predecessors ever exegeted pop culture or told funny personal stories. If the students aren’t going to be disappointed, you can bet that the missionaries will be.”

Then there was the familiar shaming voice from my own cultural background. “You’re a nobody, dude. As soon as you walk onto that stage, everyone there is going to wonder where John Stott is. To make it even worse, all the Asian-American students will be holding their collective breath because, if you blow it, they’re all going to feel ashamed.”

I was able to share my fears with the conference director, and he gave me permission to be myself, to believe that God made me who I am, with gifts to preach and teach exactly what was needed for the first Urbana of the new millennium. If I had bailed out with some lame excuse, I would never have experienced the anointing and blessing of God’s Holy Spirit. I had a wonderful experience and, from what I’ve been told, many were blessed by the Bible teaching.

So how do you counter the pervasive voice of self-criticism? Let me share with you another illustration that explains why anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. Dan K. is a world-renowned jazz fusion performer and recording artist. He’s been a special friend for fifteen years. Our worship leaders and I approached him once to ask if he would arrange some of our favorite worship songs so that they’d sound more soulful and jazz-tinged. He first said, “Those songs you sing are rock-based, so it’s not possible to jazz them up. Jazz and soul music are blues-based.” We then asked him to compose some soulful worship songs for us to sing. That’s when he said, “Just write your own songs.” We thought we were being humble when we claimed that none of us were talented enough to write original songs, worship or otherwise. That’s why we were coming to him, a professional songwriter.

Dan shocked us with his Buddha-like response: “All of you can write songs. You just never finish the first verse of the first song you’re trying to write. Before you’ve even gotten to the end of the first stanza, you stop cold because you hate the tune and you think your first verse’s lyrics are infantile and weak. Because you never finish your first song, you never end up finding out which of the songs you’ve written have any potential. Since I’m a professional songwriter, I try to write one new song every day. I didn’t say that I write a great new song every day. I just said that I try to write one song each day. It’s often not until I’ve finished, say, twenty new songs that I’m ready to step back and listen to each one more closely. If I never finish the first song—no matter how poor a song it might turn out to be—I will never write the great song.”

As he finished, I just had to blurt out, “So, anything worth doing is worth doing poorly?” Dan agreed that it was. So you see, one of the best ways to thwart your self-critical voice is to not worry so much about doing something perfectly or not at all. You will never discover the treasures if you don’t first dig a lot of holes with nothing in them.

Ken Fong is senior pastor of Evergreen Baptist Church of L.A. in Rosemead, CA. He was the Urbana 2000 Bible expositor and loves college students.