The Ultimate Man-Trap: The Lures Of High-Performance

The expectations of men these days are both exhilarating and soul-crushing at the same time.

"I’m grinding when you’re sleeping," tweets one prolific writer and entrepreneur.

“Wake up! No one is going to save you. No one is going to take care of your family or your retirement. No one is going to 'make things' work out for you," exhorts another.

The commitment, passion, focus, and "hustle" they display can be good characteristics for a man to develop, especially when compared to sloth, aimlessness, and passivity. However, these same attributes that typically mark one as a "high-performer" can also mask a spiritual drought and simmering dissatisfaction with life.

Because we have bought into the performance premise, detecting there's a problem in the first place is especially hard.  

That problem? Often — not always, but often — the pursuit of high-performance drains the soul.

In a show of His grace, Christ warns of this very risk: 

And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul? Matthew 16:26 (NLT)

This tension from living in a performance-driven world is not academic. It could be the most central battle we all face.  

We just don’t know it. 

The Ultimate Battle

According to Matthew 4:1-11, Satan tempted Jesus with three key lures of Performance.

The first one was Provision: 

“If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” 

Every man feels the need and pressure to “provide” — even if they have way more than enough. So they work harder and reach for ever-higher levels of influence, often in the name of providing "more."

The second lure is Protection:

If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”

Much of our Performance is just to protect what we have already. This could be status, influence, ego, or just income. Without making a fool of ourself. Without losing to a competitor. Without getting fired.

Performance, especially in these demanding jobs, is fueled by the need to protect oneself. The threats don’t just come from real-life aggressors in the workplace. They can come from within yourself, such as a fear of failure, or the ghost of the unrelentingly critical father.

The third is Position:

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”

In a high-performance role, being higher-up in the hierarchy — gaining Position so others “bow down” — may mean greater span of control, a larger budget, increased public visibility and recognition.  

These three lures of Provision, Protection, and Position are inescapable if you're living in the real world, especially one where the achievements of the successful and driven surround you and your own workplace demands performance.

On their own, Provision, Protection, and Position aren’t bad.

And that’s what makes us all so susceptible.

What do you think?