You have undoubtedly heard of the goal side of that at least. A simple definition is to decide what you want out of life and devise strategies to achieve or acquire said things. Most motivational speakers center their programs around this idea. The way they tell it, it's a virtue, and it's the only way to live. However, it's not inherently virtuous to be goal-oriented, they are only as good as their goals after all. If their goals happen to be shallow, selfish, and superficial you would be hard-pressed to call them righteous. Such self-centered people can have real tunnel vision with their goals and can end up hurting and betraying the people in their lives. To them, it's just collateral damage, at least until it comes back to haunt them, which it often does. People with natural tendencies of being goal-oriented can also be very impatient as well, and just can't sit and wait when it's needed. They can have an inexplicable desire to force things to happen and can end up spoiling their efforts when delicacy is required. Especially when people are involved, and those people happen to be more avoidance-oriented. They will not respond well to being pushed on.
Then there is the flip side of it; the avoidance oriented. As obscure a term as it may be, it’s actually rather common, just nobody is trying to sell self-help health books based around it. The avoidance oriented identify the things that they don't want to experience in life and devise strategies to avoid them. Again, there isn't anything inherently right or wrong about this tendency. It's just a different way to approach life. There is nothing wrong with avoiding the consequences of the sinful nature of the flesh after all. Yet, sometimes they end up avoiding way too much and miss out on many positive things. They often never find or live out their purpose in the kingdom of God; as a result. These can be the unfaithful servants that bury their proverbial talent in the ground. (Matthew 25:14-30) Generally, such people are more sensitive than the goal-oriented, especially when it comes to external stimuli.
But remember, it's a spectrum; we are all capable of both sides of it. We just tend to favor one side of it more than the other. The reason I bring it up is that the details in how you live this out can be very revealing about yourself. This can give us insight into where our wholeness has gone askew, where we really seek it from, as well as reveal why we are failing in true holiness. For example, when a highly goal-oriented person is actively avoiding a very specific thing, it's a strong indicator of where their brokenness lies. We can even find ourselves with one foot on both sides of the line where our lack of wholeness is concerned. We especially see this in our relationships. We desire connection, but we also want to avoid the parasitic users who have betrayed us before. So when we do venture into a new relationship, we can end up projecting fears upon people who haven't even earned our distrust yet, and judge them by what other people have done. Trying to control relationships this way will sabotage our goals before they even have a chance to take root. Not that we should look at people as goals.
In short, as disciples of Christ, we need to always be evaluating our goals, or lack thereof, and make sure that they are in God's will and holy. When I say holy, I mean more than just sinless perfection. As Luke 11:24-26 reveals, removing something bad from our life, and not replacing it with something good can leave a void, leaving us vulnerable to backsliding. Or as Galatians 5:16-18 reveals, the best way to counter what we shouldn't do is to focus on doing what we should do. So this post comes back to the same thing that so many others have. To focus on that one dimension of holiness, and forsake the others is to set ourselves up for failure. Every side of holiness helps to support the others.
The Visual PARABLEist
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