Perfect Love Casts Out The Eleventh Check

Three checks would be professional. He does eleven.

He knows the number because he counted once, out of curiosity, and then wished he had not, because a number is harder to argue with than a feeling.

The first three are real. He finds things in those and they are worth finding. From the fourth onward he finds nothing at all, and he has never once found anything from the seventh onward in his entire working life, and he does them anyway.

He knows what they are. That is what makes it worse and also what makes it addressable. He is not checking for errors after the third. He is trying to reach a state where sending it does not feel dangerous, and that state does not arrive, and so he keeps going until he runs out of time rather than until he runs out of fear.

If you asked him what he thinks will actually happen if something is wrong, he would find the question surprisingly hard. He would say something about it being embarrassing. And then, if he were honest, he would say that the embarrassment does not seem large enough to explain a man doing eleven of anything.

Something else is being expected. He does not know what.

You may have your own eleven. A number of checks, or rereads, or run throughs, where you know exactly which ones are professional and which ones are something else, and no way of stopping at the honest number.

What fear is actually anticipating

Here is a line about fear, and the second half of it names something people rarely notice.

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.1 John 4:18

Because fear hath torment.

The word underneath torment is about punishment. And that is the diagnosis: fear, in this sense, is the anticipation of punishment. It is a body braced for something coming.

Which means the question to ask yourself is not why am I checking. It is: what am I expecting to arrive.

And you already noticed that embarrassment is not a big enough answer. You are right. Nobody does eleven of anything for embarrassment. Something larger is being anticipated, and it is worth finding out what, because it is almost certainly not something anybody has actually threatened.

You are bracing for a punishment that is not coming, and the love you are inside has none in it. 1 John 4:18 names fear as the anticipation of punishment and says perfect love casts it out, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man see what the eleventh check is actually for.

Now I want to be careful, and I am going to be, because there is a careless version of this that would harm you.

I am not telling you that checking is bad. Your first three checks are good work and I would not want them removed. Precision is not a vice and it is not fear. I am not treating your carefulness as a sin to confess, because it is not one.

The line is not between careful and careless. It is between the checks that find things and the checks that are trying to buy a feeling.

You are able to keep every check that does work and put down the ones that are buying safety. The written word says perfect love casteth out fear because fear has punishment in it, and the Holy Spirit is not the one waiting at the end of the eleventh look with anything in His hand.

The honest half. Stopping at three will feel wrong. It will feel actively dangerous the first several times, and I am not going to tell you that it will not, because it will, and being told it would be fine would only prove that whoever told you had never done it.

And I want to say one more plain thing. If this has spread beyond your work and into your sleep and your body over a long period, it is worth telling somebody who can sit with you properly, a doctor or a wise person who knows you. That is not a failure of faith. It is a sensible thing a person does.

The part that is yours tonight is small and it is a stop rather than a start. Third check, one sentence, and then let it go while it still feels wrong.