The God Who Delights in Beginners

There was a time I stopped dancing altogether. Not because I didn’t want to, but because someone had convinced me that wanting to wasn’t enough.

The man I was dating at the time was a professional dance instructor. Partner dancing, specifically. The kind with rules and technique and standards for what counts as doing it right. When he told me this early in our relationship, I felt the immediate weight of inadequacy. I’d never danced with anyone in my life. The gap between his expertise and my complete inexperience felt insurmountable, the kind of disparity that would inevitably become source of frustration or at best patient condescension.

So I decided to surprise him.

I drove an hour each week for five months to take private lessons with the best instructor in the area. Spent money I didn’t have much of and time that was already scarce, practicing basic steps and frame and all the foundational techniques I thought would let me meet him somewhere closer to his level. Not match it–I wasn’t delusional. But at least demonstrate I’d tried, that I cared enough to invest in becoming someone worth dancing with.

When I finally told him what I’d done, his response wasn’t enthusiasm. It wasn’t even mild interest. Just a kind of detached acknowledgment that five months of lessons could only get me so far, which was true but somehow felt dismissive in ways I couldn’t articulate at the time.

We went out dancing anyway.

Our first time together on a floor, and I tried to show him everything I’d learned. Every step the instructor had drilled into me, every technique I’d practiced until my feet ached, every bit of progress I’d fought for over months of driving and paying and working to be good enough. When we walked off the floor, he looked at me like I’d done something deliberately offensive. “What was that?”

I didn’t understand the question. I’d just danced with him. I’d tried to apply everything I’d learned. What did he mean, what was that?

“That was the crappiest dance. Did you give that to me on purpose?”

The floor dropped out from under me in ways it hadn’t during the actual dancing. I explained I was trying, that I’d given my best, that five months of lessons was all I had to work with and I was still learning. He proceeded to catalog my failures. My stepping was wrong. My posture was a mess. There were only so many “pity dances” he could give me before he needed to dance with someone… good.

I internalized every word.

Maybe I should have been further along. Maybe I wasn’t talented at this. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked him to dance in the first place. None of this came naturally to me, and it had been a fight just to find the time and money for lessons, never mind opportunities to practice with actual partners. I sobbed in the car afterward. He offered what I think he meant as comfort: “You’ll get better eventually.”

I threw out dancing altogether after that. The joy was gone. I knew I wasn’t perfect. I knew I wasn’t even mediocre. I was learning, and apparently learning wasn’t enough. You were supposed to already be good, or at least good enough not to embarrass your partner, or you shouldn’t be on the floor at all.

I wondered if God viewed me the same way. If my attempts at faithfulness looked as pathetic to Him as my dancing had looked to someone who knew what good dancing was supposed to look like. If He was offering pity prayers, pity grace, pity attention to someone who should have been further along by now, who was taking too long to get good at being Christian.

Many months later, I went to a restaurant that taught bar swing on Tuesday nights. The kind of dancing my ex had looked down on, refused to do with me because it was beneath him and “not considered real dancing” in his book. Too casual, too loose, too focused on fun rather than technique. I brought a book. Sat in a corner table. Enjoyed the ambience without any intention of actually dancing. That part of me was dead, or at least dormant enough that I wasn’t interested in resurrecting it.

Someone asked me to dance anyway.

I refused. Cited that I didn’t know bar swing, wasn’t good at dancing generally, would rather not put myself through disappointing anyone or being disappointed again. He kept asking. Insisted, actually, to the point where I couldn’t focus on my book anymore because he was just standing there waiting for me to say yes.

I caved. “Just one dance. And I’m apologizing in advance.”

We got on the floor. And he was objectively terrible. Super new to dancing, got confused about how he should be leading, got lost in the music, forgot sequences, stepped on my feet at least twice.

You know what? None of it mattered.

He was having fun. Genuine, unselfconscious fun, from doing something you’re bad at but enjoying anyway. And he seemed to have even more fun when he realized I was learning too, that he got to show me things, figure things out together, stumble through the steps without judgment.

And eventually, after a handful more dances with other beginners who were just as lost as I was, I started having fun too.

It didn’t undo what my ex had said to me. The words were still there, the internalized voice telling me I was taking up space on the floor that should go to people who deserved to be there. But this experience showed me something else: that there’s a rotten part of any activity that can eat away at its joy if you dwell there too long. That competition can be good but can also steal enjoyment of the game itself. That excellence pursued at the expense of delight becomes its own kind of poverty.

Looking back, there are two ways to see a beginner on a dance floor.

The first way sees incompetence. Sees missed steps and poor posture and timing that’s slightly off. Sees someone taking up space that could go to a better partner, wasting the time of anyone skilled enough to know what they’re doing. This way of seeing measures value by proficiency, judges worth by performance, determines whether someone belongs based on whether they’ve earned the right to be there through demonstrated skill.

The second way sees possibility. Sees someone learning, trying, willing to risk looking foolish for the sake of experiencing something new. Sees delight in movement even when the movement isn’t polished. Sees the joy that comes from doing something badly but together, from figuring things out in real time, fun that only happens when everyone involved knows they’re terrible but no one cares.

My ex saw me the first way. The man at the bar swing night saw me the second way. And I wonder which way God sees us.

There’s a story in Mark 10:13-16 where people are bringing children to Jesus and the disciples are turning them away. Children aren’t useful. They can’t contribute to the mission, can’t understand the teaching, can’t do anything except take up time and attention that should go to people who deserve Jesus’s time: adults, people with resources, people who matter.

Jesus rebukes the disciples. “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”

The kingdom belongs to people who can’t yet do it right.

Who are still learning, still stumbling, still getting the steps wrong. Who come with nothing but willingness to try, to be taught, to receive what they can’t earn. This is opposite of how my ex viewed dancing. Opposite of how the world tends to view most things: as competitions where the skilled deserve access and the unskilled should step aside until they’ve practiced enough in private to deserve public presence.

But God apparently operates on different principles. Paul writes that God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, chose what is weak to shame the strong, chose what is low and despised to bring to nothing things that are (1 Corinthians 1:27-28). God seems to have particular fondness for beginners. For people who don’t know what they’re doing, who are trying anyway, who come with nothing to offer except their willingness to show up and learn.

The Pharisees were experts at religion. They knew the law inside and out, could quote scripture, performed their spiritual disciplines with precision and consistency. They were the professionals, the ones who had earned the right to be there through years of study and practice. And Jesus kept choosing fishermen and tax collectors and women and children instead. Kept gravitating toward people who didn’t know what they were doing but were willing to follow anyway. Kept measuring worth by something other than proficiency.

But here’s what I wrestle with: God does want us to grow.

Paul writes about moving from milk to solid food, about maturity, about not remaining infants tossed by every wind of doctrine (Hebrews 5:12-14, Ephesians 4:14). Jesus told parables about talents that should be invested and multiplied, about servants who should be productive, about trees that should bear fruit (Matthew 25:14-30, Luke 13:6-9).

So growth matters. Progress matters. You’re not supposed to stay a beginner forever.

The question is what you’re measuring. Whether progress means becoming more skilled at religious performance or becoming more like Christ. Whether maturity means knowing more and doing better or loving more deeply and trusting more fully. My ex measured dancing by technical proficiency. By whether steps were executed correctly, whether posture was maintained, whether the dance met standards established by people who knew what they were doing. And by those measures, I was failing. Five months of lessons hadn’t made me good. I was still a beginner, still taking up space on the floor with someone who deserved better partners.

But the man at bar swing night measured dancing differently. By whether we were having fun, whether we were learning together, whether the experience created delight rather than proving competence. And by those measures, we were succeeding, despite being objectively terrible at the actual dancing.

I think God measures more like the second way than the first.

Not that technique doesn’t matter. It does in the sense that growing in holiness matters, that becoming more like Christ requires actual transformation rather than just feeling good about trying. But the measure isn’t primarily proficiency. It’s love. It’s trust. It’s willingness to keep showing up even when you’re bad at it, to keep learning even when progress is slower than you hoped, to keep dancing even when you miss steps.

There’s a rotten part of any worthwhile activity that can eat away at its joy if you dwell there too long. The part that turns play into competition, learning into judgment, participation into performance evaluation.

In dancing, it’s the people who only dance with partners who are good enough not to embarrass them. Who treat the floor as stage for demonstrating skill rather than space for experiencing movement. Who measure every dance by whether it met technical standards rather than whether it created connection.

In faith, it’s the people who measure spirituality by visible metrics. By how much you know, how consistent your disciplines are, how impressive your testimony sounds. Who treat church as sorting mechanism for separating the mature from the immature, the committed from the casual, the people who deserve to be there from the people who are taking up space.

It’s the voice that says you should be further along by now.

That your progress is too slow, your understanding too shallow, your practice too inconsistent to count as real faithfulness. That God is offering you pity grace the way my ex offered pity dances: tolerating your presence until you’ve improved enough to deserve actual attention.

This voice kills joy.

Makes showing up feel like imposition rather than invitation. Turns learning into shame about how much you still don’t know. I’m still navigating the dance community. Some only dance to find a date. Others dance for the sheer love of movement. Some dance to improve their skills, to compete, to demonstrate mastery.
And I’m still navigating faith communities. Some are there for social connection. Others for genuine encounter with God. Some for the satisfaction of demonstrating spiritual proficiency, for the status that comes with being seen as mature and knowledgeable and committed.

In both spaces, I’ve had to learn to distinguish between people who see beginners as problems to be tolerated and people who see beginners as participants worth celebrating.

My ex taught me that some people will only value you if you’re good enough not to embarrass them. The man at bar swing taught me that other people will value you simply for showing up, for being willing to try, for finding joy in the stumbling process of learning together. And God, I’m slowly learning, is more like the second one than the first. Not that He doesn’t care about growth. Not that He’s content for us to remain perpetually immature, never developing in holiness or understanding or capacity to love well. But the growth He’s after isn’t primarily about technique. It’s about trust. It’s about showing up even when you’re bad at it. It’s about finding joy in the learning rather than shame in the not-yet-knowing.

Jesus said “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30). This doesn’t sound like someone offering pity grace to disappointing students. This sounds like someone inviting beginners to learn alongside him, promising that the learning won’t be the crushing weight of constant evaluation and inevitable failure.
I still hear my ex’s voice sometimes when I’m dancing. Still feel the shame of not being good enough, the fear that I’m taking up space that should go to better partners. Still catch myself apologizing preemptively, trying to manage expectations downward so no one is too disappointed. But I’m learning to dance anyway. Learning to trust that joy in the movement matters more than precision in the steps. Learning that some people will only dance with you if you’re good, but other people, better people, will dance with you simply because dancing together is better than dancing alone, even when you’re both terrible.

And maybe that’s what faith looks like too. Not getting good enough to deserve God’s attention, but showing up to learn alongside Him, trusting that He delights in beginners who are willing to keep trying more than He values experts who have forgotten how to stumble.

I don’t know. But I’m still dancing… and discovering that the God I thought was measuring my technique with professional disappointment might actually be more interested in whether I’m enjoying the music.