A Clinical and Faith-Based Reflection on Self-Improvement, Optimization Culture, and What Grace Actually Interrupts Progress culture has the aesthetics of something permanent. The ground it’s built on is another matter. There is a particular kind of forward progress that does not look like forward progress. It arrives in the language of growth, of becoming, of doing the work. It tracks, measures, reflects, and adjusts. The effort is oriented toward the future self…. the versi