As a recovering perfectionist (who just finished wringing my hands after losing a most “perfectly” captured string of words, precisely elucidating a tricky aspect of this discussion when my husband suddenly stepped into the room to let me know he was taking the garbage out to the curb), I know all too well the struggle to step from the allure of the golden wire stretched in front of our every endeavor, tempting us to walk the thin line of victory based on self effort alone, into that which we seem to fear most: a sloppy finish at best, an unfinished one at worst.
Perfectionism is a sorry and often sorrow-filled state of affairs: it is, by its’ nature, a walk with grief and chafing, as we are constantly reminded not only of our own shortcomings, but that of those and the world all around us. Fault-finding becomes our default, and even when we attempt to present a sunny visage to those around us, like the picture of Dorian Gray, we hide the slicing, critical thought processes that drive us behind a manufactured smile.
It engenders a brittle existence, and its insidious goal is the cessation of productivity and the honor that accompanies the grace of honest effort. It operates alongside pride, which tells us we will make the first line on the page when we know it will appear precisely as it should be. This not only creates tremendous (and yet, often easily toppled, more on that later) obstacles to forward movement, it assumes that there is knowledge of what is “perfect”—the standard of which, if it really does exist, is a measure only within, the ultimate hubris.
For the believer, the remedy is quite simple: to repent of making oneself the standard, and agree to come in alignment with the heavenly standard, which is only supernaturally attained, and may even look like less to our natural inner eye.
Jesus was maligned by the hypocritical clergy of the day for not “appearing” holy or righteous, according to their conceptual array of best practices. But before we think we are off the hook, let’s admit most of us would never have arranged things as God did to introduce His son to the world—a controversial, scandal-inducing conception; a birthing in the least likely of places for a King—a horrifying death. Yet, what place on earth truly had the level of majesty due the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Creator and Word Made Flesh? Something else was at work that mortals usually fail to grasp, and it is only glimpsed in tandem with humility. Pride must be flushed away for this to be possible.
The abiding sense of grace that Christ give to His followers is free of charge, does not come only to the vetted, the strong, the pure, the pleasurable, but to the besotted individual (of which we all are in our flesh) who simply says yes. And then, the transformation into the perfection offered in Christ alone is made complete—also an offense to our pride, which perpetually wants to make it on our terms. And thus begins the messy, glorious process of becoming more like Him.