The Problem of Perfection
\nCopyright by Shea Oakley
\nAll rights reserved<\/p>\n
The world is full of frustrated perfectionists. Of course, if we are honest with ourselves, we must realize that frustration and perfectionism go hand in hand because human beings cannot reach perfection by their own effort. This fact might seem self-evident but it does not keep billions of people from trying and experiencing all the misery that comes from repeated failure. One might ask why they continue to try. What is it that compels us to desire to be perfect to begin with?<\/p>\n
The\u00a0theological answer is that all human beings are made in the image of a perfect God and so we are \u201chardwired\u201d to be perfect beings ourselves. The very sense we have that things are imperfect points towards the existence of something which imperfection must be compared to. We know there is a sun behind the shadows cast by that which is flawed. The one who believes in the God of the Bible knows what or, more accurately, Who this sun is.<\/p>\n
There is also\u00a0an explanation for why imperfection is so inextricably bound up in the human condition. The scripture tells us that the perfect Creator of the universe originally gave the crown of His creation the gift of free-will. It goes on to explain that somewhere in antiquity, at the beginning of our race\u2019s existence, the \u201cproto-humans\u201d used this free-will to turn from the God of perfection in favor of self-sovereignty. Since a perfect God is worthy of, among other things, perfect obedience a race that rejects such obedience immediately becomes imperfect by definition.<\/p>\n
But just because we have fallen into imperfection does not mean we do not have a dim corporate memory of what we once were. We are, in fact, acutely aware of what we were, if often only subconsciously. This is at the core of the pain and bewilderment of human existence. We can use any number of things to dull the ache of our imperfection, but we cannot make it go away, at least not on our own.<\/p>\n
The message of specifically Christianity is that we can be individually restored to the flawlessness our God had in mind when he made us and this as a gift, not something imperfectly, and thus impossibly, earned. Since only the divine is perfect, the way back to perfection must pass through the divine; specifically through a particular Man who entered human history 2000 years ago and proceeded to live a perfect life from start to finish.\u00a0It is\u00a0identification with that perfect Man, through faith, which\u00a0is the only path God has given us to regain what we have lost.<\/p>\n
The Christian proposition is that the true cure for perfectionism is not obtained by effort, but only by and through the perfect gift embodied in Jesus Christ. For the long-suffering perfectionist this is perhaps the essence of the Gospel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Problem of Perfection Copyright by Shea Oakley All rights reserved The world is full of frustrated perfectionists. Of course, if we are honest with ourselves, we must realize that frustration and perfectionism go hand in hand because human beings cannot reach perfection by their own effort. This fact might seem self-evident but it does… <\/p>\n