I am a self-admitting perfectionist, not always for needing things to have their place as much as for things being the best they can be.
And I don’t think I’m the only one out there. For instance, when I craft a sermon, article or presentation, I go through multiple drafts even before I begin to practice it.
Maybe you know someone who does that.
Maybe you are that person who doesn’t just want things to go right, you want the event to go perfectly.
However, the problem with being a perfectionist is that I can sometimes believe that my value as a person depends upon the perfection of whatever I work on.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to do well in activities in our lives. It’s OK for us to do our best for others in our work.
What we often do, though, is consider that our work determines our value to God and our loved ones. In the ancient world, a person knew the gods favored them by the blessings they had. And how did they earn the gods’ favor? Various deeds of heroism or sacrifices. The message that began long ago was, “I am only as good as the things I do.” Can you see the problem here though? It creates a system where we strive and stress over achieving what we cannot even come near.
If we stress about the perfection of everything we’ll stress ourselves to a point where we experience burnout. But God never asked us to be perfect. Sure Jesus is recorded in the Gospel according to Matthew teaching us, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (5:48)
However, that word for perfect could be translated as competed/finished/whole. God chose each of us not because of our perfection.
Rather God completes/perfects us in Christ. That is the idea of grace.
Grace doesn’t require our works to be earned; if it did, then grace would have us stuck in the sacrificial system again.
The writer of Ephesians reminds us that our goodness before God is “because by grace we are saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is a gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast.
Because God has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” (2:8-10) God has done the work for us.
God always invites us to experience the grace of hearing that we are enough for who we are. Therefore sisters and brothers, embrace one another with the grace of God that looks past an ideal we cannot achieve.
Affirm others around you who have done their best and produced some of the good works God has created us to do.
Give that to yourself, when you’ve given your all to something and yet come up short of perfection.
And look through Gods eyes of loving acceptance for who we are proclaimed to be in Christ.
Amen.
