Being Perfect

Today a respected leader interpreted for our congregation that we should stop comparing ourselves to each-other and trying to be perfect. My first thought was “wait. . . but Jesus said. . .”

Jesus said, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matt. 5:48, KJB). He gave those instructions after attempting to alter justice-based (love your friends & hate your enemies) social attitudes to something much more difficult: mercy. He wants us (everyone) to feel and show love to those who hate or hurt us. He knew we would not succeed immediately. Some of us will struggle with that kind of love our whole lives. Some of us will simply give in to a very human need for justice and retribution. And yet he reiterated this commandment's importance by urging us to be “perfect.”

I can think of three interpretations of that scripture, but none of them seems quite right. We can change our standards of “perfect” to fit whatever we are already; we can take the long view, that perfection is a post-life end-goal; or we can believe in the miracle that because Jesus asked, He will provide the means to miraculously and immediately perfect us. 

Taking the long view seems to be popular, simply because it necessarily takes pressure off of women who are attempting to perfect themselves immediately by a common social standard. I think today’s speaker means to contradict this. He understands that we are drawing our idea of perfection from our neighbors and friends, and finding it impossible and even devastating to compete on our own strength.

Jesus didn’t ask us to be perfect like our next-door neighbors: no, that would be too easy. He asks us to be perfect like Heavenly Father. PERFECT. KNOWS EVERYTHING; NEVER MAKES MISTAKES. YEAH, THAT GUY. *sigh*

So this is my theory, for what it’s worth as a person who takes impossible tasks very much to heart: All three slightly wrong interpretations of that scripture are also mostly right. But only when taken simultaneously.

We can’t individualize the standard of “perfect” to fit our current vices, but we can change our path to fit our current abilities. Every person has different spiritual gifts, and while we should strive to cultivate them all, we should start with what we already have and build on that, like the servants who were given money in that one parable. We can increase our “money,” but only if we use well what God gave us. Perfection does not spring ex nihilo, and we each bear our own seeds.

A perfection which never makes mistakes is not possible in this life for anyone but Jesus, and anyone who thinks differently suffers from Pride (irony?) and probably some serious depression. We ALWAYS take the long view. As He asked us to be perfect, He knew we would fail. Lots of times. Accidentally and on purpose. He just knew that He was going to make imperfection correctable/failure impermanent.

What about the miracle of being perfect now? Well, we won’t be whole, and we won’t be glorified until well after the physical resurrection. Yes, we’re supposed to be physically perfect, too. *sigh* (Though I’m 96% sure physical perfection isn’t what we think it is, and I’m 98% sure that’s not what Jesus meant either in that immediate context). God established (and Jesus conformed to) rituals by which we accept the stipulations of Jesus’s atonement and become clean of sins, purified by the presence of God, and otherwise endowed with power to grow and succeed at resisting temptation. When we are baptized, given the Gift of the Holy Ghost, renew those covenants by Sacrament, etc., we are literally cleaned and purified of sin and error. We are perfected by grace, however temporarily in the short view.

I think a significant portion of Jesus’s commandment to be “perfect” included these very immediate ordinances, and their prerequisite repentance. In a sermon about offering mercy, He taught us to also accept grace.

So when my Priesthood leader asks me to stop trying to be perfect, He’s not saying give up on glory. He’s not telling me to accept my sins as a permanent identity. He’s REALLY NOT saying that ordinances aren’t necessary. He’s responding to a vernacular understanding of perfection that is both impossible and currently undesirable. Trying to be perfect like somebody who isn’t God won't help anyone achieve real perfection. 

But working with people who have complementary strengths gets us closer.

As a perfectionist in my professional and personal life, this message is important to me. As a scholar, I can use all of these principles to survive my job and its bloody birthing process. If I fortify the strengths I already have before attempting to gain more strengths, understand that true success is never immediate nor immediately apparent, and regularly forgive myself for errors, setbacks, and *flying tampons, the morass of academia can be more gracefully forded, and I’ll learn how to recognize true colleagues, leaders, and kindred spirits who have been telling me this ^ all along.

*inside joke. Remind me to tell you, if you don’t already know it.