Perfect

Yesterday as I was folding laundry, Samuel was building with his Duplo blocks.

I heard him say, “I gotta make it perfect”.

And my heart was pierced.

He is three years old.

I stopped what I was doing and went into a monologue about how it doesn’t have to be perfect and found myself floundering because did he not learn this concept from me?

I am trying to cut the word “perfect” out of my vocabulary, but it’s not enough to not say it, because it’s a matter of the heart.

The pursuit of perfect is not just unhealthy, it is deadly.

No one is perfect but God alone.

And to think that we can be perfect (like God) is arrogant, prideful and wrong.

One of my issues with Christianity is that people say we need to “be more like Jesus”.

On the one hand, yes, we are to follow God’s way.

On the other hand, the point is that we could not even come close to God so he became like us.

He didn’t stoop to our level so that we would strive to be gods ourselves.

We are not perfect. AND THAT IS OKAY.

It is okay to not be perfect.

“The truly righteous man is not he who never sins but rather he who, amid a predilection to narcissism and selfishness, battles his nature to live a virtuous life.” +

-Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

In Jewish tradition, there is a practice of purposefully leaving an error in your work because only God is perfect and attempting to be perfect means that you are attempting to be like God.

It’s an outward expression of the attitude of the heart.

Let us strive to follow God, not be like him.

And let us be content to be imperfect.

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+ The Tyranny of Perfection, by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. (A really good article with a Jewish perspective on Christianity’s problem with perfection.)