It has been estimated that there are over four hundred counselling theories on human behaviour. A number of these insist that blame lies at the core of most emotional disturbances – either blaming others or blaming self. Now, of course, there needs to be responsibility taken for our actions, but the root of so much blame is what is called perfectionism. I would be perfect and my world would be perfect were it not for other people is one extreme, and the other is I’m not perfect and my work is not perfect so I must be absolutely no good.
What these have in common is the denial of the nature of our world and of everyone in it. It is an imperfect world. Any philosophy to be helpful has to recognize this and any religion to be the truth also has to recognize this. We have to learn to live with an imperfect self in an imperfect world filled with imperfect others.
What about perfection in self? Not only do we have the tendency to blame, we also have the tendency to elevate our wishes and desires into dogmatic, absolutist “shoulds”, “musts”, “oughts”, demands and commands. It is an irrational quality that demands that the universe should, ought to, and must be different from what it is. Perhaps this is a reflection or echo of what man had in the garden of Eden – that we intrinsically yearn for a better world, but which can only be realised in Heaven.
It is natural and healthy to want to be better, but progress must be made without the demand for instant perfection. The person who expects perfection of himself, or herself, will either have a very low self-image or false self-image because it cannot be real. For example, a housewife who thinks she can be the perfect housewife will either end up with a nervous breakdown, or become self-righteous, or, readjust her goal and be satisfied with some improvement. Likewise the Christian who demands perfection of himself will end up in trouble. Either he will become hypocritically self-righteous in deceiving himself that he is perfect (cf. 1 John 1:8,10), or he will become frustrated and defeated, interpreting his shortcomings as proof that he is not a Christian.
The Bible says that our position before God is not based on achieving personal sinlessness. Good emotional and mental health is based in reality and reality is in 1 John 1:5-10. G.C. Brewer said a long time ago, Men who have been in Christ for fifty years are no nearer perfection, insofar as their behaviour and daily living is concerned, than they were when they were babes in Christ. I am one such person and I can speak with practical experience. We may not have the same temptations, we may not have the same weaknesses, we may not make the same mistakes that we made at the beginning, but we still have weaknesses we still make mistakes and, in some respects, we are still more in need of the mercy of God than we were in the beginning. None of us can ever be saved without the mercy of God and the cleansing power of the blood of Christ. But if we continue to rely upon Him and to serve Him, we have the promise that we shall be presented faultless before his throne.
Now, turning to the expectation of perfectionism in others, oftentimes the person demanding perfection in himself also will demand it in others. However, the problem is in associating with other Christians will do nothing more than confirm in their mind that everybody else is a hypocrite and there are no true Christians anymore. So, frequently, they give up, withdraw into a little circle that contains only themselves, deceiving self about their own state or else, as before, give up on themselves and become like the world by wallowing in the mire. Charles Spurgeon once told a person looking for the perfect church that if he found it he should not associate with it because he would mar its perfection. There never has been a flawless congregation on the earth because the people who make them up are not flawless. As individuals grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ, the congregation improves. However, if a congregation is what it should be, it is leading people to the Lord, and so more immature babes in Christ are added to the body and begin the process of growing all over again. Congregations need to keep this in mind else they can get to the situation like the school-teacher who said school teaching would be alright if it were not for the students!
Many over the years have become frustrated with a congregation and have left, striking out on their own, or quitting altogether. Others have torn the church up because it did not respond immediately to their prescription for perfection. Ultimately, if we are not going to settle for less than perfection, we will settle for nothing.
What about politics? we are imperfect people living in an imperfect world with imperfect countries and imperfect politicians. Some people demand a perfect country. When we measure our country against such an ideal it is obvious that the country is not perfect and idealists think that the answer is to tear it down and very quickly we will build a perfect world, notwithstanding the fact we are the envy of much of the world. For the past three generations many in free countries despised their birthright and believed that a communist system of socialism was the answer and deliberately tried to white-ant their own freedoms.
Many of you remember Jim Jones and Jonestown in Guyana. I remember reading about the mass suicide and murder of 914 people there in 1978. Many people thought it was a religion commune, and heaped scorn upon established religion, but Jones had gone there to establish the perfect society based upon communist socialism. There were no Bibles in Jonestown and Jones once threw his Bible on the ground, spat on it, and said, there is no god but socialism. He claimed the Bible was used to keep people in slavery (shades of ‘opiate of the people’). Instead of sermons based on the Bible, his flock was fed a mixture of fear, socialism, and struggle against imperialism. Some of them made daily visits to the Russian embassy in Georgetown in connection with the desire of the group to move to Russia, the promised land. Jones had promised them paradise but it wasn’t working out and Russia didn’t want them and so ultimately they took the exit of death. As Leslie Paul said, The satanic pride of the revolutionary in his revolution makes him the enemy of humanity. The bitterness of the frustrated idealist is the most fruitful source of terrorism and nihilism
Some people pride themselves on being donkey-voters. They look at the candidates and find fault with them all and so vote for none. One of the candidates will be elected whether we vote or not. We never get to determine who are going to be the candidates, but we can look at imperfect candidates and ask ourselves who is going to do the most good and the least harm? Even if all are undesirables we can at least ask ourselves, which is the least undesirable? Just because we cannot have the whole loaf, shall we refuse to take one slice? If we take one slice today, perhaps we might get two or three tomorrow.
Turning to children, there is a way of living called vicarious living. The word may seem familiar to you because we speak of the vicarious suffering of Christ, by which we mean His suffering was on behalf of others. Some people don’t live their own lives but live their lives through others. There’s the person who who buys every scandal magazine he or she can get his or her hands on to see how the rich and famous, the pop-stars, the movie stars, are living and live a fantasy life themselves glued to soap-operas and slaves to every fashion that comes down the road. I don’t know who coined the expression get a life, but it certainly is appropriate at times. This is where children come in:- perfectionist parents see their children as a second chance of living their own life. Having fallen short of their own perfectionist ideals, some want to make their children’s life a clone of their own – only perfect this time. They seem to think that imperfect parents can produce perfect children. So the children can never do enough to please the parents. If they overcome major flaws there is always something about which the parents can nag. The children never feel they have the approval of their parents, and many times give up or rebel. Eph. 6:4 says: provoke not to wrath; do not exasperate your children.
But a man might say But aren’t we told to be perfect? (cf. Matt.5:48). Indeed some have taught, such as Charles G. Finney, that we must be as perfect as God. This was the old Methodist idea of Wesley’s second experience of grace as he called it, though it is unknown in the Bible. Benjamin Warfield took Finney to task when Finney, in advocating the idea that a person can be perfect, tried to impale his readers on dilemmas. If it is not a practicable duty to be perfectly holy in this world, then it will follow that the Devil has so completely accomplished his design of corrupting mankind, that Jesus Christ is at fault, and has no way to sanctify his people but by taking them out of this world…..If perfect sanctification is not attainable in this world, it must be either from a want of motives in the Gospel, or a want of sufficient power in the Spirit of God. But as Warfield pointed out, those dilemmas could be equally applied to every evil with which man is afflicted – disease, death, the incompleted salvation of the world. In other words, does the presence of ill-health, death and the unconverted mean that the Devil is stronger than Christ? In no wise. The effects of redemption are not realised in a day, but through a long process, and the last enemy to be destroyed is death, and then, and only then, will the saved enter into that complete enjoyment God has in store for them. Until then we are imperfect beings living in an imperfect world.
But what did Jesus mean when he said be perfect? The word perfect originally meant an achievement, the carrying out of performance of a resolve, or to reach completion. A movement was perfected by being carried out or fulfilled. In Matt.19:16-22 the rich young ruler asked What lack I yet? and Jesus said If you would be perfect, go and sell what you have, give to the poor, and come follow me. 2 Tim. 3:17 says that the scriptures are profitable so that a man may be ‘perfect’ (K.J.V.), but other versions use ‘complete’ etc. 1 Cor. 2:6 records Paul speaking of wisdom among those who are ‘perfect’ (K.J.V.) – other versions will use ‘full-grown’, ‘mature’. You get the gist.
Going back to the context of Matt.5, if we were perfect in love as God is then we would be God (1 John 4:8). “Therefore” indicates that the perfection he speaks of here is related to what he has said before. Christ said they were to love their foes as well as their friends. Their love was to be ‘perfect’, or ‘complete’, as is God’s love. It was not to be a half-circle which included only that part of humanity which comprised their friends. It was to be a complete circle which embraced all humanity. Our love does not compare with the absoluteness of God’s love, but it can be complete in that it embraces all humanity. So when we come across people, regardless of who they are, we will do the right thing by them – that is, we will do unto them as we would would want them to do to us.