Sunday, September 11, 2016

Why Perfectionism will Destroy You but Perfection Will Save You

When I was growing up, I had a bizarre theory about the television.   I figured if I could see them, then they could see me.    And this created a huge problem when it came to the Brady Bunch.    For those who remember it, the Brady Bunch told the story of this blended family, where the house was always put together, the parents never got angry, and the kids had nothing but the nicest problems.   I loved that show, but I was terrified of what the Brady’s might think of my family, the McGowan’s.   So before the show, I’d clean up the area around the TV.  I’d ask my siblings to dress nice and behave well.  I wanted the Brady’s to see us at our best.   But something always went wrong.  My dad would come in his t-shirt on the way to his workshop or my sisters would get in a fight.  Somehow, some way my family would find a way to embarrass me in front of the Brady’s.  

Now you may never had any desire to impress the Brady Bunch, but somewhere along the way, you’ve been worried about impressing somebody.   Have you ever had someone come over to clean your house, but before they came over, you cleaned it first?   Now, I’m not talking a full clean, but you pick up things, maybe do the dishes; stuff like that.   You realize that the house will still be dirty, but at least they won’t think you’re a total slob.   Or maybe it wasn’t a house cleaner, but a neighbor or some worker who came to fix something.   Maybe you said something like, “I apologize for the house.  It’s normally not this way at all (when you knew it was this way all the time).”  

Now, is that so bad?  Who doesn’t want to make a good first impression?   But the deeper question is.  Why do you do that?   Why does it matter so much?   Underneath that drive to impress lies a deeper problem.  And that problem painfully limits your life, your relationships, your sense of joy and peace.    But in these words, Jesus offers a way out, a way that frees you to become who God created you to be.  And in these words, Jesus points to that way.  Let’s listen and hear what Jesus has to say.    


What’s wrong with wanting to make a good first impression?   Shouldn’t that be a worthy goal? It all depends on why you are doing it.  Too often what drives the desire to impress has to do with a deeper problem, one that leads you away from the fullness that God yearns to give.  What is the problem?  You are striving for the appearance of perfection, when what you need is the real thing.   And the real thing, real perfection is something very different from what you might think.    And once you’ve experienced it, it frees you as only true perfection can.  But first, you need to understand the problem that binds you up.   

Here’s the problem.   People mistake perfectionism for perfection.  But the two could not be any more different.   Perfectionism has nothing to do with being perfect, and everything to do with looking perfect.   When you are in perfectionist mode, you know two things.  You know deep inside that you are far from perfect.  And you also know that you can’t let anyone see that.    Why?   You fear that if anyone did see it, what would they think?  What would they think of you?  How would they react?  And a voice tells you that they would react badly.   So to avoid that condemnation and disapproval, to avoid the shame of that exposure, you cover it up with the appearance of perfection.   And then you tell yourself, this is what perfection looks like.   If I look perfect, then I must be perfect, right?

But in the words that came before the ones we just read, Jesus destroys that false belief.    In example after example, Jesus punctures the illusion of perfectionism, one that the religious leaders of his day were promoting.  Jesus said; so you say, you shall not murder, but I say to you if you cherish anger in your heart, then you’ve murdered.    You say, don’t commit adultery, but I say to you if you look at someone with lust in your heart, then you’ve done the deed.  Do you see what Jesus is doing?  He is laying out a painful truth. Perfectionism is not perfection.  Looking perfect ain’t perfect.  It’s just a lie you tell yourself to help you feel better about the mess you know you are.   And that lie destroys the life that God wants you to live.  Why?

In that lie, you can’t spend your life growing into the person God created you to be.  Instead you spend your life constructing an image of the life you think others want to see.    And that life isn’t a life.   It’s a lie, a lie that eats you up from the inside, and wounds you and often others in devastating ways.

When I first came to South Florida, I got to know the pastor of a large church nearby.  We went to lunch pretty regularly.   I began to believe that we had developed a solid relationship.   After the last lunch I ever had with him, he told me that he would email some information I was looking for.  And I waited, and I waited, and the email never came.  So after two weeks or so, I called his assistant to ask her about it.   After a long pause, she said, “Kennedy, you don’t know?  David doesn’t work here anymore.”    It turned out as we shot the breeze at that last lunch his life was falling apart by his own hand.    The ugly truth about a long affair had just come out, and at that lunch, he was only days away from leaving ministry, losing his marriage, and devastating a church that had placed their trust in his leadership and integrity.   But as we sat there at that table, you would never have known it.   Even there, as his life blew up around him, he was still trying to cover, trying to look perfect when he was anything but. 

Now you may not be hiding an affair, but when you get caught in the lie of perfectionism, you are hiding something.  And let’s be honest, aren’t we all hiding a bit like that?  But when you do, you aren’t just hiding some little flaw, you are hiding you.   And that hiding binds you, and it binds others, because we’re all living lies with each other, lies from which we can’t break free.   And nothing good will ever come from that hiding.  It will just bring more hiding, more lies.  It will spawn a life that is so far from what God intended our life to be.     

Yet here’s the question.   How do you break free of the compulsion to cover?  How do you gain the freedom and courage not to hide just how imperfect you are?  You gain that freedom by knowing what true perfection actually is.     

In these words, Jesus shows you.  And he begins by describing it in an unexpected way.   He talks about how God showers rain and sun on everybody from the worst to the best.  Then he says.  That’s the way you need to be.  If you are only nice to the people who are nice to you, then what’s the big deal?  Pretty much, everybody does that.   If you want to be perfect like God, be good to everybody.  Don’t hate your enemies.  Pray for them.   

Now how does that help?   It doesn’t if you think Jesus is just giving you something new to do. If you think Jesus is telling you to smile and be sweet to people who have done you wrong, you’re still stuck.   Because, then you’ll just be living another lie.  You’ll be smiling at folks on the outside, when inside you are not smiling at them at all.      

To get what Jesus is actually telling you, you need to understand what this word translated as perfect here really means.    When we think of perfect, we usually think of something that’s absent of flaws.  But for Jesus perfection didn’t mean an absence of flaws but a fullness, a completeness.   You could actually translate the words that Jesus says more accurately as; be complete, therefore, as your heavenly Father is complete.       

Jesus is saying what makes God perfect is not an absence but a fullness.  God has no lack, nothing missing.   And God showers that completeness on everyone.  Yes, God sees injustice and wrong.   God works to make it right.  But as God does that, he still showers rain and sun on everyone, the just and unjust alike.  Why?   In God’s completeness, God’s fullness, God can offer love to everyone.   God sees no one as unworthy of that love.   And that is the fullness that frees you from the lie of perfectionism.

You see, with all those examples about adultery and murder, Jesus was making it clear.  You are not perfect.  You are not complete.   And to try to live a life that denies that is to live a lie, a lie that will ultimately destroy you.    But if you instead acknowledge your incompleteness then you open the door for the very completion you need.  You can’t cause the sun to rise, so God raises it for you, no matter how good or bad you are.  You can’t bring the rain, so God brings it for you, despite anything you’ve done or not done.  And on your own, you can’t become complete, become whole, so God brings that completion and wholeness to you. 


That’s why God came in Jesus.  That’s why in that agony on the cross, he didn’t hate his enemies.  He prayed for them.  Don’t you see?   In Jesus, God came to make you complete.  He emptied himself so he could fill you.   He became utterly broken to make you whole.   So, yes, you are incomplete.   But in Jesus, all your incompletes are gone.   He, in that ultimate gift, that infinite sacrifice, made you complete, whole, even perfect.    And as you know that, you will find the freedom to be who you really are, warts and all.  Why? Even in your incompleteness, you will know in God’s eyes, you are already complete.  And in that freedom, you will grow.  You will grow past your warts more and more into the perfect creation God made you to be.   So, forget perfectionism.  Forget those lies.   Live into the truth of your incompletion because can you rest in the truth that in God’s eyes you are already complete. 

No comments:

Post a Comment