Freedom from Perfectionism
I’ve hated myself for not being perfect. I’ve felt the need to be perfect because it has seemed the requirement for being accepted and approved of and loved. I tried to reject and rebel against this perfectionism, but it was always nagging at me. “You’re think you can get away from me, but I’m still here. You need to be perfect. Otherwise you won’t be accepted.”
When Adam and Eve were created and living in the garden before sin, they weren’t trying to be perfect. They didn’t even know there was such a thing as perfection or imperfection. They had no idea that there was such a thing as good and evil. They hadn’t yet eaten of that tree. They weren’t trying to do things right. They weren’t trying to keep from doing things wrong.
They lived without sin because that’s just the way things work out when you’re doing life with God.
The tree was eventually eaten. And when you choose to eat from that tree of right and wrong, you’ll quickly become conscious of your sin and failures. You’ll quickly start considering your own perfection and lack of it. You’ll feel shame. You’ll want to hide. You’ll want to cover your nakedness so that people can’t see the real you. You are ashamed by you. You begin to hate you. You idolize perfection and it tortures you because it’s a carrot on a string and you can never attain it even though you work yourself to exhaustion and burnout and medicating your pain with poisons of various kinds.
Then Jesus comes. He explains that what you’re chasing is indeed a carrot on a string. You’ve been living as though you can achieve it if you run really hard after it, or as though you don’t care about it, even though deep down it haunts you.
He shows you that you can be free from chasing it. He shows you that it’s safe to come out of hiding and shed the coverings you’ve hid yourself under. You’ve been made blameless and righteous and spotless if you choose to accept it. You can live like him. Free from sin. Free from thinking about whether or not you’re perfect. Free to leave that tyranny of self consciousness and live Father conscious again.
2 thoughts on “Freedom from Perfectionism”
This makes me think of a Jonathan Martin section I read last week. Perhaps the only antidote to perfectionism is genuine failure. Perhaps what really keeps us imprisoned is not the impossible expectations for success and approval that come with perfectionism, but that we’re outrunning the very real grace that only comes with failure.
“Walking in holiness is not to walk in perfection, but to walk in authenticity, to walk in truth…Deep living comes out of deep healing, which requires us to go deeply into our own pain, our mistakes, and failures to find the God who meets us there at the bottom…as we do this, a whole new way of living is made available to us…
The fact is, moments of getting life very wrong are often necessary if we are to become people who can choose our own lives. There is no way to come to know the truth about ourselves–or the beautiful truth of a loving God–without going straight through the passage of failure.”
I think I inherited the belief that the way to stay close to God was to avoid moral (or really, any other kind of) failure at all costs. But what if it’s the opposite?
What if our “discipleship” is part of what is setting people up for this practical perfectionism?
Great thoughts! Thanks for sharing. You’re line about “we’re outrunning the very real grace that only comes with failure” reminds me of how I experienced grace. I’ve also noticed that people who have experienced grace tend to have a common answer when asked the question “what changed for you?”. The answer is often “I gave up”.