Being Perfect

When I was about nine years old I was sitting at the table waiting for my tea and I promised myself that I would remember that moment for the rest of my life. There was nothing special about the moment but for some reason I decided to remember it. This was a curious but pointless thing for me to do, but if I could get any nine year old to make the same committment to remember what I'm about to say for as long then it really could transform their life.

The message I wish I could get over, to myself and to everyone I meet, is that you are not perfect. God is perfect, human beings can't be. Jesus is perfect, you are imperfect. The holy spirit is perfect, but the church is very far from perfect. Heaven will be perfect but this world cannot be so.

We bandy about the word 'perfect' to describe a child's score in a maths test for example. But getting full marks doesn't make you perfect, because a good teacher will keep setting you new harder tests - and you will find your limits, even if you're a brilliant mathematician there will always be a point beyond which you cannot go. You cannot be perfect.

Children of divorcing parents sometimes think that if only they could become perfect then their parents would stay together. Adults stay with abusive partners believing that if only they could be the perfect wife or husband then their partner would stop abusing them and everything would be alright. I remember as a child making the promise that I would be so astonishingly good that my Dad wouldn't ever be cross with me again. But I couldn't be perfect and neither could he - God is perfect, humans aren't. Jesus is perfect but we're not. And the holy spirit is perfect but the church it calls into being is not and never will be.

There are two ways to get into God's good books. One is to be perfect, the other is to know that you are not perfect. There's nothing that can't be forgiven by God - but what seems most unforgiveable from God's perspective, from the point of view of the Father who is perfect and stands in in judgement over humanity is not that human beings are imperfect - it is that human beings think they are perfect.

Thinking you could be perfect is guaranteed to make you unhappy. Thinking you are perfect is guaranteed to make everyone else unhappy. And what makes us unhappy in this purely secular sense is not unrelated to what puts up barriers between us and God. Perfection is like a beautiful sunset - we gain immesurably from being aware of it but we will destroy ourselves if we try to own it or to be it.

God is perfect, humans are imperfect. Jesus is imperfect, you are imperfect. The Holy Spirit is perfect, but individual Christians and Christians gathered together as the church are not perfect and never will be this side of the Kingdom of God.