Week of August 29, 2010

Pressing On
Philippians 3:4-14

though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

English Standard Version

I need to be truthful about this: I am a perfectionist.

By that I mean that I have an emotional drive that compels me to achieve ideal performance with consistency in many areas of my life. Fortunately, there are other areas in which I do not feel this urge for perfection, and I feel that I am successfully controlling my perfectionist emotions to keep these urges in a healthy balance. Still, if I relax my guard, I quickly develop attitudes of arrogance and impatience that stymie my walk with God and damage my relationships with others.

I must admit that I have benefited from my perfectionist inclinations. I excelled in math during my school years, and math is simply a perfect, idealized universe that sometimes conveniently models the real world. I graduated with highest honors from Georgia Tech, a monastery of science and engineering. My career is in computer science, and computers are notorious for demanding precision and perfection. My other vocation is music, and musical performance necessitates technical mastery of both instrument and musical score as the prerequisite for effectively expressing one’s self. When I am not performing, I am often running the sound system, where any error is likely to distract the audience and irritate the performers.

It isn’t just me that strives for perfection—haven’t we all had daydreams about being perfect? Don’t young boys wish they were playing in baseball’s World Series, so they could hit the winning home run? Don’t girls imagine themselves as the picture-perfect bride in a fairy-tale wedding? Don’t we all want to be the ones that solve the daunting problem, make the big sale, or tell the perfect joke that makes everyone laugh?

If we read carelessly, it even appears that the Bible encourages our unrelenting drive for perfection. Jesus, in Matthew 5:48, taught, “Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.”

However, Jesus intended different methods for achieving perfection than we perfectionists are driven to use. We demand the flawless performance of those around us, and we justify our unreasonable expectations by assuring the tormented that we demand even higher standards of ourselves. With an intense focus, we marshal every resource available toward achieving the highest degrees of excellence. We are certain that our efforts to spur everyone towards our ideal will yield great benefits in the end and earn us the gratitude of those whom we have pushed beyond their limits—once they recognize what they have accomplished and how they have grown under our direction. You know the stereotypes for perfectionists, and often those stereotypes are accurate.

There is no room for God in the plans of a full-blown perfectionist. God is not a resource that can be controlled or influenced. Perfectionists are reluctant to substitute anyone else’s plans for their own, particularly plans that require blind faith. Perfectionism at its strongest encourages the practitioner to control every aspect of the environment, to dictate all the activities, to guarantee the result, to be the mastermind behind the entire venture—to be a god.

To follow God’s will requires a perfectionist to admit failure and weakness. This can be an emotionally crushing revelation to concede the obvious: our best efforts will never be sufficient, we can never be smart enough to anticipate all the contingencies, we can never compel everyone else to perform exactly the way we intended, and we do not know what is best. Perfectionists must recognize that the only way we will ever satisfy our emotional need for perfection is through surrendering completely to God.

The freedom and joy that comes from surrender is immense! No longer does a perfectionist pursue the world’s most brilliant concerto performance, but pursues the perfect Love expressed by God through Jesus Christ. Results are no longer measured by size or profitability, but in relationships. In fact, the perfectionist devoted to God’s Will no longer knows what the result will be, but trusts that the only One qualified to be God is working all things out for good. God’s presence with us blesses us constantly with glimpses of holy perfection, and the changing perfectionist trades the frustration of constant imperfection for the ebullient bliss of experiencing God’s Love.

For me, learning to surrender my emotional need for perfection has yielded radical results in every area of my life. I could never be successful as a manager if I still behaved as an arrogant computer perfectionist. My highest goal for leading church music groups is that God would use the individuals in the ensemble, not that our performance will be pristine. Instead of driving away those close to me, I have been married to the same wonderful woman for almost 30 years. I am becoming perfect, but not through my own skill, wisdom, motivation, or heroic effort, but by allowing God’s Love to transform me.