Colossians 1:28-29
God's Perfection

We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.

New International Version

To state it simply: I am a perfectionist.

By that I mean that I have a emotional drive that compels me to achieve ideal performance with consistency in a number of areas of my life. Fortunately, there are areas in which I do not feel this urge for perfection, and I feel that I am successfully controlling my perfectionist emotions so that these urges can be kept 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--haven't we all had daydreams about being perfect? Don't young boys wish they were playing in the baseball 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 to make everyone laugh?

If we read carelessly, it even appears that the Bible encourages our unrelenting drive for perfection. Jesus, in Matthew 5:48, taught, "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

However, Jesus intends different methods for achieving perfection than we perfectionists desire to use. We demand the flawless performance of those around us, and 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 will 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 subject 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 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--that our best efforts will never be sufficient, that we can never be smart enough to anticipate all the contingencies, that we can never compel everyone else to perform exactly the way we intended, and that 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 is pristine. Instead of driving away those close to me, I am celebrating my 25th wedding anniversary this year. I am becoming perfect, but not through my own skill, wisdom, motivation, or heroic effort, but by allowing God's Love to transform me.