Hilton Head Island, SC – September 20, 2015
The Chapel Without Walls
Matthew 5:38-48; Luke 6:27-36
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Texts – “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” – Mt. 5:48; “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.” – Lk. 6:36 (RSV)
The Curse Of Perfection
In 1787 a group of very gifted men gathered in the colonial capitol building of Pennsylvania. We now know it as Independence Hall. The Articles of Confederation had gotten the USA off to a rocky start, and these historical giants were deputized by the then thirteen states to draft a proper Constitution for the new but struggling nation.
They began their document with ringing words which we all learned in school: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice (and so on) do ordain and establish the Constitution of the United States.” It sounds wonderful, except that the Preamble contains an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. There can be no such thing as a “more perfect union.” If anything is perfect, it can’t become more perfect; perfection comes in only one variety, and that is utter flawlessness.
We all give the words “perfect” or “perfection” less value than they deserve. I clearly recall the first time I was confronted by this philosophical and linguistic conundrum. I was a young pastor in my first parish in northern Wisconsin. We were in a discussion after a potluck dinner. One of our elders, who was the youngest of our elders, a man of about 35 or so, was talking about striving toward perfection, which he conscientiously did, every day. He acknowledged that he wasn’t perfect, but he was trying to become – as a he said – “97 or 98 or 99% perfect.” It was a noble sentiment, and he was an unusually conscientious man, but it is impossible to be 97 or 98 or 99% perfect. Either someone is perfect, or he isn’t. It is like a woman being 97 or 98 or 99% pregnant; either she is pregnant, or she isn’t. There is no gradation in the fact of pregnancy, nor is there in the fact of perfection.
Nevertheless, we have all known what we call “perfectionists.” They strive for perfection in many goals of the human race: to be the perfect athlete, the perfect parent, the perfect employer, the perfect employee, the perfect doctor, lawyer, merchant, or chief. And it is all in vain. No one can be perfect in anything, let alone everything. Even the apostle Paul, the one indispensable man of the New Testament Church, recognized that. In his letter to the Philippians, he said he was trying to improve himself physically, mentally, and spiritually. “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect,” he wrote (Phil. 3:12 ff), but he was pressing on “toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
It is debatable whether or not it is wise to try to achieve perfection. However, it is a huge mistake for anyone to imagine that she or he has attained perfection in anything that really matters. It doesn’t matter if anyone is the perfect housekeeper. That and $1.95 will get you a cup of coffee in heaven. It doesn’t matter if you got 1600 on your SAT, although many of us are so old we didn’t even have to take the SAT. It’s what you did with your life after you got your perfect score that matters, but whatever you did, it wasn’t perfect. Those who play bridge or poker know they can’t always be perfect. Those who play baseball know they can’t bat .1000 for more than a very few at-bats. There is a certain political candidate who, on the very rare occasions when he speaks about himself, leads us to think he thinks he is perfect. I don’t think so. And that’s not because he is he; it’s because nobody is or can be perfect. The search for perfection is a curse, in and of itself. Never strive to be perfect. Strive instead to be good, or better, to be better. That is all God requires of anyone.
Today I read two passages from two Gospels which are very similar to one another. The first passage was from Matthew, which says that when Jesus said these words, he “went up on the mountain” (5:1), which is why this is part of what know as the Sermon on the Mount. At the end of one section of his sermon, Jesus said, “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (5:48).
In commenting on this, William Barkley says the Greek word for perfect is telelos. It does not mean “perfect” as we understand that word, but rather that something or someone does what they are designed to do, they become what they are meant to be. However, we tend to think of the perfect or of perfection as being “without flaw,” without error,” or “morally unexcelled,” and we know that no one measures up to those standards for an entire lifetime.
When Luke gave his version of what Jesus said, he stated that Jesus spoke his words “on a level place” (Lk. 6:17). Did Jesus give his sermon on a mountain, or on a plain? And is either the Gospel of Matthew or the Gospel of Luke perfect? How do you answer? In any event, in Luke when Jesus comes to the similar place in the sermon that he does in Matthew, Jesus said, “Be merciful, even as your (heavenly) Father is merciful” (6:36).
I can easily imagine that Jesus urged us to try to become the person God intended us to be, and that is a very valid goal. But I can’t imagine Jesus ever instructed us to be without flaw or error, or to be morally beyond reproach. All of us can and should constantly strive to become better than we are, but none of us can ever be perfect, and it is a serious mistake to try. We can only fail, and what’s the point of attempting to do something of which we know we are incapable? The search for perfection is an existential and psychological curse.
This is an attempt to make what I consider to be a very important theological and philosophical point. To seek perfection in anything is to guarantee oneself failure. To seek to do better or to improve or to try harder is both laudable and doable.
I can imagine that if you are half of a couple, one of you may say to the other on the way home from church, “See? What have I been telling you for all these years?” If you do that, you are proving my point; it is not nice to wag one’s righteous finger at the other with a judgmental “I told you so!” To do that is to engage in imperfect behavior. Instead, merely say, “That was an unusual sermon; what is your response to it?” You’re not trying to become better if you club your spouse with the preacher’s words, but you can do good if gently you probe what your perfect partner thinks about the preacher’s words. There is more than one way to skin a cat, and a frontal attack will likely get you skinned alive. You might even deserve it, you smug sinner, you.
I read about a British man who went to the dentist for root canal surgery. Something went wrong, and ever since, he can remember nothing of his life from that moment on. Every day he gets out of bed and asks his wife who he is and where he is. He can remember things from before the dentist visit, but the only thing he can remember after that happened is that his father died. Otherwise, try as he might, he can’t bring back ten minutes ago or ten months ago or ten years ago. He lives in an interminable, bewildering, mystifying present.
Try as we might, we cannot make everything right that we want to make right. We’re like that poor man; we’re stuck in an imperfect world as imperfect human beings. Our imperfections include our relationships with one another, our life with one another, our efforts always to do right by one another. We can’t win for losing. It is sadly inevitable. Failures are an unavoidable factor in the successes of everyone who ever lived.
Anyone who has ever played bridge knows that there are less-than-average players, average players, and really good players. But even the best bridge players are not and cannot be perfect. For one thing, how well one does with each hand that is dealt depends on what cards each person gets, and especially what you and your partner get. If two partners get nothing, nothing is what they will have when the score is written for that hand. And if one partner gets really good cards and the other gets nothing, then it will be hard for the two players to do well. But even when both partners are dealt great hands with lots of points, it is rare to get a grand slam. (If you don’t play bridge, just play along with me, and try to imagine what I’m saying.) Perfection in bridge is simply beyond the realm of possibility. All the best players can hope for is to do their absolute best. But nobody gets grand slams with every hand that is dealt.
No gardener achieves perfection in the garden. No stock broker makes perfect suggestions all the time. No money manager is perfect in every investment. Even Warren Buffet misses the mark on a regular, if also remarkably limited, basis.
Through the years I have visited countless patients in the hospital. Most of them hope for and expect the best care possible, but some expect perfect care, flawless care. It doesn’t happen. And it doesn’t because it can’t. As long as humans are involved in the process of taking care of other humans, there will be mistakes and mismanagement and miscalculations. Those who expect or demand the most will be the most frustrated. Such is the curse of the search for perfection.
Through the years I have officiated at many weddings. I also have met with many couples after their marriages went awry. In a small percentage of those troubled marriages the trouble comes because one of the partners anticipated a care-free relationship which would never encounter hard times. What a curse is that attitude! It assumes that deep love and commitment enable all obstacles to be avoided.
The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is not a tale of two people without flaws. God never intended anyone to be perfect. If that were His intention, that presumably is what we would be. Instead, we are all damaged goods. We were born good, but we also were born damaged. We are genetically incapable of perfection. There is no way around that sober truth.
Then why do perfectionists keep trying to be perfect? It is either because that is what they believe God requires of everyone or, more likely, because it is what they require of themselves. The former is a fallacy and the latter is a fantasy. No physical being can be perfect, and we are all physical beings. God created us as physical beings in a physical world, and thus we have inevitable limitations. In Psalm 103 David said of God, “He knows our frame, he remembers that we are dust” (103:14). Nothing in this world is perfect, except God.
One of the best illustrations in our lifetime of imperfection is the smartphone. In the first place, the best performance of the smartphone is determined by the technological prowess of the person using it. I will readily confess that smartphones are far too smart for me. I have about thirty apps on my cellphone, out of hundreds or thousands of possibilities. I use one app every day, the one that says “Phone,” and I use the one that says “Messages” occasionally, because most people seem to know it is futile to text me. I use the one that says “Mail” rarely, because I read almost all email on my 1948 desktop computer, which actually is under my desk. The other 27 apps I use almost never or actually never. Then why, you wonder, do I even have a smartphone? That doesn’t sound very smart, does it? Probably it is pointless for me even to own one. But I got it free, except that the monthly cost went way up considerably when I got it.
However, I, technoklutz that I am, ask why my smartphone doesn’t work in certain places. Why, for instance, doesn’t it work at the Hilton Head Hospital? Or why is it silent in the elevator of our building? Why does it work everywhere in our apartment except the bathroom? I know it has something to do with unseen waves of technological amazement pulsing through the atmosphere, presumably going around corners or through ceilings. But why do those waves succeed in their invisible journeys here but not there? And why, when we are driving up I-95 and I’m talking to somebody on my handy-dandy Blue Tooth in the car, does the person I’m talking to suddenly disappear into cyberspace? There are no mountains on I-95, it is basically flat as a board, and there are cell towers every 20 or 30 miles. Steve Jobs had a reputation for making perfect products, but my Apple A1303 is not perfect. I didn’t expect it to be, but I did expect it to be smart, and often it isn’t. Or at least it doesn’t seem to be.
The perfect is the enemy of the good. Everyone can do good, and everyone can do better, but no one can do everything perfectly. That is especially true in matters of morality and behavior. To seek perfection in anything is to experience inevitable frustration; to suppose that one has achieved it is to experience delusion.
When I was a teenager, I was a Boy Scout. I greatly enjoyed the Scouts and the friendships I made there and all the many things I learned there, knowledge which serves me well sixty years later. We always began every Scout meeting by reciting the Boy Scout Oath: “On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country; to obey the Scout law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.”
The best thing about the Scout Oath is that it doesn’t encourage the impossible, but it also holds up the ideal of doing one’s best: “I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country.” None of us can do better than our best. But our best is not the best. The best is found only in God. For our own mental stability and a proper self-understanding, we must never forget that.
I suspect Luke had it right. We are to be merciful, as God is merciful.
But Matthew and Willie Barclay may also have been right. If we become the best we can be, the best we can be, then perhaps we will have achieved what Matthew and Dr. Barclay described as telelos. That doesn’t mean ethically flawless or behaviorally without error. It means we do our best to be the best we can be. God asks no more of us. But He also asks no less. The search to become perfect is a curse. The search to become better is a blessing.