August 12, 2011
Continued…
Six year-old Lydia was only moderately impressed with her craft project
of six paintable refrigerator magnates. Trying to generate some enthusiasm I
showed her the prince, princess and the enchanted castle. In a sing-song voice
she said, “They’re OK…I’m just not a very
good painter. I can’t stay in the lines all the time.” I finally eased her worries
by showing her the lopsided ceramic bear (or dog…depending on your imagination)
with one short leg that her daddy made when he was a child. Once her spirit of
perfectionism was neutralized, she had a great time being creative. I can’t fault
Lydia’s initial reaction. Even as an adult, God will sometimes give me an
opportunity and I can hear myself unenthusiastically saying, ‘I’m just not very good, I can’t stay in the
lines…’
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Gail;
-----Perfectionism has a well needed place in life, although it is almost unachievable in a technical sense. Every astronaut is pleased to know the space program thrives on perfectionism. Thousands of daily airline flights end in only a few disastrous crashes per year because of the that industry’s bent for perfectionism. And whenever I bite into Char’s chocolate chip cookies, pizza’s, and chicken pot pies, I close my eyes and thank God for perfectionism. Life would not progress without it (don‘t take that as a compliment for Progressive liberals.)
-----Almost everyone has a well mastered area of life where perfectionism drives what he does. It may be something really simple and seemingly inconsequential, but it serves a particular purpose. And that is the key to perfectionism’s utility or destructiveness, purpose. Someone may have the perfect ability to locate people dying in the desert and bring them canteens. But when he has located a drowning person at the beach, the canteen he will offer actually adds to the problem. The purpose of his particular perfection just doesn’t fit at the beach. Perfectionism is not for encounters with the unfamiliar or for discovery and learning processes. It is confined to performance processes, to those which you do by what you know.
-----Fortunately, our God is a perfectionist. Think of eternal life in a place of imperfection. To get there our righteousness must be greater than that of the Pharisees. “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matt 5:48) Oh-no! Maybe each of us does have a particular point of perfection in his life, but having it just in a point is not being perfect in all points.
-----Our true nature manifests in our desires. And even though our desires are messed up in that they tend to flip-flop like a carp in the grass, they will either flippity-flippity-flip-flip-flop-flip or they will flip-floppity-floppity-flop-flop-flip. The persevering side of desire’s conflicts perseveres because it is the side we have chosen (by God given right to choose.) If we choose to desire being perfect like our Father, then by the work of Christ, that we are. Of course, we are not it in whole instantly, but His perfection is in us seminally for leading us into entire perfection eventually. It is like the smallest particle of algorithm which works over and over and over upon our inner conflicts and inconsistencies combing them into becoming better and better and better. But even in this sense, it is not us who are the perfectionists working it into us. It can’t be, because we are not perfect. It is God, the perfectionist, working in us, because He is perfect. He will prepare us for what we need to perform. And He will have us perfected for what we need to be perfected. These are His gifts to us. All the rest is just discovery, learning, and practice, a bit for the doing of it and a bit just for the fun of it.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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