Be ye therefore perfect,
even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect
(Matthew 5:48 KJV).

The call for perfection that Jesus included in the Sermon on the Mount seems to ask the impossible of us. How on earth can any man ever achieve perfection? One explanation I’ve heard is that perfection is the goal, and we will only reach it only in the resurrection. We strive for perfection in this life, but there is no way we can achieve it in the flesh. But if that is what Jesus meant, there were many ways he could have said precisely that.

There is an odd thing about this passage. Jesus did not speak of perfection here. What he said was, "Be ye therefore teleios, even as your Father which is in heaven is teleios." Jesus, of course, spoke these words in Aramaic. Choosing the best Greek word to convey the idea, Matthew used the word telios to tell us what Jesus said. With all the wonderful Bible study programs now available, anyone can consult a Greek lexicon and do his own word search. The definition of telios in the lexicon is "complete." You can do a word study through the New Testament to see how the word is used, and you will find that "complete" works in every instance. Jesus said, "be you therefore complete." And there is a world of difference between "complete," and "perfect." The word "perfect" is defined as "being entirely without fault or defect." I am sure that is an accurate description of God. I am equally sure that it is an utterly inaccurate description of any man or woman alive.

"Complete" is a different idea entirely. I am a private pilot with instrument, glider and multi-engine ratings. When I completed my instruction for the last rating, my instructor signed me off, shook my hand, and said, "Congratulations. Now you are a complete pilot." I didn’t know exactly what he meant, because no one knew better than I did how far I was from perfect. I think he meant that I now had a full set of the ratings available for a private pilot. Of course, the fact is that there is no such thing as a perfect pilot. There are simply too many variables that can arise in that complicated pursuit for anyone ever to claim perfection. In a way, it is a nice analogy with life.

One of the biggest problems we face when tackling a subject like this is getting our semantics right. What do we mean by the words we use? For most of us, the definition of "perfect" I offered above is perfectly accurate. Now I have to explain where perfection falls short of what Jesus was saying.

Imagine a pianist in recital, performing a difficult Chopin etude. It is possible for him to do a flawless performance, getting all the notes right, using the pedal as indicated on the page, following the instructions for loudness, and softness. I have heard people, listening to such a performance in recital comment on its perfection saying that he "didn’t miss a single note." They were defining the performance in terms of what did not happen. There were no errors.

Can we agree that it is possible to do a perfect, flawless performance, and yet have a performance that is mediocre and uninspired? You can have a flawless piano solo by one pianist, and a performance of the same piece by a genius, and even the untrained ear can hear the difference. Perfection and excellence are two entirely different things. Once again, we fall back on the meaning of words. Excellent means "eminently good, first-class." Perfection means "being entirely without fault or defect."

It dawned on me out of the blue one day that the idea of perfection is a negative idea. It is negative in that it defines a thing in negative terms. It does not have fault. It does not have a defect or blemish. All perfection describes is what is not there. It says little about what is there.

Once the idea had taken root, I had to find out more, so I headed off to the Internet where you can find out anything about everything (or is it everything about anything?) The word I chose to search with was "perfectionism." I found two starkly opposing views on the subject. One held that perfectionism is a good thing if its managed properly. That view acknowledges that the perfectionist can be neurotic, but by and large, it’s a good thing if handled properly.

The other holds that perfectionism is entirely a neurotic condition and is harmful. Which view is right? The difference between these views is superficial, and arises out of pure semantics, but it is instructive, nonetheless. I found a helpful paper on the Web by Carol Peters which outlines the various ways of approaching the subject. It seems that scholars in the field describe two types of perfectionist—the normal and the neurotic. Normal perfectionists are people who derive real pleasure from painstaking work. Neurotic perfectionists are those who are unable to find any satisfaction because, in their own eyes, nothing they do is ever good enough.¹

So Carol Peters is persuaded that perfectionism can be good or bad, it all depends. But she also notes that "A number of researchers . . . have linked perfectionism with depression, anorexia nervosa, bulimia, migraine, personality and psychosomatic disorders, Type A coronary-prone behaviour and suicide." Is it a good thing? Or is it harmful?

Peters cites another author who lists five characteristics of perfectionist teachers and students: "Procrastination, fear of failure, the all-or-nothing mindset, paralysed perfectionism, and workaholism." ² These are said to contribute to underachievement on their part. Procrastination affects all of us from time to time. The fear of being less than perfect, of not living up to one’s own expectations can produce overwhelming feelings that lead us to put things off. I don’t think many of us consciously go through this line of thought, but the fear of making a mistake, of having a fault, can prevent us from starting a project in the first place. This probably lies near the root of what we call "writer’s block." Successful writers have come to understand that the blank page has to be assaulted with words, so they just start writing. They can always come back and rewrite. It is a curious thing that most drafts of papers, books, or novels, can be improved merely by cutting off the first few paragraphs. Once the block is passed, the work gets better.

Putting things off until the last minute, when a deadline is bearing down on us, is a manifestation of procrastination. It makes life harder on everyone connected with a project. But some people cannot bring themselves to start until they absolutely must.

Apathy also keeps the writer from starting, but that may be merely another manifestation of perfectionism. He knows his work will never measure up, so he just never starts. And thus, never has to face the lack of perfection.

I recall a sermon I gave years ago in England. It was one of those fire and brimstone sermons that people strangely seem to enjoy (mostly, I think, because they are sure I am talking about someone else). After the sermon, and after the usual round of congratulations, which I always

take with a grain of salt, a gentleman came to me and said something that shook me to my roots.

"My, Mr. Dart," he said, "when you preach like that, I just feel like I am never going to make it." He meant it as a compliment, but it woke me up to one of the major errors of young preachers. The last thing I wanted was to make people feel like they could "never make it."

I have thought about this encounter a great deal, and I have come to see it in an entirely new light. When you hold up unrealistically high standards for people, the end result is likely to be apathy. When a man comes to feel that he "can’t make it," the natural response is "why try?" I can never measure up to this standard. I can never do this without making a mistake. I can never reach the faultless plateau, I am too flawed, I just can’t reach this level. I might as well give up.

Those perfectionists who can’t live with apathy tend to become workaholic. According to Peters, they are "dependent on performance since self-esteem is tied to external rewards." Too often, it is tied to how we think others look at us. We can’t find satisfaction inside ourselves. Workaholics don’t delegate well, because no one can achieve their high expectations—not even themselves. They also have a hard time saying "no" and get over committed, losing any sense of balance in their lives. Sometimes people don’t like to let go of things because they are afraid of failure on the part of the person to whom they have delegated the job. Perfectionists have a hard time letting someone else do the job and then accepting the job when it is finished. Sometimes the person receiving the job simply can’t do the job as well as the perfectionist would like. Think of a perfectionist mom and a five year old daughter working together in the kitchen.

So we are left with a person who either cannot delegate, or having delegated cannot let go. We have a person who can’t say no, because, "If I don’t do it, who will?" or "Nobody can do it the way I think it ought to be done." This hardly seems to be what Jesus was advocating in the Sermon on the Mount. But there is another side to the story.

At the end of the search, we find one theorist telling us that perfectionism is a neurosis and another telling us that it is not. Now how can this be? The answer? Semantics. Read this paragraph carefully:

Did you catch it? The author switched words on us in mid stride. What are they talking about, excellence or perfectionism? The author uses these words interchangeably, but they don’t mean the same thing. Excellence transcends perfection. Excellence can be imperfect, even flawed. Excellence may not be exactly what is written in the score of a piece of music. It is possible, after all, to improve on Chopin, or even Bach.

A story is told of an organist in a German cathedral who, one day, encountered a stranger who was examining his organ. Learning that the visitor was also an organist, he proposed that they play together. The Cathedral had two organs, so there began a kind of contest, dueling organs, if you will. Each would propose a theme which would be answered by the other. Step by step, they ascended into ever more complex themes and variations. Finally, the visitor proposed a theme that the other could not answer. The organist walked over to the stranger and said, "Either you are an angel from heaven, or you are Johann Sebastian Bach." Bach was a genius at the organ, they say, a greater performer than he was a composer. Genius transcends perfectionism, it goes beyond the music that is on the page. Yet genius may be flawed. So we have to be sure we know what is at issue here. Is it excellence, or perfection?

And it is here that a major issue can be addressed in Christian theology and Christian conduct. Excellence can be flawed. One can be complete without being perfect. This is true even when it comes to the Law of God. Perfection is not what the law is about. People are fond of saying, "No one can keep the law perfectly." The statement is correct, but irrelevant. God did not expect anyone to keep the law perfectly. Nor did he give us a law we couldn’t obey and then punish us for not obeying it. The law is not given for perfection. It is given as a "lamp to my feet And a light to my path" (Psalm 119:105).

Peters had this good advice: "Maintain high standards for yourself but don't impose them on others - they will run the other way fast!" Then she repeats the admonition: "Maintain high standards for yourself, but don't impose them on others lest you become a tyrant."

That last sentence underscores what too many Christians have had to endure. I can recall preaching sermons when I was very young in which I held up a standard so high, that no one could hope to measure up to it—certainly I could not. I was asking the congregation to be, well, perfect. I think not a few preachers become tyrants because they are perfectionists and they are demanding things of the people that they themselves cannot measure up to. Not only that, their standards and God’s standards may not be the same. Imagine how terrible this can become if the preacher creates an organization that thinks it must enforce his standards. This is the stuff that cults are made of.

God’s standards, and you can always count on this, are administered with grace. Men’s standards, unfortunately, are not. And that is precisely where the divide came between the disciples of Jesus and those of the Pharisees.

In my research, I happened on a publication of the University of Illinois counseling center. I presume it was a kind of pamphlet for incoming students and was attempting to help them adjust to university life. They offered this warning about perfectionism.

I can see a Christian reading that and balking. After all, Jesus said we should be perfect, and they are telling us that perfectionistic attitudes can actually interfere with success. But that wasn’t what Jesus was saying. He was calling on man to be complete, to strive for excellence. And the person who is striving for excellence will almost always surpass the one who is striving for mere perfection.