Recently, I was drawn to an online tweet that linked to an article claiming to explain how to be happy. I was curious and followed the link. This began an hour-long online journey, reading a number of articles about perfectionism. These ranged from a psychology journal article describing the problem and its causes, to a Huffington Post blog that suggested perfectionists needed, among other things, to be more consciously grateful in order to help combat the self-criticism and self-condemnation that tend to come with perfectionism.
This got me thinking about Christ Jesus’ words, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). I’ve seen good people turn themselves inside out trying to achieve perfection by agonizing over everything, struggling to avoid mistakes, and carrying guilt when they can’t seem to get it all “just right.” But this behavior resembles perfectionism more than it does spiritual understanding and the demonstration of spiritual perfection, and it’s a trap I’ve fallen into myself on occasion. In a perfectionist state of thought, people may temporarily lose the ability to recognize their own goodness, to understand their connection to God, and to heal themselves and others.
So, I began to pray to better understand those words of our Master. Soon, it occurred to me that both perfectionism, and what can feel like failed attempts to be “perfect as the Father,” all stem from trying hard to be humanly perfect. With what I’ve learned from studying Christian Science, the notion of human perfection is impossible, as it is fixed in a mortal concept of ourselves that is inherently flawed. Instead, we need to see that each one of us is, now and always, spiritually perfect—direct expressions of the one perfect, divine Mind, God.
