Perfection

Perfection is defined as a state or quality of being of the highest degree of skill or excellence. It demands proficiency.  Yet, few people who use the word employ it with this definition in mind.  When there is an order screamed into a drive-up box connected to the headphones of a busy teenager, her response is likely “perfect.”  What about the coffee order that makes it perfect?  Is it the skill in which it was pontificated, or the decisiveness based on bodily need? Perfect has become yet another word highly overused and with very little regard for its true meaning.

Matthew 5:48 reads, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  The word “perfect” here has also been translated as complete.  In either case, the challenge to succeed in being truly anywhere near equal to the perfection or completeness of God is daunting.  God the Father is the highest degree of excellence.  As His children, Christians strive to follow the Father, to emulate Him.  When fully grasping the enormity of that level of perfection it appears impossible.  What does it take to reach perfection?

Michael Phelps is the most decorated Olympian of all time, winning 28 medals.  He holds the record for the most Olympic gold medals.  In training, he “swam 13 kilometers a day, six or seven days a week— at least 80,000 meters every week.”  Thomas Edison experimented with over 6,000 vegetables to create filament material for his light bulb. He had over 1,000 unsuccessful light bulbs before he succeeded.  Charles Babbage, a mathematical genius, in the early 1820s, conceived the Analytical Engine and wrote over 5,000 pages of intricate mathematics to construct the machine that would now be called a computer.

Countless others have spent lifetimes chasing perfection.  Perfection of art, business, music, athletics, invention, science, and so much more.  The pursuit of perfection of the Father in Heaven would be found in people such as Rev. Billy Graham.  Over 58 years of ministry, Billy Graham conducted 417 crusades in 185 countries reaching more than 210 million people for Christ.  J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) was a poet, professor and who wrote The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and the Silmarillion.  Mother Teresa (1910-1997) ministered for over 45 years to the poor, sick, and orphaned in India.  The list goes on and on.

On the pursuit of man’s perfection, J.R.R. Tolkien is quoted, “We have come from God … the eternal truth that is with God.  Indeed, only by mythmaking, only by becoming ‘sub-creator’ and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall.”  Michael Phelps, Billy Graham, and Thomas Edison created stories. They sought perfection in themselves through hard work and perseverance and, from God.  Perfect is not the coffee order, perfect is the pursuit of God in the creation of who God has meant you to be.

 

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel