Perfection: The Ultimate Illusion

“Could I get you started with something to drink?” she asks.

“Diet Coke, please,” I respond to our spunky server.

“Perfect,” she replies cheerfully. A few minutes later: “Have we decided what we want to order?”

“I’d like a cheeseburger, medium, with extra cheese and fries,” I say.

“Perfect,” she replies.

Into the meal: “How did everything turn out for you?” she asks.

“It’s good,” I say, not wanting to make an issue of my slightly overdone burger.

“Perfect,” she predictably replies again.

Having had my fill of “perfect”–our server’s reply to anything anyone at our table said to her–I rudely correct her: “I said it was good, not perfect!”

Well, in reality, I didn’t say that out loud, but I sure thought it!

Except for the rude reply, the above scenario actually happened. Even more annoying than that exchange, however, is the one I frequently have with myself. I too frequently demand perfection of myself. I too frequently expect perfection of others. I’m too aware of how far short of perfection I and others around me really fall. I am all too keenly aware of overdone cheeseburgers, missed deadlines, shoddy work, misspellings, and poor grammar! And I know this: much to my own shame, I just invited you to discover misspellings and poor grammar in this post. Please don’t let me know if you find something. My inner perfectionist is quite sensitive! It’s a tough way to live. I’m even thinking that I shouldn’t even have written about this at all—an example of how stifling perfectionism can be.

Of course, my perfectionism is a result of some head trash that I have—and I know that many who are reading this have it, too. We have some ways of thinking that hold us back from our destinies. And perfectionism is one of the worst pieces of head trash there is in terms of sabotaging God’s purposes for us. This head trash, or wrong way of thinking, says, “I have to be perfect.”

Dr. David Burns, in his book Feeling Good, says this: “Perfection is man’s ultimate illusion. It simply doesn’t exist in the universe. There is no perfection. It’s really the world’s greatest con game; it promises riches and delivers misery. The harder you strive for perfection, the worse your disappointment will become because it’s only an abstraction, a concept that doesn’t fit reality.”

As followers of Christ, we know the reality that God is the only one who is perfect. Thankfully, he attributes his own perfection to us so that we, who are not perfect, are seen by our Heavenly Father in accordance with the perfection of Jesus. So here are some thoughts as to how to overcome the obstacle of perfectionism in your life:

How have you seen perfectionism stop you from doing what you feel called to do? How have you overcome perfectionism in your own life? Please share in the comments section below.

Pastor Ed’s Notes

Photo by Frame Harirak on Unsplash.