Perfection: the Enemy of the Good (Richard Rohr) - Day 24
Perfection: The Enemy of the Good
Day 24… from setback to comeback
This is Day 24 of our 40-Day Journey from setback to comeback, or as my book title states: Return From Exile.
If you are late to this party, I hope you'll go back to the beginning and catch up. The idea of exile isn't readily understandable and takes some time to sink in. But once it sinks in, everything starts to make sense...at least from a faith perspective.
“We grow spiritually much more
by doing it wrong than by doing it right. ”
Jesus Wasn’t Being Clever
The problem with most Christian faith is we try to embrace it through a secular grid of success. It doesn't work that way. We should have caught on to that when Jesus said, "The last will be first." But no one wants to believe that. We want to think Jesus was being clever. No, he was speaking Truth, we are just too blind to see it.
Exile will always be offensive until we understand life from God's perspective. The author who has helped me grasp this the best is Richard Rohr. I'm sharing a number of his writings because I think he says it better than I can. Here is yet another post taken from his book, Falling Upward:
The Demand for the Perfect is the Enemy of the Good - Richard Rohr
We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right. That might just be the central message of how spiritual growth happens, yet nothing in us wants to believe it.
If there is such a thing as human perfection, it seems to emerge precisely from how we handle the imperfection that is everywhere, especially our own. What a clever place for God to hide holiness, so that only the humble and earnest will find it! A “perfect” person ends up being one who can consciously forgive and include imperfection rather than one who thinks he or she is totally above and beyond imperfection.
It becomes sort of obvious once you say it out loud. In fact, I would say that the demand for the perfect is the greatest enemy of the good. Perfection is a mathematical or divine concept; goodness is a beautiful human concept that includes us all. People whom we call “good people” are always people who have learned how to include contradictions and others, even at risk to their own proper self-image or their social standing. This is quite obvious in Jesus.
Exile Is More Normal Than We Think
Maybe exile only feels like "exile" because we insist on life being perfect. We expect things to go "well." We expect to do well in school, our marriages to flourish, our careers to excel, and our finances to grow. If they don't, something must be wrong. Fix it!
Sometimes the only way to break free from this "success" mentality is to experience "failure." It's a gift to "fail" and wake up one day to see that the world didn't end. The sky didn’t fall. Life goes on. God is still God. The forecasts were wrong. There is life after failure, unless you insist on living in regret.
You see the world differently on the other side of failure.
How have you grown spiritually by doing it wrong? How has the perfect been the enemy of the good for you?
This 40-day journey is adapted from my book, Return from Exile.
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