“The Problem with Perfect”

“The Problem with Perfect”


Date: February 19, 2017

1
THE PROBLEM WITH PERFECT
SCRIPTURE: LEVITICUS 19:1
2; 9
18; MATTHEW 5: 38
48
GRACE COVENANT PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ASHEVILLE, NC
February 19, 2017
The Rev. Dr. Marcia Mount Shoop, Pastor
I have a confession to make.
You may think I am a bad parent. You m
ay think I am a good parent. But the truth is,
this is what I use to do when my kids were
little and
someone gave them a toy that
beeped, talked, asked questions, lit up, or basically made any noise at all. I removed
the batteries before the children knew
the toy’s capabilities. Yes, it is the truth. I did
it. I did it many, many times.
There were three toys that the manufacturer had made to foil parents like me. The
batteries were not replaceable and they were not accessible. One was a small,
handheld
size Scoop the digger from Bob the Builder. Sidney took it everywhere.
And so for months I heard the
word “Can we fix it?” and “I can dig it”
over an over
again.
The second was three little ducks that you could pull behind you and they waddled
togethe
r while going “quack, quack, q
uack, quack.” Our cat liked to
pull the string to
make them quack
often at 3:30 in the morning. A particular kind of joy for a young
mother who
would
do anything to get some sleep at night.
And the third toy, my
nemesis, t
hat had a permanently embedded and inaccessible
battery was a tiny guitar, glittery, bright colors
one of those things that looks like a
box of neon markers blew up
and splattered all over it
. This was a gift to Mary
Elizabeth when she was around 3 or 4
.
This delightful toy blinked lights and had the
voice of Hannah Montana (aka Miley Cyrus) singing the chorus to “Nobody’s
Perfect.”
Nobody’s perfect
I gotta work it
Do it again til I get it right.
I still have
a
visceral reaction when I hear that song. I
can remember breathing
deeply
saying my edited version of the
Jesus prayer
(Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,
have mercy on me, a mother)
praying for patience, praying not to succumb to the
burning desire to take the toy and h
it it
with a sledge hammer until
I couldn’t lift my
arms any more.
But seeing my little curly haired girl in her pink cowboy boots and grass stained
leggings dancing over and over again to the same three lines:
2
Nobody’s perfect
I gotta work it
Do it again til I get it right.
Seeing
her internalize this musical mantra c
onvicted me. I needed to be more
generous about letting her love what she loved. I needed to welcome the message
even if t
he messenger was not what I would have chosen for her
.
I did
not
want her
to
b
e burdened with
any expectation having
the perfect body, the
perfect disposition,
being
the perfect student, the perfect girl friend, the perfect wife,
the perfect mother.
Everyone is susceptible to the perfectionist trap, but
at times
I feel especially
protective of m
y daughter
in a world where women’s bodies are
hyper sexualized
,
even little girls bodies
and where pressure to get straight As and be gifted and be
friends with everyone and
do well at everything single thing you do, to always make
everyone feel at ease,
to be the hostess with the mostest, to take care of everyone’s
feelings
are still real expectation for girls and women
in many aspects of our
culture
including in some expressions of Christianity.
The problem with perfect is that our very understanding, o
ur very templates
of
perfection
,
are distorted by sexism, racism, homophobia, and materialism. And so,
Jesus’ exhortation to his friends to “be perfect like my
Father in Heaven is perfect” is
something
we must attend to
with great care.
There is a s
ong I si
ng when I need to remember
God’s love. And I sing it to people
when they are in vulnerable spaces
on the threshold of death, in the throws of
despair, in the bondage of self
loathing.
Listen and then sing it with me when you are ready. It’s ok if
you don’t get it exactly
right
you’ll catch on.
(
Sing
: To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.
)
We cannot come to these passages in Leviticus and Matthew without surfacing the
distorted scripts of our understanding of holiness and
perfection. If we don’t surface
those distortions, if we don’t name the radically different reality that Jesus’ vision of
perfection requires, then these passages can become tools of deprivation,
instruments of our languishing.
Far from burdensome deman
ds of a hard
nosed God, t
hese are messages of
a God
who wants us live
into how we were made to be
.

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