Perfection in Christ
August 28, 2022
As I was pondering how to start my talk today, my mind somewhat randomly came to a phrase in my patriarchal blessing, which I think will be okay to share here. I am cautioned that at times Satan will attempt to bruise my heels and lead me astray. In the scriptures we read that Satan will have power to bruise our heels here in mortality, and I wondered what that really meant. So I Iooked up what it means to have a bruised heel, and Dr. Kenworthy over there confirmed that my internet search didn’t lead me too far astray, even if my medical terminology was incorrect.
A bruised heel happens when the fat pad in your heel, which cushions the heel bone, is compressed and displaced, allowing the bone to bruise.
It is caused by repetitive impact on the heel, especially from repetitive jumping or long-distance running (which happens to be my favorite sport. Not that I run that far these days, but if I’m going to do something, it’s usually running). Contributing factors are poor footwear and training errors, like increasing your training too far, too fast, or changing the surface you run on or your footwear you use without time to adapt. In short, it is an overuse injury.
I know this would have zero meaning to most people from a spiritual standpoint, but when I read that I caught my breath and had to stop for a minute, because I knew that this phrase was put there for a reason, for me. The Lord wanted to remind me right now that He knows me, and a main vulnerability to my spiritual well-being is overuse fatigue--expecting myself to be able to do more and be more right now, and being discouraged when I don’t measure up.
But how do we reconcile all of the counsel we get to do better with the plain fact that we can’t do it all? This is something that I feel that the Lord has been teaching me over and over and over again. (Apparently I am not just a perfectionist, I am a stubborn perfectionist. But really, it’s something I’ve always struggled with)
In the past I have thought that if I was obedient enough I could do everything. Aren’t we promised that keeping the commandments will mean that we can run and not be weary and walk and not faint? It’s funny, given how much of my life I have spent running, how long it took me to actually learn about what all these scripture references to running mean in practice. We need to remember that the kind of stamina needed to run without becoming weary is only ever achieved by long, slow training, always with an eye to pacing. The Lord may ask me to run a marathon, but he doesn’t expect me to up and do it at World Championship pace right this second. Along that route, I need periods of slow runs, sprint and medley workouts to build speed, and lots of nourishment and rest.
I also like to pause when I hear the word, “shall.” This one came up a lot in my legal writing class way back when, because it really has multiple meanings. It can express what will happen, but it can also express a command. So commandment keeping will make it so that we will be able to run and not be weary, but if it’s a commandment as well as a promise, we need to do the practical things that keep us from getting weary: pacing ourselves, taking care of ourselves, making sure our shoes don’t get worn out and our form is proper, and sometimes taking a break or riding a bike or swimming instead of running at at all. Scriptures like Mosiah 4:27 explain how to do this: “And see that all these things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength. And again, it is expedient that he should be diligent, that thereby he might win the prize; therefore, all things must be done in order.” The running really isn’t the important part here: it’s the diligence. And we enable ourselves to be consistent and diligent when we give ourselves a sustainable pace.
If you haven’t had enough misinterpreted scriptural running analogies, then I’m sorry but I’m on a roll so we are going to keep going. We often talk about running a race with respect to living the Gospel, and there is a lot we can learn from this analogy that is useful. Hebrews 12 encourages us to “lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.” But I think this idea also can get us off track if we don’t understand the limits of the metaphor. The main characteristic of a race is competition. But living the Gospel, whose purpose is to redeem the whole human family, should be anything but a competition.
The girls on my high school cross-country team were all Christian, and our team scripture became 1 Corinthians 9:24: “Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth a prize? So run, that ye may obtain. Great scripture, and it inspired me to run my hardest and try my best in more than just running. But 16-year-old me did not take time to understand the context of the rest of Paul’s message here. He continues: “And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things.” Oh, right there he is saying that we need to moderate our efforts and keep balance! Not just run flat out without stopping. “Now they (meaning the runners in a race) do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.” Right there Paul is saying that he is actually contrasting living the gospel with running a race to point out how they are different. “I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air.”
As we run our race with temperance, we should remember that the eternal race isn’t at all about how ahead or behind we perceive ourselves to be compared to the people around us or reaching a certain righteousness index. Certainly as we follow Christ He will help us to overcome sins and temptations, but the important part really isn’t the progress metric, but the process itself. Because the moment we think that we don’t need Christ desperately, or don’t need HIm as much as other people, we are right back at the starting line. This reminds me of the Nephites who were there when Christ appeared. They heard a voice, and the first two times they didn’t understand it because they looked around at each other to try to figure out what was happening. It wasn’t until the third time that they looked steadfastly to heaven, and not to each other, that they were able to understand what the Lord had to say to them.
As I wrote about competition and comparison, in my mind's eye I saw our ward as my high school track practice, where lots of different athletes of different abilities are training. Some are jogging slowly, some are doing sprints, some are walking or stretching. They all have different abilities and strengths. They are all training for different events. Some are practicing shot put or pole vault. Some, like me at some points, are in the field house icing their shins or riding a stationary bike because they, shockingly, have an overuse injury. And I felt the love of the Savior, who would look on each of those athletes that He loves and not care an ounce what mistakes they had made or what struggles they had or what place they came in at the last meet. Knowling all these things, He would only care that they were there showing up, willing to be coached and stretched, willing to try because they trust HIm and trust in the process He has laid out for each of them, and they want to do their best.
I think that’s why another phrase has been coming back to me for the last several months: the Lord’s course is “one eternal round.” Like that track where we can all train and help one another, remembering as Paul did that worldly races are about winning but eternal races aren’t.
I think it’s so interesting that we regularly have images of the Lord being on a straight path but also being on a round one. In Alma 7 he says:
“For I perceive that ye are in the paths of righteousness; I perceive that ye are in the path which leads to the kingdom of God; yea, I perceive that ye are making his paths straight.
“I perceive that it has been made known unto you, by the testimony of his word, that he cannot walk in crooked paths; neither doth he vary from that which he hath said; neither hath he a shadow of turning from the right to the left, or from that which is right to that which is wrong; therefore, his course is one eternal round.”
The path is straight because it is narrow and doesn’t vary, but it’s round because the Lord is always on the right and never going to the left (or to what is wrong). When it comes to my analogy we may need to run the track backwards so we will always be turning right, but otherwise, I think the metaphor holds. And I think it’s safe to say that if you feel like you are running in circles and your efforts aren’t taking you as far as you might like, you are still on the Lord’s path. If you make the same mistakes you’ve made before but you get up and try again, you are still on the Lord’s path. And it doesn’t matter where on that track you are as long as you are trying to listen to His voice and do what He asks. It just matters that you are there trying, and supporting the other people that are there training with you.
In my effort to run and not be weary, for the last good while I have been slowly going through the Book of Mormon again, trying to take time and to open myself up to what the Lord might teach me, not putting too much pressure on myself to finish a certain study plan or have a remarkable insight every time. I think it was no coincidence that when I received this assignment I had been working my way through Christ’s teachings to the Nephites in 3 Nephi for a week or so.
Then, what do you know, I open up the talk that Bishop Smith suggested I reference for this talk and immediately Elder Holland brought up those very passages! He said:
“The Sermon on the Mount begins with soothing, gentle beatitudes, but in the verses that follow, we are told--among other things--not only not to kill but also not even to be angry. We are told not only not to commit adultery but also not even to have impure thoughts. To those who ask for it, we are to give our coat and then give our cloak also. We are to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, and do good to them who hate us.
He continues, “If that is your morning scripture study, and after reading just that far you are pretty certain you are not going to get good marks on your gospel report card, then the final commandment in the chain is sure to finish the job: ‘Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father…in heaven is perfect.’ With that concluding imperative, we want to go back to bed and pull the covers over our head. Such celestial goals seem beyond our reach. Yet surely the Lord would never give us a commandment He knew we could not keep.”
Part of the problem that Elder Holland alludes to here comes from the fact that the connotations of the word “perfect” in modern English are different from the original meaning in the scriptures. And now we get to go back to the tried-and-true, stereotypical way to start a talk:
The dictionary defines the word perfect as:
conforming absolutely to the description or definition of an ideal type:
excellent or complete beyond practical or theoretical improvement:
Unblemished, faultless, flawless
If we apply this definition to Jesus’ injunction, we are likely to despair. No matter how much I try and how much I trust and how much I repent, I don’t see a way for me to conform absolutely to the measure of Christ, to get to the point that I can’t make any theoretical improvement, or to be faultless or flawless. Just ask my boys how many times in a week I have to apologize to them because I reacted poorly to something. But despair is a tool of Satan, not God. Despair is how I’m prone to being led astray, thinking that I just can’t measure up and so it’s less painful not to try. We can similarly be led astray if we expect that righteousness should make others free from error too. If we expect righteousness to mean perfectionism, then every leader and prophet from the beginning of time down to Russell M. Nelson will be a disappointment. And if the prophets can’t be perfect, and we can’t be perfect, what’s the point? This is why Satan wants so badly for us to spend our time tearing ourselves and others down, using a measuring stick that isn’t scaled for grace and mercy and the pure love of Christ.
Thankfully, this is not what Christ asks of us. President Nelson has taught that the word used in Matthew 5 is the Greek teleios, meaning complete. Its prefix, tele-, as in telephone or telegram, indicates something far off. Its verb form means to complete or to reach a distant end or goal. (CR Oct 1995, “Perfection Pending”)
This definition of perfection is so much more hopeful to me. It’s something I can work toward, little by little, with help; not something I have to demonstrate now to be worthy. It causes me to look up at the goal instead of down on myself.
And I think that is a huge key to becoming perfect in Christ. It’s looking to Him instead of looking to our own strength and wisdom and understanding. It’s trusting that even though the gap between our expectations and our performance seems wide, He can use us for His purposes and, line upon line, make us like He is.
Back to Elder Holland’s talk, which is from October 2017 for anyone who would like to read it:
“‘Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him,...,’ Moroni pleads. “Love God with all your might, mind and strength, then … by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ.’ Our only hope for true perfection is in receiving it as a gift from heaven--we can’t ‘earn’ it. Thus, the grace of Christ offers us not only salvation from sorrow and sin and death but also salvation from our own persistent self-criticism.”
I love to think about what it means to receive the gift of perfection from Christ like Elder Holland says rather than trying to earn it myself. When I think about the magnitude of that gift, I’m inspired to obey Him out of love and to give what I can to His other children. I don’t excuse my sins and mistakes, but I can forgive myself for them and resolve to keep on trying. That’s the difference between guilt vs. shame, between grace vs. perfectionism, and really between what Christ tells us about ourselves vs. what the adversary wants us to believe. We are supposed to have weakness so that Christ can mold us into the people He needs us to be.
So going back to those “soothing, gentle beatitudes” that Christ gives before asking us to live a higher, more demanding law, I see now why it was so important that they be given first. If we come up against the demands of the law and feel broken or weak, if we sin and we mourn and we feel like the poorest in spirit, then the law is having its proper effect on us: it has shown us our need for Christ. Remember the people who He blesses are poor, broken, meek, hungry, thirsty, and persecuted. These aren’t things we are trying to avoid, as we do in a worldly sense. These are things we are seeking after, because it’s not so much the achievements as the continual turning to HIm that He is looking for. It’s the broken heart that He wants, because it’s a broken heart that can let Him in to stretch and grow and change. “And ye shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit.” (3 Nephi 9:20) Then if we turn to Him we will be blessed as He described!
Elder Holland put it this way: “Brothers and sisters, every one of us aspires to a more Christlike life than we often succeed in living. If we admit that honestly and are trying to improve, we are not hypocrites; we are human. May we refuse to let our own mortal follies, and the inevitable shortcomings of even the best men and women around us, make us cynical about the truths of the gospel, the truthfulness of the Church, our hope for our future, or the possibility of godliness. If we persevere, then somewhere in eternity our refinement will be finished and complete--which is the New Testament meaning of perfection.”
With that in mind, my personal invitation for all of us is that we press forward toward perfection in the sense that we press forward toward Christ. We keep looking to Him, trying to do what He asks us with the understanding that He’ll provide the strength and the light and He can make our small and imperfect offerings able to accomplish His great work.
We can “be not weary in well-doing, for [we] are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great. Behold, the Lord requireth the heart and a willing mind.” (D&C 64:33–34) Not perfection; desire and willingness.
“[We] are not able to abide the presence of God now, neither the ministering of angels; wherefore, continue in patience until [we] are perfected.” (D&C 67:13)
We follow the counsel to “not run faster or labor more than you have strength and means provided…; but be diligent unto the end.” (D&C 10:3)
As Elder Gerrit W. Gong of the Quorum of the Twelve taught:
“As we seek new and holier ways to love God and help us and others prepare to meet Him, we remember that perfection is in Christ, not in ourselves or in the perfectionism of the world.
“God’s invitations are full of love and possibility because Jesus Christ is “the way, the truth, and the life.” To those who feel burdened, He invites, “Come unto me,” and to those who come to Him, He promises, “I will give you rest.” “Come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, … love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ.”
I leave that invitation and my testimony that Jesus is the Christ, who took all of our sins and weaknesses and infirmities upon Himself so that He can make us whole, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
