We will be casting a new movie about an actual living person. It will be titled “Mr Perfect: The Movie.” We are looking for nominations and suggestions for the actor to play the lead role. The person is allowed to star in the movie, if that makes it easier. Don’t worry ladies, the sequel will be “Ms Perfect: The Better Movie.” Our culture seems to be obsessed with perfection. People concentrate so much on their looks, that they often miss what is much more important. People can put up with ugly if the character and personality are dynamic. But even the best looking can’t maintain true friends if they are rotten to other people.
The sad thing is that some people actually believe they are perfect, or at least as perfect as any human being can be. They might never actually say those words, but by their action they say it. Everything is about them. The world revolves around them and what they do. Other people are just an inconvenience. Their feelings and ideas just slow down the perfection that they want to enact in their world. They say they want to get along, but then at the first hiccup they rail into those who stand in their way. Their opponents are then portrayed as the lowest form of life, devoid of intelligence and common sense. If they would just do what he wants, everything would run smoothly.
This is not a new type of person, bread in the throngs of the 20thCentury. There have always been those who thought they could do no wrong, that they were sinless. But John will have none of this. He says that anyone who claims to not have sinned in their life, past and present, is a liar. They are trying to make God the liar, saying that He is wrong. Not everyone is a sinner, and they are the proof.
What this kind of person is really doing is replacing God and His judgment about right and wrong with their own set of standards, a set that they make up to make themselves look good in their own eyes. That way they can claim to be perfect. They redefine what is evil making it good instead.
Notice that John uses the pronoun “we” as he discusses this problem. He says that we might be the ones claiming that we have not sinned. Even if our culture redefines a sinful act, that doesn’t make it any less sinful in God’s eyes. This includes a church culture. We have often excluded people for whom Christ died. It used to be by the length of their hair or the color of their skin. We excluded people because they didn’t dress like we did or talk like we did.
So when we paint what we do as the pinnacle of perfection, we are in dangerous territory. The LORD wants a humble people, transparent about their struggles with sin and the perfection of our Savior. This doesn’t mean that we are always talking about our sin, but that we are always lifting up the Savior, a Savior that we so desperately need.
I don’t want to be on the side that declares that the LORD is a liar. I want to be affirming His perspective on life and the world. I might misunderstand what He has said, but I want to be struggling to put what I do know to be true into practice in my life. I don’t need perfect clarity to know sufficiently to live godly in Christ Jesus. And when He does bring greater clarity, I am willing to step up and admit I was wrong. I am a sinner. I am human, limited and broken.
Have you any ideas about that Mr Perfect nomination?
The Arnold Journey 