Posts Tagged: James 3:2

“The Enemy is Perfectionism”

On December 6, 2024 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

“The good is the enemy of the best.” (A common saying.)

“The best is the enemy of doing anything at all that is good.” (My take on the saying and my reality.)

Some of you have been wondering why I haven’t been posting any of my musings in the past way-too-long. I am tempted to give you a one-word answer: laziness. However, there is another one-word answer that probably comes closer to the truth: perfectionism.

I have had lots of ideas, and I have probably started at least ten posts in the past two months. However, none of them were quite worthy of publishing.

This has been a problem for me since I was a kid. It is why I haven’t been a better student, a better husband, a better dad, son, pastor, teacher. Nothing is ever quite good enough.

I have faced many of my demons and have faced down many of my demons, but not this one. Perfectionism and I go way back, and he is a hard master to shake free from. It feeds my vulnerability to depression. I mess up, even in small ways, and I start my descent into the grayness of depression.

And yet, there is a verse in the Bible that says we all screw up all the time in many ways. Did you know that such a verse existed? It is little quoted and is probably too honest to be well loved, but it is there. “For we all stumble in many ways . . . .” (James 3:2a, King James Version) I checked this out in the Greek, and the verb translated “stumble” is in the present tense. In Greek, the present tense is used for actions that are ongoing and/or repetitive.

But we don’t like to stumble, do we? And we most definitely don’t want to admit that we frequently do stumble.

As a recovering addict, I will tell you something that seems radically counterintuitive: Addicts are among the greatest perfectionists in the world. This fact seemed counterintuitive to me also for many years. How could we, who have messed up our own lives and the lives of others so badly, be perfectionists? That made no sense to me at all.

Unfortunately, it is only too clear to me now. We put huge pressure on ourselves to be perfect in every way, we can’t pull it off, and we feel chronically horrible. So we ask ourselves a fateful and fatal question: “What could I do to feel better right now?” Our response to that question never leads to anything good.

Now, I am not saying that every addict is a perfectionist, nor am saying that perfectionism is the only contributing factor in addiction. However, the connection between addiction and perfectionism is much more common than you or I might imagine.

What is the antidote to perfectionism? I don’t know, but I suspect that one good medicine for the disease of perfectionism is good-enough-ism. I’m not even sure we have a single word that quite conveys the idea I’m trying to express. In and of itself, that linguistic lack ought to tell us something.

So, my fellow perfectionists, how would it be if you and I pledged ourselves to good-enough-ism? Who knows? We might be a lot better off if we did. Even our work and our roles might be better if we realized that real good is much better than unreal perfection.

, , ,
Follow on Feedly