There’s an old adage that states the more closely you study the things that man has done, the more imperfection you will find. Conversely, the more closely you study the things that God has done, the more perfection you will find. Every sculpture, every masterpiece has its flaws, but have you ever inspected a snowflake, a leaf, the detail in the human body? The deeper you delve more and more the detailed perfection will be found. Thus, in our dealings with God as spiritual beings whose treasure is found in earthen vessels, why do we spend so much time focusing in on all of our imperfections? Why do we allow ourselves to be convinced of our every flaw and human frailty when we as humans are fundamentally imperfect? Ever since that fateful day when sin and corruption entered into God’s creation, men and women have begun life with a sin nature in their blood. No amount of good behavior escapes that reality. Try as we may, we cannot perfect that which is imperfect. Instead our task, though it be only known by very few individuals, is to accept God’s perfection in place of our own attempts at gaining it. Have you been obsessed with finding your imperfections? Is your focus of life centered on your own imperfections? Does your relationship with God suffer because of your preoccupation with sin? Have you been deceived into finding imperfections?
It is always ironic to me that the people who care most about what God thinks and are concerned with what God says is right are often the same ones seeking to find perfection in their imperfections. They work themselves over unmercifully feeling bad about this and guilty over that. All enjoyments God lavishly provided for his precious creation are viewed in a bad light with constant threats of potential excess, bad motives and generalized warnings about how things will get you. There is no fun in their fun. There is no ability to relax and be at peace because doing so will surely lead to disaster. They spend today lamenting yesterday’s missteps and in doing so, miss today. They are risk averse and think breaking any rule will lead to unmanageable consequences. They are in effect prisoners to sin and the consequences of sin. The harder they work to overcome sin, the more susceptible to sin they become. They are forever upset with themselves for some potential violation with the result that heaven’s brass. Add to that a vocal world proclaiming a never ending list of requirements to please God. In this we are deceived in trying to make our imperfection into perfection.
Though the whole world would disagree, God’s plan for mankind was never that he should live this way. It is not pleasing to God spending your days mired in guilt for your mistakes and your foibles. God is well aware of your imperfection and as such devised a new plan to forever free you from this way of thinking. You cannot earn your way into God’s righteousness no matter how hard you work. Sin nature is in your blood. Howbeit many still work hard at this endeavor to their own misery and lack of fulfillment. You cannot make your imperfection perfect. God makes your imperfection perfect in the life of His son Jesus Christ. Jesus lived God’s Word perfectly so that you and I would not have to try. He was a perfect man and he never sinned. He came into the world with sinless blood and by the sacrifice of his blood we have been made forever righteous in God’s sight. The perfect for the imperfect. Once we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and that God raised him from the dead, we receive God’s spirit inside of us and from that day forward cannot sin in God’s sight. This was God’s plan to save man from himself. By doing this God set us free from the claims of sin and wrong. Every time we insist that we know more than God and persist in remembering and rehearsing our misdeeds, we deny what God did for us in Christ. None of us like to make mistakes or do things that are not right, but as imperfect creatures it is going to happen to all of us. In this God forever solved our dilemma by introducing the perfect for the imperfect. He made a way for us to prevail by relying on the works of another man. That is grace and that is God’s love for us.
There’s more to the dastardly practice of focusing on our imperfections rather than focusing on God’s perfection. The one behind those persistent painful reminders, those dreadful accusations, the guilt and every condemnation is the devil, the enemy of God’s people. He knows that if he can turn your focus away from God and onto yourself, you will fail every time. If he can get you to look away from God and hone in on your own human imperfection you will lose the fight. You will not have confidence in God to be all that He said He would be for you because you have sin-consciousness. Jesus died once and for all to deliver us from sin-consciousness. Jesus Christ’s sacrifice removed the devil’s authority over our lives. But, if we don’t know this or worse don’t believe it then we will be forever bound by sin and the claims of sin. We will spend our days lamenting sins long past and in short reducing our expectations for a happy, healthy. prosperous life. We will feel as if we deserve sickness and struggles because we just don’t measure up. But in this we are being deceived. What God did He did once and for all who will believe. Jesus wouldn’t be a very good Savior if you and I still had to save ourselves. Sin, guilt and condemnation do not come from God. They come from the devil.
All of us in this life will be challenged by this reality. All of us at one time or another will be talked out of God’s goodness toward us, His perfection, His willingness to do for us what we could never do for ourselves. Indeed the whole quest of man is centered around believing God to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. Every time it becomes about you, what you are doing and what you are not doing, you have fallen off track. God’s goodness towards you is not based on what you do or don’t do, it is based on His unconditional love, mercy and grace. We receive God’s blessings when we believe what He says and He says all throughout the Bible our redemption would come via the life of His son. You ain’t going to get there on your own folks. You cannot earn it no matter how good you endeavor to be. So give yourself a much needed break. Quit focusing on your humanity, your imperfections, your absurdities. Stop looking at that which can never be made perfect and look toward His perfection. Relax and enjoy your life and your fun. Stop second guessing your every move and motive. You are not the evil one, on the contrary you are the good one. God knows you love Him and He knows you care about what He thinks. He already knows your heart. If He can look past your imperfections in the life of His son then you can also. Stop finding imperfection. Find His perfection instead.
Just some good thoughts…
All of us that celebrate Christmas look back upon the holiday season with great fondness. When we were young it was a magical time when our parents adorned our houses with garlands, blinking lights and all manner of Christmas themed memorabilia. We helped decorate the Christmas tree and excitedly anticipated that incredible day when Santa would somehow traverse the earth delivering gifts to all of the children of the world. As we got older Christmas never lost its joy for us as we got to produce a repeat performance for our children. We gladly scoured the earth in search of the famous doll or the other coveted toy and generally spent more than we had in the process. We began to learn that everyone didn’t celebrate Christmas and had other holidays and traditions instead. And it was okay. Some people believed that it was Jesus Christ’s birthday while others associated it with the movements of the sun. For some, the dates were arranged slightly different and the holiday encompassed a number of days. It seemed only reasonable that with all of the people in the entire world, there would be varying practices and vastly different beliefs. And it was okay. Rather than try to make the holiday season into something deeply spiritual or sacred it seemed more reasonable to accept it for what it really is; a time when people celebrate their love for one another; a time when people are a little more kind and a little more compassionate towards their fellow man. For me the holidays have always been a happy time when folks treasured the joy of giving over receiving and seeking to do nice things for others instead of seeking only to receive nice things instead. Adult children return home from other states and other countries to spend time with the people they love most. We gather at each other’s homes and celebrate the season with various libations and all kinds of delightful foods. And for the time we are thankful, thankful for the people we love, thankful for the lives we get to live and thankful to God who made it all. We take a pause from all of our frenetic activity, slow down and appreciate one another.
I’m not sure about you, but I have always bristled when people used the word morality. It seems to be a word that doesn’t ever appear in a neutral sense, but rather in the context of one person claiming to be better than another person. I’m sure you have heard the phrase, “He seems to be a man of low moral character,” which is code for a person who does not do what the judge presiding feels is right or good. But, who decides what is right and what is wrong? Some philosophers claim that all things are good dependent upon the context. Others define good as everything their church reports as permissible behavior with all the rest being sin. Multiply the number of churches by the number of differing opinions and you end up with an ocean’s worth of so-called sin. Is that what morality really is? It seems morality in its basic form would be the distinction between right and wrong. But, I think it goes a step further than that. The question that begs is why are some things considered good while other things are reported as bad? Assuming God to be the ultimate authority on right versus wrong, would it make sense for Him to arbitrarily decide a good act from a bad act? Further, would it be logical for the distinction between good and bad to be simply based upon a code of approved behavior without some reason or logic back of it? And even deeper, would God’s plan for the man He designed complete with instructions on how best to live life, list all the things that a man enjoys as bad things leaving those things he was generally indifferent about as good? Or, has religion skewed our views concerning what good really is as opposed to what bad really is in the crucible of our existence? Thus, morality, what is right and what is wrong, must be based on more than an arbitrary set of rules for living made up to annoy, restrict and punish mankind. Morality, in its truest sense serves rather as a source of preservation defining what will lead to blessings and abundance protecting us from those things that lead to misery and loss. 
There is a famous poem by Dale Wimbrow called, ‘The Guy in the Glass” and there is a famous song by Michael Jackson called, “Man in the Mirror” both focused on the judgments we assign to ourselves. The reason both works are so important is because their messages point us back to things we think about ourselves, indeed the judgments we conclude as true about who we are. The problem with our self-judgments is that they are typically not true, but rather a compendium of other people’s judgments we have assumed as our own. Judgment runs rampant in the world today. People are quick to point out your flaws because they have been trained to focus on their own flaws. People judge your socioeconomic status, your standing and station in life (i.e. whether you are above or below them), your acceptability or reasons for rejection, your attractiveness quotient, your body shape and size, whether you are good or evil (as an all or nothing proposition) and finally your value as a human being. In this, you and I are submerged and swallowed up in judgment day by day whether we recognize it or not. Each days holds an opportunity or multiple opportunities for people to take shots at you either in cruelty and meanness or disguised and wrapped up in humor. Not only do you become the butt of the joke, but worse an assault is being made on who you are. For this reason it is incumbent upon us to learn how to make proper judgments about ourselves and even more so, how to properly discern and reject others’ judgments of us. Thus, the judgments of the man or the woman in the mirror become paramount. 
Mental health has become a popular topic nowadays. People are becoming more and more aware of the importance of their mental health and how it positively or negatively affects their lives. It might surprise you to know that as long as there have been human beings, mankind has endured mental health problems. As thinking beings and the only thinking beings as we know it, man is forever impacted by the thoughts he chooses and the thoughts he entertains. To separate the mental health issues that plague mankind and his thoughts serves only to make man a victim and not someone that has control over his thoughts and thus his mental health. A healthy mind must be fed healthy thoughts and the thoughts that contradict health always lead to sickness, first in the mind and later in the body. Have mental health issues got you down? If so, listen to my mental health musings and see what you think.
One thing we all have in common as human beings is the desire to find things that make us happy. If you think about, we are all on a quest for happiness. And, far too many people seem to be unable to find it. It is probably the most written about subject in the whole world. Some folks think happiness exists as a direct result of their financial means. Others claim it is the direct result of extreme poverty and stripping yourself from all the entanglements of the world. Some say it is found in nature, while others want to experience it in the city. No matter where you find it, one thing we all agree on is our need to have it. So, when it comes to happiness, are you barking up the wrong tree?
I often reference the process of believing God when I write my blogs and I began to wonder if people really understood what it means to believe God. Believing is one of the most simple, natural things in the world. It is not some magical mind activity that we employ when we have a need, nor is it the power of the mind which some erroneously purport. Instead believing is a prerequisite to receiving anything from God. In fact, it is the necessary ingredient in order to bring any good things into our lives. People believe everyday and remain unaware of it. If believing is the key to receiving, then it behooves us all to learn how to believe. In this I ask, can you see it?
justsomegoodthoughts 