You do nothing by halves. When you do things, you do them just right. You leave nothing unfinished, and it bothers you to see a job hastily done. The wrinkle must be smoothed, the crooked must be straightened, the disordered must be made orderly, and the mediocre must be completely dismantled and done again the right way.
To sum it up, you love perfection. You are a perfectionist.
Does this description fit you? It may, or it may be the furthest thing from the truth.
Either way, it doesn't matter. I believe that everyone is a perfectionist.
How can I possibly say that?
First, let me give the dictionary definition of the word perfectionism - "a disposition to regard anything short of perfection as unacceptable." Most perfectionists would agree with that. However, here's how I define perfectionism, and I believe it is something that everyone can relate to: the longing for something more than a high moral standard or goodness; an aching desire for fulfillment and pure virtue.
As humans, we all want something better than "almost good enough," and we look for it in different ways. Some of us hope to be perfectly smart, to have perfect relationships, to be perfectly rich, to be perfectly kind, or to be perfectly wise. Whatever it is, we all experience a deep sense of straining and striving through life, and yet rarely feel like we achieve our ultimate goals. No matter how high we reach, we can never reach the standard. We want to be perfect...but we can't be.
Look back through the pages of time, and you will see humanity's attempts to reach "goodness," to reach a higher level of morals, to reach something better...to reach God.
Civilizations rise and fall, but a common thread remains woven through every single one of them: they all have some form of religion. Why? Because there is a longing in every human heart that grasps for something deeper, greater, wiser, more pure and good. Not something just a little better than the best we can do, but something dependable and complete in itself.
Something perfect.
Our altars and our rituals and our incense and our liturgy and our Korans and our prayers and our sacrifices and our robes and our candles and all of our desperate cries come together in one loud choir of voices.
Where does this aching search for perfection come from?
Well, it comes from the very image of God. God created humans in his own image - in perfection! Sin and death marred that beauty, but the longing for something perfect still remains deep within us all. Now, the disease of sin eats away at the soul of every single person. And so man creates religion from that longing in his heart to remedy the imperfection he sees in others and feels in himself.
Yet every attempt falls sort of perfection.
Well, the good news is that Jesus Christ came to save imperfect people. The solution to all of our imperfections can only be found when we look outside of ourselves and put our trust in the ultimate Source of perfection.
Jesus Christ is perfection. When he came to earth, he lived a perfect life, then sacrificed himself when he died on the cross, absorbing the righteous wrath of God that we deserved for our rebellion against him.
The One who created everything perfectly in the beginning has already come to heal this broken world and give us hope.
That hope lies in the promise of a beautiful future, that everyone who follows Christ will finally be made perfect again...for eternity!