“Nobody’s perfect.” You ever said that?

If you have, it’s probably because you screwed up and were trying to justify your failure to someone else. That’s why they make pencils with erasers, right? People make mistakes.

This is the logic: if nobody’s perfect, I shouldn’t worry so much about the times I’ve blown it.

And yet – many people are prone to protectionism. If that’s you, keep reading. If not, maybe you can just pass this blog along to someone who is.

At any rate, we all tend to mentally beat ourselves up when we miss obvious things. Have you ever said things to yourself that, if anyone else said them to you, you’d punch them in the throat?

• ”You are an idiot for messing that up.”
• ”You are a consistent screw-up.”
• ”You’ll never be good at that.”
• ”Why bother? It won’t make any difference.”
• ”Look at all those people who can do that better than you. You’re just outclassed.”

See what I mean? When you say “nobody’s perfect,” you recognize there’s a standard out there that you aren’t reaching. And the harder you try to get things just right, the more likely it seems that you’ll fail.

Perhaps you can identify with:

• regret
• opportunities you turned away from
• choices that were lame in hindsight
• Saying “I should have…”

It’s also a matter of hearing criticism from others that feels like “piling on,” because you’ve already emptied your emotional fuel tank criticizing yourself.

I’d contend that much of what we experience in the realm of personal dissatisfaction has to do with perfectionism. Let me explain.

You’ve probably had the experience of running across a high school acquaintance on Facebook or other social media site who comes across as shockingly perfect. They have the right job, right spouse, right kids; they live in the right place, drive the right car, vacation in the right places. Perhaps you’re a student and you see posts from your classmates, who invariably have it all together. You aspire to that. You so wish you had it together, at least more than you currently do.

You’ve heard me say this a gazillion times: Social media is a great betrayer of the truth, simply because we can only see what others want us to see.

Knowing that as a fact, though, doesn’t always take the sting out of you feeling that you just aren’t good enough. It’s because we get a sense of “who we ought to be,” and that’s informed by what we see in others as filtered through modern narratives.

”Nobody’s perfect,” say you? Then why the self-inflicted dissatisfaction?

Pop culture has us saying things like:

• ”I’m better than I was yesterday.”
• ”I’m good enough.”
• ”I can do whatever I set my mind to.”

Does that even help? Perhaps. None of those statements is inherently false. But you might find yourself stuck in the same state you were in yesterday. Maybe you really aren’t good enough. Perhaps experience has taught you that you can put your mind to something and still fail.

Make peace with reality on this one.

As long as you’re grappling with who you ought to be vs. who you really are, you can expect to be in pain.

Before you break out the torches and pitchforks, understand this: I am not giving you an excuse for not striving. You do want to better yourself. Don’t let contentment cause you to stall out. If you’re a believer, giving up and accepting your state is not an option. Nobody’s perfect in and of themselves, but we are perfected in Christ. (More on that in a moment.)

But that old self? That part of you that keeps coming back to torment you and convince you that you’ll never amount to anything? It’s time for a funeral.

That’s hard.

There is never any excuse for not desiring excellence. You never want to intentionally do a bad job. I hope you realize that without me pointing it out. You want to do better and hold yourself to high standards. That’s not what I’m talking about.

Listen: Sometimes good enough is good enough. And not good enough doesn’t define you. It just means you need to not let perfectionism become a liability that saddens you.

Ancient script says this: “Be perfect, therefore,” Jesus said, “as your Heavenly Father is perfect.”

Want to know a better translation of the word “perfect?” Check this out: Perfect = complete. In other words, you are whole and done because God’s done all in you He needs to.

There are huge implications for us – not the least of which is that we never need to say of ourselves, “nobody’s perfect.” Because you can be made complete.

If God is complete (He is), then if we mirror Him (and we should), then we show the world the character of God. Theoretically, can we be perfect? Because of our weakness and useless striving, we can’t be perfect in the world’s sense. In the spiritual sense, we have grace to overcome our shortcomings and sins. Still, there are plenty of opportunities to sin, and we all tend to take advantage of them. So we aren’t talking sinless perfection here, neither in the spiritual or temporal sense.

”Nobody’s perfect” is a true statement apart from God. But you can be made complete.

I’d suggest that completeness makes perfectionism irrelevant.

Yes, you want to be and do your best. At the same time, you have to understand that God has already done the heavy lifting. He doesn’t exist to serve you. But what He wants to do is for you to recognize who you are in Him, and not who you are in comparison to others who seem to have it together so much better than you do.

May God grant you grace, peace, and the simple contentment of knowing you don’t have to perform for Him or anyone else. You’re complete. Don’t carry around burdens that were never meant for you.