God Let's Us Screw Up for a Bigger Purpose
It has been heavily on my mind the past month about how God must feel about our overall imperfections. In the Bible, we learn that Jesus asks His followers, God's other children, to "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." (Matthew 5:48)
As much as we are told that God wants us to work toward perfection, we must also recognize that the perfection we seek for is not going to happen in our mortal lifetime. Sometimes we may wonder, "why even try then?".
1. God cares about our overall experience in life more than the mistakes we make along the way.
We need to screw up in order to learn. I was recently faced with a dilemma, which I will share to illustrate this point.
I have a family member close to me who has recently made some deliberate, "sinful", lifestyle choices. I racked my brain trying to think of some way to get through to them to make them realize their destructive choices. I thought about contacting a third party friend who could "get through to them" to this family member to "wake up" and change. As I prayed and meditated on how to do this, I felt a surprising spiritual revelation. God's Holy Spirit came to me, and let me know that it was not my job to manipulate anyone or guilt trip anyone to change. I was encouraged by God's Holy Spirit that my sole duty and responsibility was to love unconditionally. When I mentally and humbly accepted that truth, I seemed to get a glimpse that God was allowing this individual to make their mistakes because those mistakes would provide more personal growth for that individual than would ever happen if they were coerced back on track. I also was reminded that Jesus' atonement provided for this family member to make their mistakes, learn what they needed to learn, and return when and if they desired. The atonement is not for "if" we make mistakes. It is for when we make mistakes. Mistakes are absolutely crucial to our spiritual growth, and without mistakes, our mortal purpose would lose it's meaning. I also realized that no matter what happened, this family member would never be out of reach of God's greater purposes.
That experience has caused me frequent reflection on mistakes. Mistakes, sins, transgressions, and flaws all serve a few great and eternal purposes:
2. God loves us "in" our mistakes. God does not ignore us until we decide we want His help. He has been there all along with His arms outstretched constantly for us. But He won't invade our privacy. When we put Him at a distance, He keeps that distance until we welcome Him back into our inner circle. If we invite Him daily, He will be with us every day and walk through our mistakes with us every day, giving us wisdom to find greater peace in our mortality.
3. God has more planned for our lives than mediocrity. I believe we are children of God. If we are literal children of God, that must mean that when we "grow up" we will be just like God, right? If a kitten grows up to be a cat, a puppy grows up to be a dog, than we, as God's children, are destined to become like God, which is why we try to be like Jesus, so eventually we will. I do believe our potential is much greater than we can fathom. We would be damning ourselves from divine growth to assume we were "good enough" and without need for further progress. So this message of encouraging us to "be perfect" is actually a constant invitation to continue improvement. The only person that God the Father expected to be perfect all of mortality was Jesus Christ. The rest of us, then, need to rely on Jesus' strength, example, compassion, forgiveness, and advocacy so that we can, as wobbly as we may, eventual gain that perfection, or that "completion" of God's road map in our lives.
In the meantime, I believe we have a loving Father, who ultimately understands, and is always loving and compassionate. He sees us as wholly loved and absolutely divine and eternal. The Father will never condone any work contrary to His laws, but He does not associate our divine identity with our wrongful desires. Because God the Father is a God of both mercy and justice, we cannot rationalize sin and expect the universe to ignore it as well. We always have mercy extended, but if we don't keep changing for the better and improving, relying on the purifying merits of Jesus Christ to take our sins away, we'll always be faced with the eternal justice of our choices. God's universal, eternal laws are marked by the laws that Jesus Christ gave us. Jesus has given us the successful road map of Jesus Christ, His perfect Son, so we can pattern our path closely to His. Jesus Christ, because He understands us perfectly in every detail, can help us navigate our roadblocks, help us repent and be forgiven, and be cleaned and recharged. Those patterns will ultimately help us complete our divine destiny on Earth, being "therefore perfect".
As much as we are told that God wants us to work toward perfection, we must also recognize that the perfection we seek for is not going to happen in our mortal lifetime. Sometimes we may wonder, "why even try then?".
1. God cares about our overall experience in life more than the mistakes we make along the way.
We need to screw up in order to learn. I was recently faced with a dilemma, which I will share to illustrate this point.
I have a family member close to me who has recently made some deliberate, "sinful", lifestyle choices. I racked my brain trying to think of some way to get through to them to make them realize their destructive choices. I thought about contacting a third party friend who could "get through to them" to this family member to "wake up" and change. As I prayed and meditated on how to do this, I felt a surprising spiritual revelation. God's Holy Spirit came to me, and let me know that it was not my job to manipulate anyone or guilt trip anyone to change. I was encouraged by God's Holy Spirit that my sole duty and responsibility was to love unconditionally. When I mentally and humbly accepted that truth, I seemed to get a glimpse that God was allowing this individual to make their mistakes because those mistakes would provide more personal growth for that individual than would ever happen if they were coerced back on track. I also was reminded that Jesus' atonement provided for this family member to make their mistakes, learn what they needed to learn, and return when and if they desired. The atonement is not for "if" we make mistakes. It is for when we make mistakes. Mistakes are absolutely crucial to our spiritual growth, and without mistakes, our mortal purpose would lose it's meaning. I also realized that no matter what happened, this family member would never be out of reach of God's greater purposes.
That experience has caused me frequent reflection on mistakes. Mistakes, sins, transgressions, and flaws all serve a few great and eternal purposes:
- They fill us with gratitude and love for Jesus Christ, who forgives us
- They teach us that we need to follow Jesus Christ to live with a pure heart
- They allow us to navigate through sin and sorrow to find where happiness and joy are found
If we beat ourselves up for our mistakes and imperfections, we can't allow for any of those three purposes to enter our minds and lives.
2. God loves us "in" our mistakes. God does not ignore us until we decide we want His help. He has been there all along with His arms outstretched constantly for us. But He won't invade our privacy. When we put Him at a distance, He keeps that distance until we welcome Him back into our inner circle. If we invite Him daily, He will be with us every day and walk through our mistakes with us every day, giving us wisdom to find greater peace in our mortality.
Imagine a Roomba vacuuming robot navigating a course through the carpet of a home. It will bump into furniture or stop at a barrier and need to correct its course again and again until the course is complete. And in the end, the course looks something like this:
"Roombas do not map out the rooms they are cleaning. Instead, they rely on a few simple algorithms such as spiral cleaning (spiraling), room crossing, wall-following and random walk angle-changing (after bumping into an object or wall). The result is that although Roombas are effective at cleaning rooms, they take several times as long to do the job as a person would. Roombas may cover some areas many times, and other areas only once or twice." (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roomba#Operation)
Sometimes I wonder if God sees our overall life like that pathway made by the robot. It may not look symmetrical, pretty, or divinely designed, but we are getting the job done that He intends for us, covering all the area He sent us to cover, even if it takes us much longer to get it all right. He's not going to laugh or ridicule or ignore us because we bump into a wall. Instead, I believe He genuinely looks forward to our benchmarks of completion and progression points and then showers us with blessings. And when we need to stop and recharge, He allows us time without casting judgement, and He understands perfectly. When we make mistakes and need to be cleaned or "serviced" spiritually, He cleans us, repairs our broken parts, and is compassionate toward those broken parts of us that need longer time to repair. He grants us our necessary strength and recharges us, and cheers us on when we resume our life mission.
3. God has more planned for our lives than mediocrity. I believe we are children of God. If we are literal children of God, that must mean that when we "grow up" we will be just like God, right? If a kitten grows up to be a cat, a puppy grows up to be a dog, than we, as God's children, are destined to become like God, which is why we try to be like Jesus, so eventually we will. I do believe our potential is much greater than we can fathom. We would be damning ourselves from divine growth to assume we were "good enough" and without need for further progress. So this message of encouraging us to "be perfect" is actually a constant invitation to continue improvement. The only person that God the Father expected to be perfect all of mortality was Jesus Christ. The rest of us, then, need to rely on Jesus' strength, example, compassion, forgiveness, and advocacy so that we can, as wobbly as we may, eventual gain that perfection, or that "completion" of God's road map in our lives.
In the meantime, I believe we have a loving Father, who ultimately understands, and is always loving and compassionate. He sees us as wholly loved and absolutely divine and eternal. The Father will never condone any work contrary to His laws, but He does not associate our divine identity with our wrongful desires. Because God the Father is a God of both mercy and justice, we cannot rationalize sin and expect the universe to ignore it as well. We always have mercy extended, but if we don't keep changing for the better and improving, relying on the purifying merits of Jesus Christ to take our sins away, we'll always be faced with the eternal justice of our choices. God's universal, eternal laws are marked by the laws that Jesus Christ gave us. Jesus has given us the successful road map of Jesus Christ, His perfect Son, so we can pattern our path closely to His. Jesus Christ, because He understands us perfectly in every detail, can help us navigate our roadblocks, help us repent and be forgiven, and be cleaned and recharged. Those patterns will ultimately help us complete our divine destiny on Earth, being "therefore perfect".
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