Another look at perfection
The word “perfect” is often used to describe an ideal as it relates to material things – for example, what perfect hair or even the body should look like. It doesn’t take long to realize that relying on anything material for perfection is short-lived and far from dependable. And looking around the world, things don’t seem too perfect. Is perfection for dreamers?
Think of this. Perhaps you have felt uplifted when singing in harmony with others or just participating as a listener. Or maybe you have stood speechless before the beauty of an exquisite flower. You could call each such experience the hint of a perfection that goes well beyond what we can see physically – the spiritual perfection that comes from God.
Christ Jesus demonstrated the healing power of knowing this God-given spiritual perfection, and said in his timeless Sermon on the Mount, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). He understood so clearly that God is perfect Spirit and made each of us in His image: spiritual and perfect, without a single element of materiality. As such, we lack nothing and have all that is necessary.
Indeed, the perfection that comes from God includes the full measure of infinite Spirit’s qualities – such as strength, peace, wisdom, wholeness, and integrity – which we each express individually. This spiritual reality makes obedience to Jesus’ imperative not only possible, but natural. The teachings of Christian Science – based on this fundamental truth of spiritual perfection that threads all the way through the Bible – empower us to recognize our flawless nature as God’s reflection, which heals and adjusts all kinds of adverse situations.
Some years ago, these ideas were pivotal to me when a rash developed on my skin. The condition didn’t get worse, but it didn’t get better either. Praying about inharmonious situations had been natural for me over the years, but to be honest, I wasn’t really praying very diligently about this situation. One day after several months, I felt the need to awaken from a complacency about the condition.
The words “perfect model” lit up my thought, and I knew it was a message that would help me as I prayed. It’s a phrase from “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science: “In Science, all being is eternal, spiritual, perfect, harmonious in every action. Let the perfect model be present in your thoughts instead of its demoralized opposite. This spiritualization of thought lets in the light, and brings the divine Mind, Life not death, into your consciousness” (p. 407). Also, “We must form perfect models in thought and look at them continually, or we shall never carve them out in grand and noble lives” (p. 248).
I started to turn my thought and attention to the model of perfect being – God’s spiritual and harmonious being – that we reflect as God’s children. It brought an immediate sense of peace and uplift. I saw that there was no way that the full expression of perfection and a skin rash could dwell together.
I became so conscious of the presence of this “perfect model” of God’s total goodness filling my thought that I didn’t even think of the skin rash. Feelings that I was at the mercy of a material condition vanished, and the skin rash was gone in a day or so.
Spiritualization of thought – letting the perfect, divine model be present in our thinking – opens the way for the healing light of spiritual understanding to shine in and dissipate the shadowy misconception that imperfection and inharmony could possibly be a part of anyone’s real identity.
The full scope of our spiritual perfection is not evident physically. But we can start today to embrace it more in our lives. Fixing our view on and molding our lives from the standpoint of pure goodness, we will feel tangibly how God is tenderly taking care of us.
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