Nobody's Perfect - May 25th

We all understand that nobody is perfect. But do we truly embrace this concept in our daily lives, in our daily walk with Christ? If not, then how would our perception of ourselves and others be different if we did? These are some of the questions we wrestled with this past Sunday.

The context for our discussion centered around the formation of Jesus's most intimate group, the twelve disciples. By all accounts, Jesus formed a rag tag group of very common and ordinary men. Men with tumultuous pasts. He called some uneducated fisherman, a greedy tax collector, a political extremist, and a host of other sinful souls that on the surface had no qualifications for laying the foundation for the Christian Church.

Why would he pick these guys? In today's world, if you gave a high profile CEO the task of forming a group to evoke a spiritual revolution and rebuild the Church, I am almost certain the final twelve would consist of some of the most respected religious leaders and biblical scholars in the world, along with a marketing team to spread the word once the plan was in place. Makes sense... right?

It makes sense because many of us often share a very similar perspective of the world around us. A perspective, learned from the society in which we live, that places knowledge, money, and power above faith and commitment. Christ's perspective said that these attributes themselves are not evil. It is when these become barriers to our faith that we must do what God demands to remove the temptation. (See Luke Chapter 18, verses 16-30)

Many of the religious leaders and scholars of Jesus's day did not truly understand that "nobody is perfect." I suspect that one of the reasons Jesus did not have disciples from this group is because they were blinded by the barrier of knowledge and greed as to who Jesus really was. Jesus associated with the ordinary and the sinful. He welcomed all and held the principles of love and compassion far greater than the religious law of the day. He was and is a revolutionary, and because of the leaders' high regard for the law and efforts to live in perfect obedience to it, they missed the only person who knew true perfection.

Conversely, I believe Christ chose the men he did because they were willing to strip away their individual barriers, which in turn, allowed them to become trusting, devoted followers of Christ. Christ did not choose them because they were perfect, but because they understood what it meant to be imperfect. Jesus did not come to this world with a memory. Sure he knows what we have done, just as he knew the souls and deeds of his disciples. But Jesus is not focused on the past. I think the past for Jesus is a teaching tool for the future, not a tool of condemnation. There is no prerequisite to faith, no mountain you have to climb before you can begin your journey with God. Your journey can begin now; pick back up from a leave of absence. Be renewed, refocused, etc., in your current imperfect state. Jesus's call is not for the perfect because none exist. His call is for a simple, committed faith--a faith that puts Christ in control. The release of this control is where true transformation resides.


To me "nobody's perfect" is a tool of perspective. A perspective that, if we listen, can humble us when we have it all figured out, can offer compassion and patience when we want to see change in people's lives and in the world around us, and can be a sense of empowerment when we fill inadequate, and inferior.


What would our lives and our world look like if we held on to this perspective and coupled it with the simple faith that Christ calls us to have? The ordinary, common men that Jesus called to be his disciples did this, and the foundation of our Church was built, the life of Christ was captured through their words, and their example lives on.