“Be perfect, as I Am perfect,” God says. Looking up into the kindly face of God, I am encouraged to make my utmost effort.

Then I read the letters of Paul and James and think, “They’re so right! I am a liar, and a hypocrite. Although, I daresay, they are rather rude to say so.”

How is God perfect? Nowhere else do we leap so completely into circular logic that is essentially useless. God is defined as possessing all these positive attributes, so much so that He becomes rather a tool of the language. We take all these things and say, “The Sun was out, and it was warm, so it had to be a nice day.” Anything that is good, God has to have that, and everything God has, has to be good. Sure, but that comes with the territory.

“I Am Who I Am,” God says, a beautiful sentence inasmuch as every word is one syllable and has to be capitalized. That is one rare sentence.

God is always here, in the present tense. “Be perfect, as I Am perfect” conveys a wistfulness, a note of speaking to Himself, a whisper in a sleeping ear.

We just need to work with this word– “perfect.”

Once, a giant walked the Earth– Mr. Perfect. He sank basketball shots from the middle of the court with his eyes closed. His darts always hit the bull’s eye. He hit home runs. He bowled perfect games. He had blond hair and blue eyes. But even he eventually lost (to Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake, of course).

In some cultures, legend has it that a perfect piece of art is impossible. That eleven-fingered lady on the Japanese six-panel screen– maybe that was, in that spirit of capitualtion to the inevitable, intentional. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers performed “Kings Road” on “Tomorrow with Tom Snyder” one night in 1981. They seemed out of sync until they neared the instrumental conclusion. Suddenly, the band clicked. “That,” I thought, “was perfection!” 8:08, 11:11:11 and 12:34:56 are three seconds of perfection on a digital clock. A colleague of mine had a saying– “Imperfection is perfection.”

Perfection is also an average day for a robot. Everything is done correctly.

Perfection and Heaven suffer the same stereotype– something finished. Static.

A human is different. To always exist in the present moment is a process, a carrying forward the progess made in the past and using it in the here and now and carrying it into the future where it will be discarded, or transformed.

To be who you are, to be someone whose beliefs, intentions, and actions are unified and consistent, despite doubts, mistakes, and opposition– that is the perfection I hope for.