Article December 2, 2019 Issue

Perfection that’s possible

Elaina Simpson

A lifelong friend and I were chatting in a cafe. She asked me some questions about Christian Science, and when one of my responses included the word perfect, she commented, “It’s a lot of pressure to be perfect. Why would you want to be perfect all the time? I certainly am not perfect, nor do I want to be.”

I completely understood her point. Trying to be perfect every day would be exhausting. However, we were using the same word but with two different definitions. She thought I was referring to perfectionism, which is the refusal to accept anything short of human perfection. But in my study of Christian Science, I’ve learned about spiritual perfection, something each of us has from God. Human perfection is short-lived and inconsistent, whereas the perfection we find in God is eternal and constant—and striving to express it improves our human character and experience.

Mary Baker Eddy echoes Genesis 1 in the Bible when she writes: “God creates man perfect and eternal in His own image. Hence man is the image, idea, or likeness of perfection—an ideal which cannot fall from its inherent unity with divine Love, from its spotless purity and original perfection” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 262). Here man is referring to all of God’s children, who—like their creator—are, were, and always will be perfect.