Is perfection our enemy or our friend?

“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” is common counsel nowadays. It urges us to settle for “good enough” rather than delay a needed solution by chasing an elusive perfection. This is reflected in a product-testing approach termed Minimum Viable Product—that is, crossing a threshold where a product has minimal functionality but is capable of working successfully.

In “projects” such as caring for our health, finding a life partner, and setting up home, we yearn for more than “minimum viable.” Yet picturing and pursuing perfection within a material framework can be like the cartoonish trope of a carrot hanging from a stick in front of a mule: It dangles enticingly before our eyes, a perfection we can never quite reach. 

A far more trustworthy pathway to experiencing good is turning our attention away from what we don’t seem to have and developing the spiritual sense that Jesus exemplified. The textbook of Christian Science by Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, describes this spiritual sense as follows: “The Christlike understanding of scientific being and divine healing includes a perfect Principle and idea,—perfect God and perfect man,—as the basis of thought and demonstration” (p. 259). This points us to a perfection already at hand: perfect Love, God, and the perfection of all as Love’s expression.