Perfection

If we follow the Galilean long enough in our reading of the Sermon on the Mount, he will throw us a curve ball. He does it several times. He never does it more bluntly and devastatingly, though, as in Chapter 5, Verse 48, when he tells us to

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Wow. Now modern revisionists love to monkey with translations, particularly when they concern the love of money. The various translations of this “moral imperative,” however, vary barely a diphthong. They all translate, almost verbatim, as

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Wow. We thought only the heavenly Father was perfect. What does he mean telling us to be perfect?

I can just hear Franklin Graham now, if he were ever to read the Sermon On The Mount. “Why he’s kidding of course, having us on for one of his little inside jokes. That must mean some of the other tripe about loving your neighbor and attending ‘the least of those among us’ must be jokes as well.”

“I wasn’t joking at all,” the Galilean told me not long ago. It seems that he intended “The Sermon” have some low-breaking curves mixed in with the straight fast balls. Amy Butler of Baptist News Global expressed it well:

“Most of us really like certain parts of the Sermon on the Mount — the parts about the lilies of the field and where your treasure is there will your heart be also. But there are lots of other parts of the sermon, and frankly, many of them are quite onerous. There’s the love your enemies part, direction about not being a hypocrite, hard words about divorce, and a warning against religious leaders who smile too much. If you listen to the whole thing instead of picking and choosing the passages you like, I will guarantee you’ll feel uncomfortable …”

So, what about “being perfect?”

I think it’s something that guitar players would know about. They know that when you try to emulate, or get to play along with, someone better than you, you will get better. You’ll never be a Chet Atkins, Hank Garland, Merle Travis, or Robert Johnson, but you’ll get better. It’s a heck of a lot more effective than trying to emulate me, or listening to a rock and roll “shredder” tell us how BB King did what he did.

That would be like me explaining exactly how Muhammad Ali followed up a left jab with a right uppercut, or how William Faulkner could describe, “… a Southern boy, fourteen years old … .”

But maybe the Galilean was talking about striving, not achieving. In seeking righteousness, wouldn’t it be a lot better to emulate a truly righteous person rather than a tv evangelist who simply wants a new jet?

I know what my anti-theist friends are thinking. “Are we to emulate a spirit figure who, we are told, once destroyed every baby on the planet because he got mad at their parents?

I think baseball players would understand this one. I think they would tell you that we have to figure out, in this short life, how to handle the curve balls as well as the straight fast balls.

Let’s close this morn with a “wee bit o’perfection.”

The guitar as a path
to righteousness?
I report. You decide.