The Tyranny of Perfection
I was ‘doing supply’ for my brother who was chaplain to a psychiatric ward in a large hospital in Manchester. One night the bleeper summoned me to the bedside of Maria. When I arrived the doctor explained; ‘This patient is deeply disturbed by what she calls her sins and imperfections. She feels she is not in the state of grace, whatever that may mean. Her acute anxiety stems from an obsession with being perfect, from a fear of being punished. Maybe only a priest can heal her religious guilt.’
I realised that the patient was suffering from a ‘Catholic neurosis’, a distressing state brought on by bouts of scrupulosity. It used to drive sensitive souls to distraction. After sixty years I still remember in detail, going back twice to the same priest, in the same confession-box, in the same afternoon, because, after many efforts, I failed to ‘say my penance perfectly’ ie ‘without distractions’. ‘Too late, now,’ he testily replied, ‘its only the first attempt that counts.’ I have little doubt that the terror I felt at those words still reverberate somewhere within me.
I spoke a lot with Maria. A particular brand of piety had fuelled tormenting thoughts about her personal sinfulness, her fear of God’s anger, and finally had unbalanced her mind. She felt she had to earn God’s forgiveness by being perfect. To be her normal, human self was to incur divine anger and risk going to hell. There are those who now refer to these experiences as examples of spiritual abuse.
Children are defenceless in the face of such dangerous beliefs. They are notoriously quick to blame themselves. They are rendered powerless from the beginning, when their inner, natural confidence and self-esteem are relentlessly eroded by inaccurate and inappropriate teaching about original sin and our complicity in crucifying Jesus. Not many older Catholics can remember being told, when they were small, that God’s explosive and unconditional love was flowing into, and out of, their lives like an eternal river. Or that God was madly in love with them.
The innocent young heart of Maria could not take any more of that destructive caricature of a punishing God. So it went into hibernation for a long, long winter. It was, I remember, a hard journey that both of us then had to face, first of unlearning all the negative untruths that had obscured the sun of God’s unconditional love from her fearful heart. And then, as sure as dawn follows night, came the blessed release. All that was needed was the unblocking. The light of God, still flickering in her sensitive heart, slowly but inevitably grew stronger by the day.
Her fears, of course, kept returning. The tapes from early parenting, religious education and Sunday preaching would still play relentlessly in her head. But a stronger music was now gathering its own irresistible rhythm. It was the rhythm and beat of her own natural humanity, already fashioned in the invincible image of God. It was the rhythm and beat of the indelible graces of the Trinity at the core of her being – graces that were first celebrated at her baptism when she was delightedly anointed priestess, prophetess and princess within the intimacy of God’s family.
But only now, and almost too late, were these true and breath-taking affirmations emerging. What this woman’s aching heart was waiting to be told all through her winter of waiting was how loved she was; how precious she was to God; how utterly inconsequential were her so-called sins before the consuming passion of her divine lover. But was I sure, she would keep asking me? Because those tapes were carrying a different message. And repeatedly I would reply ‘Just look at Jesus – look nowhere else. Look at his beautiful human heart. Reflect on the extravagance of his love and forgiveness. There, and there only, will you will find the true heart of God.’
Over the last few years I have often reflected on this encounter. Every week I meet those who still carry guilt, shame or anxiety about the state of their lives. They feel they should be better than they are. They struggle with those wayward parts of themselves that they cannot ‘control’. They blame themselves for not being perfect.
Sometimes I discuss with those troubled souls (and that means most of us) the possibility that we are trying too hard to be good. I suggest to them that, no matter what, there will always be a certain, difficult load to carry. To be human is to be flawed, to be in conflict, to be unfinished. Here, and here alone, does the grace of trust finds its place – trust in life, trust in love, trust in a God who doesn’t have a problem with our imperfection. What I mean is that there is little point in trying to be perfect. Ordinary human beings just don’t do perfection very well. Nor are we meant to – for the simple reason that this is how God has made us! ‘Perfection,’ wrote Simone Weil, ‘is sterile; it cannot have children.’
All sunshine makes a desert. The desert needs dark things and places and times for any kind of blossoming to happen. The same with us. We would never know light if we never experienced darkness. We could never know love if we never experienced fear. Nor would we ever forgive if we had never been hurt. The challenge is not to get rid of the shadows and flaws and hurting bits; the challenge is to somehow recognise them, accept them, befriend them, and then, integrate them into the rest of our lives. That is what Jesus was doing throughout his time with us. He was always trying to make himself holy, to hold the weeds and wheat of life together.
In the journey of his fragile soul, he swung and swayed, in intense torment, between giving in to, and resisting, his temptations; between refusing and accepting the chalice of his destiny. Jesus was shockingly human. On our inner journey, we too are called only to be ourselves, to be grateful for the bagful of eccentric and often scary bits and pieces that make up our complex and complicated personalities. Not all sins are that bad! There is an explosive revelation hidden under the Easter Exultet, when we greet the sin of Adam as a ‘happy, necessary fault’.
When we struggle too hard to be perfect, we only lose heart quickly. When we attack the faults and foibles that inhabit our souls, we only make them more subtle, more potentially damaging. Strangely enough, the best advice may be to welcome them all! I like to believe that even the most fearful and threatening mini-monsters that prowl around the perimeters of our inside spaces are all bringing us some kind of gift. Maybe that is what Jesus meant when he said ‘Love your enemies’.
It is not a very wise thing to do, then, to strive to cut out of ourselves those parts that cause us trouble. We don’t cut out, or cut off, those members of our bodies that are unhealthy; we work towards their healing. There is no point in denying what is truly essential to us, in ripping out all that isn’t ‘good’. It is that way too with the things of the spirit. What is banished only grows again, returns again, like those seven demons in the Gospel, more threatening and aggressive than before. Maybe, then, we should think again about being too neat and clean and all swept up! Long live a little wilderness for the wildlife within us to grow. Nobody told Maria that.