Audio Transcript

Back to questions about our perfectionistic tendencies, today and Monday. Many of us struggle here. Next time we look at how perfectionism makes us indecisive in life decisions. But first a question from a student. When are good grades good enough? Here’s the email: “Pastor John, hello to you and thank you for this podcast. I’m a female high school student in Minnesota, a senior taking five college classes, so technically a full-time college student as well. This last year, in my online classes, teachers would prohibit the use of textbooks during midterms and finals. But my friends would use their books anyway. I was tempted to cheat like this, too, but didn’t. I studied longer. Had I cheated, I would have had more time to study my Bible and to hang out with my family and attend church youth group events. I know I cannot cheat and honor God.

“But is overdoing my studies honoring to him either? How important is it to strive for As, if achieving them takes me away from more important things? I’m wired to be a perfectionist. But perhaps it is wiser to settle for Bs and for second best in school or in work to preserve my time for other things that are equally or more important. How do you weigh the pros and cons of excellence when settling for very good seems wiser? When are Bs wiser than As?”

When I saw this question earlier and had a chance to think about it (and even think whether I want to tackle answering it), I spent a long time pondering, How do you give counsel not only to this kind of question but to this kind of person? And by that I mean that she said, “I’m wired to be a perfectionist.” So, we have a person — and she’s, of course, not unusual — with a perfectionist bent wrestling with, you might say, good grades versus good deeds. That’s one way to say it.

Wisdom for Perfectionists

Almost everybody would agree that taking the time to save a person’s life is more important than getting an A. No question. Almost everybody would say (probably) that going to a party with your friends is not worth lowering your school performance for. But in between those two more or less obvious choices, there are dozens and dozens of gradations that a perfectionist is going to struggle with — especially a perfectionist.

And as I thought of particular pieces of advice that I could give, I realized that at every point, certain personalities, certain perfectionist types — I think I include myself here, probably — would likely take the advice and obsess over it and make the solution that I’m offering part of the problem. For example, if I said, “Read your Bible and pray so that you’ll have wisdom,” a perfectionist will ask, “How many hours a day should I read my Bible? How many hours a day should I pray?” You got yourself in a deeper hole now.

“Associating with wise people makes us wiser. To be around healthy people is to become more healthy.”

So, the question I’m asking myself is, What can I say that would point a person to the path of becoming a healthy person? And by “healthy person” I mean a person who is not tormented by questions for which there’s no clear biblical answer. The Bible simply does not tell a student how many hours to study and how much Christian service to do or how much time to spend cultivating friendships. A healthy person recognizes the complexities of such questions and humbly seeks a transformed mind and heart, which is able to spontaneously and without fixations and obsessions make healthy choices.

The Path to Healthy Living

Here’s the path I want to commend toward being a healthy person and making healthy choices when the Bible does not prescribe which choice to make. And I just have one piece of advice and then some explanations for why I say it. The advice is to seek to be a part of a community of healthy people. That’s my advice. And by healthy I mean spiritually and psychologically mature, Bible-saturated, wise, steady, sober-minded, balanced, joyful, humble, courageous, loving people — really healthy, strong saints.

Now, why would I suggest this? What’s the biblical warrant for giving that kind of advice to a perfectionist? Why do I hope that simply being around healthy Christians will have a healthy effect on perfectionistic people? Here are my three biblical answers to that question of why I’m giving this advice and why I think it will have a profound effect if we follow it.

1. The wise make us wiser.

The Bible teaches that association with wise people makes us wiser. Proverbs 13:20: “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise” — that’s an amazing statement — “but the companion of fools will suffer harm.” Healthy ways of seeing the world and living wisely rub off. You can’t program it; you can’t itemize it; you can’t package it. And most of the time you can’t even point to when it happens. It’s relationally organic; it’s natural and it’s wonderful. So, the psalmist says in Psalm 119:63, “I am a companion of all who fear you, of those who keep your precepts.”

Or another way to say the same thing is that Paul says at least six times that his churches should imitate him. This is real, life-on-life watching and imitating. And the book of Hebrews says the same thing. It tells us, “[Be] imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises” (Hebrews 6:12). In a healthy community, this just happens. Sometimes it’s more intentional, but most of the time it’s just spontaneous. It’s caught rather than taught. To be around healthy people is to become more healthy.

And this is especially true, I think, for those who struggle in unhealthy ways with choices for which there’s no clear, biblical, step-by-step direction. It has to come from a healthy internal orientation to the world, and that we absorb in large measure from healthy people who are around us.

2. The Bible assumes spending time together.

Here’s the second way the Bible gives us warrant for this kind of advice. The New Testament uses the phrase “one another” 99 times, including — I’m not even counting the phrase “each other”; just “one another” in the ESV — “love one another,” “fellowship with one another,” “greet one another,” “serve one another,” “show hospitality to one another,” “pray for one another,” “confess your sins to one another,” “encourage one another,” “stir up one another,” “exhort one another,” “welcome one another,” “do good to one another,” “admonish one another,” “bear with one another,” “care for one another” — and the list goes on and on.

In other words, God’s plan for the healing of our personality defects — and everybody has them; I’m not picking on this girl, all right? Everybody has them. His plan for the maturing of our relational skills, and his plan for our ability to make wise choices, and his plan for all of our growth in how we serve and love each other — his plan for all these is that we spend time together, and for the more mature to become natural influences on the less mature.

3. God designs us for the common good.

Here’s one more way the New Testament commends this kind of advice. When discussing spiritual gifts and their use in the church, Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12:7, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” “Varieties of gifts,” “varieties of service,” “varieties of activities,” all of them with this goal: the common good (1 Corinthians 12:4–7). Or you could say “the common psychological and spiritual health,” “the common psychological well-being,” “the common capacity for making wise and peaceful decisions about school grades in relation to other good things.”

So, I’m saying to our Minnesota high school senior — who may well be in my own church, for all I know — that the long-range, lifelong answer to your question is to spend time with psychologically and spiritually mature, healthy people. Be in a healthy church. I know this is not a satisfactory short-term answer for specifics this semester. I know that. But it is what all of us need for the rest of our lives.