By Rev. Fr. Ayodeji Olaniyan, SMA
I have always fiddled with the idea that the essence of the incarnation is to make us more human. I reckon that the more human we are, the closer we draw to divinity. Jesus is the true manifestation of what it means to be human. To be truly human therefore will be to rise to a higher platform of living. Jesus is perfectly God and perfectly human. God calls us to be perfect like him. Hence, in the Gospel text of today from Matthew 5:48, we hear Jesus telling us, “you, therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect”.
What does it mean to be perfect? To be perfect, I must first state, is not to be a perfectionist. Perfectionism is a personality trait in psychology used to describe ‘a person’s striving for flawlessness and setting excessively high performance standards, accompanied by overly critical self-evaluations and concerns regarding others’ evaluations’.
A perfectionist gives no room for mistakes; is very specific about the manner in which things must be done; has an all-or-nothing approach; cares only about the end result of things; is extremely hard on himself/herself; becomes depressed when things don’t go according to his/her plan; is never satisfied with success; procrastinates just to get things done at the right time; easily spots out mistakes in others’ actions and spends unending time trying to perfect something. Perfectionists can be difficult to live with.
The perfection that Jesus talks about is one that should lead us to greater holiness. It is not one that seeks for legalistic order. We find some people in our churches whose obsession is to make sure that nothing falls out of place or that everyone dresses uniformly. These are ‘saints’ who are difficult to live with. These are the know-alls in the church, who apparently reduce Christianity to a set of laws and disciplinary procedures. Many of the sciences mimick nature and extrapolate principles from nature, forming them into laws and theories. Hence, we have the Newton’s law of gravity, Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, Gregor Mendel’s Law of Independent Assortment and T.H. Morgan’s theory of Chromosomal Inheritance. These scientific laws are usually given a mathematical equation. Hence, Newton’s Law of Gravity states: Fg = G(m1 – m2)/d2. Fg is the gravitational force; G is the universal gravitational constant which can be measured; m1 and m2 are the masses of the two objects and ‘d’ is the distance between them.
Scientists often try to discover constants in the universe and these constants are used to argue for the presence of predictable perfection in the universe. While there are several constants in the universe, there are also a lot of random processes and unpredictabilities. These random processes are not disorderly or purposeless. An instance is the process of cell division which is responsible for mutations that keep the process of evolution going is equally responsible for triggering the multiplication of cancerous cells. While doing Aesthetics in Philosophy, I used to define beauty in terms of alignment and symmetry, but a densely populated forest may not have a particular synchrony or flow, but that does not remove from its beauty. So, aside from all these scientific jargons I have been bandying about this morning, what exactly is perfection according to Christ?
The path of perfection is described for us in Leviticus 19:2 and Psalm 103:8. Hence, perfection is simply holiness and compassion. We are all called to a life of holiness. As St. Paul will make us realise in the 2nd reading from 1 Corinthians 3:16 that we are God’s temple. If we accept that a temple is a place where religious activities take place and that it is a structure dedicated to the worship and experience of God, God resides in us. God resides in us because we were made in His image and likeness (Gen. 1:27). We are therefore called to move above our animalistic tendencies and rise above mundane human logic. Mahatma Ghandi was the one who said that ‘an eye for an eye makes the world go blind’. Jesus has raised the bar for a Christian Human Behaviour. Rather than join in the fray of everyday commonness, we must act as matured Christians. Rather than be handicapped by vengeance, we must rise to seek a higher Christian approach to resolving conflicts. As Christian as Rwanda was, within the space of about 3 months, ethnic hatred and intolerance had decimated an entire nation and plunged them into an abyss of shame to our camouflaged Christianity. Nigeria is walking on the precipice with the vile and bile that is being peddled on cyberspace. What happened to Matthew 5:44?
I would summarise our call to divine perfection in the words of Micah 6:8. This is what Yahweh asks of you, only this:
i That you Act Justly
ii That you Love Tenderly
iii That you Walk Humbly with your God.
I dare say that Jesus has not come to make us gods. Jesus took flesh to teach us how to be more human. Jesus came that we may rise above board. Jesus came to teach us a higher form of living. In fact, the more human we are, the closer we inch to perfection. To be holy is not just about adherence to laws and customs. It would be good, in the words of Fr. Sahaya Selvam, SDB, if we understand holiness in terms of WHOLENESS, INTEGRATION and WELLBEING. To be whole is to be balanced; to be healthy; to be saved. To be whole is to be integrated intellectually, psychologically, physically and socially. For us to be holy, our religions and sciences must complement each other; faith should not stand in the face of reason. Luke 2:52 summarises it nicely while describing the adolescent years of Jesus that he ‘increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man’. Jesus was complete or whole in four various aspects of human development – intellectually, physically, spiritually and socio-emotionally. In the words of Daniel Goleman, Jesus was “emotionally intelligent”.
God is not some rigid, legalistic police personnel. God is compassionate (Psalm 103:8) ‘for he causes his sun to rise on the bad as well as the good, and sends down rain to fall on the upright and the wicked alike (Matthew 6:45). He allows the weed to grow with the wheat (Matthew 13:24-30). God rewards people not in terms of retributive justice but in terms of His abundant generosity (Matthew 20:1-16). In as much as God gave us the commandments to follow, He accommodates our randomness of behaviour and in His compassion brings us back into right relationship with Him. My life would have been easier if I were not a Christian. Unfortunately, if I must thread in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, my master, I must take up the challenge to embrace His life-giving compassion.