By David Randall
For those of us that accept the challenge of discipleship, the mandate to be perfect is one of the most ominous things we face.
It entails everything from family home evening and family history to education and relationships. In essence, 'be ye therefore perfect' puts pressure on every aspect of life.
I think the pressure can be a good thing. It helps us take life seriously and understand that we are not here just floating from one amusement to the next. But it can also be a negative thing, when it starts to weigh us down, rather than push us forward.
One of my favorite quotes on this topic came from Henry Emerson Fosdick:
'Some Christians carry their religion on their backs. It is a packet of beliefs and practices which they must bear. At times it grows heavy and they would willingly lay it down, but that would mean a break with old traditions, so they shoulder it again. But real Christians do not carry their religion, their religion carries them. It is not weight; it is wings.'
So the question then comes, 'How do I make religion and the drive for perfection into wings, rather than a weight on my shoulders?'
I think the answer comes in part by understanding what it means to be perfect.
I think too often those that feel weighed down with the seemingly unending stream of commandments are trying to act perfectly, rather than be perfect, or constantly perfected.
I was a painful example of this as a missionary. I didn''t want to just serve a mission; I wanted to be a missionary. I tried to memorize all the scriptures and follow all the idiosyncrasies of the missionaries I admired. I was willing to blindly thrust myself into the role, understanding all it''s implications and rules and methods, because that is something that I wanted to be and I felt like I was a strong enough person to do it.
But I''ve learned that I had totally missed the mark. I wasn''t strong enough to be a missionary in the active sense, without becoming a missionary in the internal sense. I had sucked myself completely out of the picture, which meant all my actions were a constant pressure on my internal self. I was surrounded by rules and methods that I could handle for the most part, but that I hadn''t internalized.
It made it difficult sometimes to decide what things were most important and to really change myself because I had only looked at them from the perspective of Elder Randall, not David Randall. I hadn''t truly learned was that before we can be anything, we must be ourselves.
God asks us to be perfect, but he does not require to start with anything more than what we are right now. The more we try to separate our gospel selves and gospel priorities from internal self and internal priorities, the more stress we create.
When I start with myself and look out into the world that surrounds me including gospel, family and academics, rather than try to handle each from a different perspective, suddenly it becomes easier to set priorities and evaluate which next step toward perfections will be the best.