Father Richard Rohr dispels the long-lasting myth that our efforts to be perfect make us more loveable or valuable to God.
There is a common misperception that deeply distorts the reading of the Scriptures and much spirituality. I call it “spiritual capitalism,” which centers around a common philosophy of “I can do it, and I must do it, and I will do it.” This is the mindset of early-stage ego consciousness. It puts all the emphasis and total reliance on “me,” my effort, and my spiritual accomplishments. It has little active trust in God’s grace and mercy. Unfortunately, the driving energy is fear and more effort, instead of quiet confidence and gratitude. It becomes about climbing instead of surrendering. The first feels good, while the second feels like falling, failing, or even dying. Who likes that? Certainly not the separate self. The ego always wants to feel that it’s achieved salvation somehow. Grace and forgiveness are always a humiliation for the ego.
The movement known as Jansenism in the 17th and 18th centuries is one theological distortion that emphasized moral austerity and fear of God’s justice more than any trust in God’s mercy. God was understood to be wrathful, vindictive, and punitive, and all the appropriate Scriptures were found to make these very points. It’s hard to find a Western Christian—Catholic or Protestant—who has not been formed by this theology. Most mainline Christians pay sincere lip service to grace and mercy, but in the practical order believe life is almost entirely about performance and moral achievement.
The common manifestation of this ever-recurring pattern might simply be called perfectionism. The word itself is taken from a single passage in Matthew 5:48, where Jesus tells us to “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Of course, perfection as such is a divine or mathematical concept and has never been a human one. Jesus offers it as guidance for how we can love our enemies, of which he has just spoken (5:43–47). He is surely saying that we cannot obey this humanly impossible commandment by willpower, but only by surrendering to the Divine Perfection that can and will flow through us. In other words, we cannot be perfect of ourselves—but God can. Yet we used this one passage to give people the exact opposite impression—that they could indeed be perfect in themselves!
In his proclamation of St. Thérèse of Lisieux as a Doctor of the Church, Pope St. John Paul II said, “She has made the Gospel shine appealingly in our time…. She helped to heal souls of the rigors and fears of Jansenism, which tended to stress God’s justice rather than [God’s] divine mercy.” [1]
Thérèse rightly named this spirituality her “Little Way.” It was nothing more than a simple and clear recovery of the pure gospel message! It was she (and Francis of Assisi) who gave me the courage as a young man to read the Scriptures through this primary lens of littleness instead of some possible bigness.
Perfectionism: The Enemy of Goodness and Grace
The greatest enemy of ordinary daily goodness and joy is not imperfection, but the demand for some supposed perfection.
—Richard Rohr, Eager to Love
Richard Rohr discovered the writings of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (1873–1897) during his first year as a Franciscan. Richard describes Thérèse’s teaching as “a spirituality of imperfection”:
Thérèse of Lisieux was a French Carmelite nun with minimal formal education, who in her short, hidden life of only twenty-four years captured the essence of Jesus’ core teachings on love. Thérèse was declared a Doctor of the Church, which means her teaching is seen as thoroughly reliable and trustworthy. She “democratized holiness,” as Brother Joseph Schmidt said, “making it clear that holiness is within the reach of anyone willing to do God’s will in love at each successive moment as life unfolds.” [1]
Thérèse came into a nineteenth-century Catholic Church that often believed in an angry, punitive God, perfectionism, and validation by personal good behavior—which is a very unstable and illusory path. In the midst of this rigid environment, Thérèse was convinced that her message, taught to her by Jesus himself, was “totally new.” [2] The gospel of radical grace had been forgotten by many Christians so much so that Thérèse had to call it “new.”
Thérèse called this simple, childlike path her “little way.” It is a spirituality of imperfection. In a letter to priest Adolphe Roulland, she writes: “Perfection seems simple to me, I see it is sufficient to recognize one’s nothingness and to abandon oneself as a child into God’s arms.” [3] Any Christian “perfection” is, in fact, our ability to include, forgive, and accept our imperfection. As I’ve often said, we grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right. That might just be the central lesson of how spiritual growth happens, though nothing in us wants to believe it.
If there is such a thing as human perfection, it seems to emerge precisely from how we handle the imperfection that is everywhere, especially in ourselves. What a clever place for God to hide holiness, so that only the humble, “little,” and earnest will find it! A “perfect” person ends up being one who can consciously forgive and include imperfection rather than the ones who think they are totally above and beyond imperfection. It becomes rather obvious once we say it out loud. [4]
Near the end of her life, Thérèse explained her little way to her sister, and this became part of her autobiography Story of a Soul. In contrast to the “big way” of heroic perfectionism, she teaches, in essence, that as a little one “with all [her] imperfections,” God’s love is drawn toward her. God has to love her and help her because she is “too small to climb the rough stairway of perfection.” [5] With utter confidence, she “believed herself infinitely loved by Infinite Love.”
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| What Does it Mean to Do “Greater Works” than Jesus? Skye Jethani |
 During his farewell discourse with his apostles, Jesus makes one of the more shocking—and misunderstood—promises found anywhere in the gospels. He said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12). This verse provokes an obvious and important question—what are the “greater works” Jesus’ followers will do?We’ve already looked at our culture’s fixation on all things spectacular and the way it causes us to mistakenly focus on Jesus’ power rather than on Jesus himself. This same cultural bias has also warped the way many have misunderstood this verse. For those shaped by pop consumer Christianity, “greater works” is automatically assumed to mean more spectacular works. This view believes that because Jesus walked on water, healed the sick, and calmed storms, then to do greater works means the true disciples of Jesus will accomplish even more astonishing signs and wonders. In a culture drawn to the spectacular, and in church traditions dedicated to attracting crowds, it’s obvious why this interpretation is appealing.However, there are a few problems with understanding “greater” to mean more astonishing. First, it is plainly obvious that most of those who follow Jesus are not doing more spectacular works than he performed. It’s hard to be more spectacular than raising the dead, which Jesus did on multiple occasions, and the last time I checked, most Christians were not emptying the cemeteries. Therefore, this interpretation would immediately call into question the authenticity of the faith of nearly every Christian alive, and indeed the faith of every Christian who has ever lived. Second, throughout the history of the church, most have not interpreted this verse to mean we would do more spectacular miracles than Jesus. This is a rather late interpretation that gained traction with the arrival of the charismatic movements—particularly in the United States and in the global south—in the twentieth century.Rather than understanding “greater works” to mean more spectacular, most throughout Christian history have understood Jesus to mean his followers would do more works. In this case, “greater” means greater in quantity, scale, and influence. Remember, Jesus’ public ministry was amazingly brief—approximately three years, and it was confined to a geographic area about the size of New Jersey. Before they died, the apostles Jesus was speaking to in John 14 would preach the gospel and start churches throughout the ancient world from the Iberian peninsula to the Indian subcontinent. Even in the Book of Acts, we see more people put their faith in Christ through the ministry of the apostles than ever responded to the preaching of Jesus himself. In this regard, their works were greater than Jesus’.Later generations of believers would go on to invent hospitals, educate countless millions, and mobilize efforts to feed, clothe, and comfort more people than any movement in history. Although it may sound blasphemous it is nonetheless true that today alone the followers of Jesus will impact more lives than Jesus impacted during his entire earthly ministry. We lose sight of this remarkable fact when we focus only on the method of our works rather than on their outcome. We assume that to be “greater works” than Jesus’ they must be accomplished through some supernatural agency rather than human ingenuity. This is, of course, ridiculous.In the end, what matters is that we feed a hungry child—not whether the food appeared miraculously or arrived on the back of a truck. And maybe we need to rethink what qualifies as a miracle to begin with. After all, which is the greater wonder—Christ’s power to transform water into wine, or his power to transform hearts to be generous, merciful, and loving? We should remember that God desires to do a great work in us, not merely through us. DAILY SCRIPTURE JOHN 14:12-17 ACTS 4:32-37 WEEKLY PRAYER From George Cotton (1813 – 1866) O God, who has made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth, and sent your blessed Son, Jesus Christ, to preach peace to those that are far off, and to those that are near; grant that all peoples of the world may feel after you and find you; quicken, O God, the fulfillment of your promise to pour out your Spirit upon all flesh, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. |
