The good versus the perfect on the journey

Lynne Baab • Tuesday November 4 2025

I am trying to offer to God my willingness to pursue good rather than perfect on this wild, wonderful, and challenging journey of faith. I am asking God to help me receive love and acceptance so I can embrace the messiness of the journey of good.

These thoughts were precipitated by a podcast by Rob Bell, an author, speaker, and former pastor of a rapidly growing church in Michigan. (If you want to listen to the podcast, the material on good versus perfect begins at 9 minutes 20 seconds.)

Bell begins by discussing the creation story in Genesis 1, noting that the rhythm of each day is punctuated by God using the word good. In the creation story, God values fruitfulness and multiplication (Genesis 1:22, 28). Plants bear fruit, the seeds fall to the ground and are buried in dirt, and they bring for more plants. Animals and humans give birth to babies in a birthing process that involves blood and mess, a fragile and potentially dangerous unfolding that often results in great joy, but not always. Good, therefore, involves dirt, mess, and uncertainty as a part of the process. All of this fruitfulness happens over months and seasons: the abundance of summer, the decay of fall, the stillness of winter, and the bloom of spring. Good involves seasons of growth, hibernation, action, and rest. Good also includes the brightness of day and the darkness of night.

Bell contrasts good with perfect, an idea we got from the Greeks. Perfect reflects a flawless form that lies behind reality, an ideal that we try to attain. Seeking perfection can stimulate remarkable human achievement, but perfect in itself has a static quality. Bell says (paraphrased a bit): “You are becoming somebody. You are not static or frozen. We often have goals and think that if we reach the goal, we’ll be perfect. Then we reach the goal, and it feels empty. Perfect cannot be improved on. The perfect loses its vitality and heart. Good is going somewhere. It includes dirt and falling on your face. You have to be free to make a mess of things in order to make something beautiful.”

This next paragraph from the podcast (again with some paraphrasing) describes what I’m attempting to pursue in my faith journey:

“When you have this ideal of perfect in your head, when you encounter obstacles, you bail. ‘I tried, but I wasn’t awesome, so I quit.’ Perfect endlessly flogs itself for its imperfections. Perfect can’t be improved upon, so it’s boring. Good requires attention, intention, and wrestling, and it allows us to take time. You dance with it. It knocks you down, but you get back up. You try this, and it didn’t work. You try that. You work with it. All of the things you try that didn’t work are all part of it. Good is okay with flaws. Good celebrates all the roads you went down that were a cul-de-sac. Good celebrates the mis-turns as part of it. Good celebrates exploration and learning.”

Bell discusses the inner voices that nag at us:

“Why can’t you be like so-and-so? They succeed at everything.”
“Sometimes it feels like I continually fall down the stairs.”
“You should nail this on the first try. If you don’t, then something is wrong with you.”

He points out that every celebrity he has ever interviewed, every person who looks successful from the outside, has aspects of their life where they are stumbling. “Everybody is doing the best with what they’ve got. Good is about direction, where you’re headed. It’s about your heart. It has room for missteps. The light and the darkness both belong. The death and the burial and the new fresh seedling rising out of the earth, all belong.”

Bell discusses Matthew 5:38, where Jesus tells his disciples they are to be perfect, as their heavenly Father is perfect. The Greek word translated “perfect” is τέλειοι, which means having reached its end or completion. Note the journey idea implicit in teleioi — we are moving forward toward a goal.

For us right now, while we are still on the journey, being perfect as Jesus commands means looking ahead to the person we were created to be and who we will be in the end. Jesus invites us to pursue wholeness, shalom, and wellbeing in every way. The pursuit of static and intimidating perfect, and the fears associated with the way we often perceive perfect to be, can freeze our growth and stop us from stepping out in faith to experiment and risk. Good enables us to learn from our mistakes and keep walking in faith, growing into Christ’s image and into the people we were created to be.

Loving God, you made us and love us. Help us pursue what is good. Through your Spirit’s power and encouragement, give us the willingness to try things we don’t think we’ll excel at. Give us eyes to see what we’re learning when things don’t go the way we expected them to go. Help us answer perfectionistic inner voices with the knowledge that we are beloved by you. Thank you for your amazing grace. Amen.

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Next week: A guide for the journey—Pilgrims’ Progress. Illustration by Dave Baab: Leschi Park, Seattle

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