Today's Daily Thought is going to get pretty nitty gritty on grammar and etymology so buckle up. The word "perfect" is a verb made up of the prefix "pre-" which essentially means through, and the Latin root word "facere" which means to do or to make. So, basically, the word perfect literally means "through doing." We perfect ourselves and the world around us through doing things and trying to make something of our lives. This is a messy process. Not everything we do leads to a more perfect world, and not everything we try makes things better. But for those of us who refuse to concede defeat, we learn from our mistakes and we keep doing and we keep making, and while we are engaged in all of this doing and making, we are perfecting "through doing." Now, let's look at the word perfection. Adding the suffix -ion or -tion to the end of a verb transforms it into an abstract noun that represents the state or condition brought about by that action. So, when we add a -tion to the end of the verb perfect, we transform "through doing" into "the state of being thoroughly done." We all think we want to just jump to perfection already. You know, give up on all this messy doing in the middle where we make lots of mistakes and find ourselves filling up with regret and shame and grief over mistakes and missed opportunities, and instead skip right to the end where we know everything and have thoroughly done everything exactly correctly and flawlessly. But we are doers and makers. We're creators, children of the Creator. We would be utterly bored and unfulfilled in the realm of perfection. God calls His whole plan for the universe and all of His children His work and His glory. The work and the glory are inseparable. We can't have any glory unless we're doing something, and when we are in the middle of making something, we can't help but feel the glory and pride that comes from a job well done. Our Heavenly Father won't reach the final perfection until He has brought to pass the immortality and Eternal Life of all of His children. God works and lives and breathes in the verb perfect, in the doing and the making, and not in the abstract noun of perfection, because He has not yet completed His work. I do want to return one more time to the grammar and the etymology. Let's look at the word perfectionism. Like the -tion added to the end of perfect to turn a verb into a noun, the suffix -ism is also added to the end of a word to turn it into a noun. So, once again, the word perfect literally means "through doing" and the word perfectionism has added two endings that both turn actions into passive states. If the hope of perfection sustains us through all of the messy trials and errors as we do and make our way through life, then perfectionism is a false idol that we worship (one of the meanings of -ism is to indicate a system of worship) that strangles our faith by prohibiting us from actually doing any work until we are already perfect. It's utter nonsense. Perfection can only be achieved through doing, and yet, perfectionism would have us wait and wait and wait until the stars have aligned and the conditions are exactly right before we act. Perfectionism is both idol worship and idle worship. Believing in perfectionism is so tragic because we live in a fallen world where perfection is all but impossible, and at any rate, does not just magically show up out of nowhere. The word perfect is clean and trim and agile and flexible, but if you start adding -tions and -isms onto the end of it, just like if we start piling on the weight of expectations and anxieties and intrusive thoughts and might have been's and what if's, and it is easy to see how our actions might grind to a halt as we stagger under the unbearable weight of perfectionism which snuffs out that creative spark, that secret fire that drives us to do and to make and to perfect. We find joy in the journey not through some artificial effort of will, turning over stones on the path to look for it, but because the joy is the journey, it is through doing and making and perfecting, it is work and it is glory.
