Past Perfect

On the road to perfection, although we are in this life destined to fall short no matter what we do, we can nevertheless experience a mighty change of heart. As we strive to be perfectly obedient, we call upon the powers of Heaven to strengthen our resolve and to clear the way before us. This process refines us. It brings our minds and our thoughts closer to our Heavenly Father’s. Although every attempt must end in failure it does not mean it was all for nothing. We have changed for the better, and with those changes comes a new vision of what perfect really means. A child being taught arithmetic for the first time may be told that you can’t subtract a bigger number from a smaller number. And once the child has mastered the basics of adding and subtracting and can do them perfectly, it is time to be introduced to the concept of negative numbers, which means suddenly you can subtract a bigger number from a smaller number. When we are first introduced to mathematics, our concept of perfection includes never subtracting a bigger number from a smaller number. But as we learn more, the idea of perfection changes. There were lots of things that Jesus did that made Him look in the eyes of the scrupulous Pharisees to be falling short of perfect obedience. But Jesus was operating on a higher level of perfection than the Pharisees were ready for. It is the same with us. On our journey to become more like our Savior, we may begin to do things in a way that our past selves from years ago would have thought were impossible, or ran contrary to God’s commandments. To repent means to gain a fresh view. We can only advance to a more refined vision of perfection once we have repented. And in order to repent, we first have to fail. Every time we fail to live up to our idea of perfection, we shatter that version of perfect, and we are able to see a newer, clearer picture. Paul says that we see through a glass darkly, but every time we fail, we break that glass, and behind it is another glass, and this one is a little less dark. Who cares if we failed to live up to our past perfects? Those were flawed visions of perfection anyway. So are our current visions of perfection, and so will the next and the next and the next. But every time we repent, we get a new version of perfection to strive for, and we can move beyond our past perfects.