“You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Matthew 5:48
I’ve only ever cried once at school. It was in kindergarten, and it wasn’t because I’d cut myself or wanted to go home or didn’t like the snack. It was because of a marshmallow tower. You might've done this project at some point too. You take toothpicks and use marshmallows as connectors, seeing who can build the tallest tower. I’m not really sure what this is supposed to teach kids. Architecture? Logic? Construction? But I’ve been forced to do it a time or two throughout my school career, and it’s never been my favorite.
Anyway, all three and a half feet of me was committed to succeeding at this. I was going to build the best marshmallow tower ever. Everything went swimmingly until the marshmallows got a bit too melty in my hot little hands and stopped holding up my tower before it was even four inches off the ground. I tried to fix it until it was beyond human help, at which point I gave up and cried. God bless kindergarten teachers for dealing with this kind of thing all the time.
There may not be an obvious lesson here (except to acknowledge this was a pretty dumb thing to get upset about), but let’s think about it a minute. To be honest with you, I think I’m still building my little perfectionist marshmallow towers these days. I’m still placing my hope, my value, and yes, maybe some tears, into fragile parts of life that God never asked me to worry so much about getting just right.
Think about all the great things you do in your life that Jesus has absolutely called you to do, such as teaching VBS, befriending someone who’s hurting, or offering to say the closing prayer in your small group. We’re actually surprisingly good at focusing on all the wrong parts of these things. Are the decorations good enough? Did I make that conversation weird? Was that prayer as eloquent as Madelyn’s was last week and will everyone notice if it wasn’t?
These examples of perfectionism sound like comparison because they are. That’s what perfectionism is at its core. We tell ourselves we’re competing only against ourselves when we’re really just trying to outshine everyone else. And because it’s all about the show, we don’t even try where it matters most. There’s a lot of applause for being perfect in the ways everyone can see and not much for being perfect where it really counts—your heart and your mind. Those are the parts God cares about the most.
Keep in mind the verse listed at the beginning of this article, Matthew 5:48, which tells us to be perfect. And yes, perfection or holiness is what God calls us to, but what does this calling to be “perfect” mean, as used in this verse? There is only One who’s been perfect all along. So, what makes the difference between holy perfection and human perfectionism? It’s our reasons for the things we do—our deeper motives.
The best way to fix our outside actions is to fix our inside heart. If you are chasing perfection so that you’ll be the best Christian and everyone will see your prayer or your nonprofit or your family and pat you on the back, you’re doing it wrong. If you’re making tiny choices day after day that shape you to be more like Jesus, if you know that his forgiveness covers your imperfections but still asks you to be obedient to his commands, you’re doing it right.
We need to be honest with ourselves. Are we seeking perfection because we want to look good or because we want to look like God? And what does all this have to do with marshmallow towers? I’m getting there.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:11–15, “For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.”
These verses tell us that Christians are all building on the same foundation: Jesus. But what we choose to build upon that foundation matters. We can build with the gold of humility, the silver of love, and the costly stones of obedience. Conversely, we can use the wood of jealousy, the hay of comparison, and the straw of showiness. Those cheap materials may build tall towers but not the sturdiest or most valuable ones. And the cheap ones only last so long.
Sooner or later, the bad choices we make, the sticks and stubble we’re building with, come tumbling down. The marshmallows get melty, the toothpicks snap, and the tower falls. And that’s God’s mercy. He knocks down our mess so he can replace it with his treasure. This process, or pruning, is how God gives us a second chance. The straw has to be out of the way for the gold to go up. It’s painful to be humbled or betrayed or “beaten” by someone else, but sometimes this is God’s way of giving us another chance to build something worthy of his Son’s foundation. God gives “second” chances again and again and again. If you find yourself building a useless marshmallow tower, it is never too late to tear down your mistakes and build something better. But not because you want yours to be better than someone else’s. Instead, build something new because you want it to be worthy of Jesus. We build his kingdom, not ours, as we wait for the day when we inherit it with him.
Remember, we are called to imitate the perfection of Jesus. “As he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy’” (1 Pet. 1:15–16). However, it is not the pursuit of perfection itself which should motivate us. Jesus called us to himself so our sins could be forgiven and also so that each day we could leave sin farther behind through his all-sufficient grace. We will never stop sinning till heaven because our nature is already sinful. But Jesus still asks us to follow in his footsteps—with his help.
As Christians, we walk the line of loving and forgiving others but not excusing bad choices. We call people to accountability but are told to judge the plank in our eye before the speck in theirs. Likewise, there is a delicate balance between chasing Jesus’s example of perfection and realizing we will always get it wrong. And he knows we will, which is why he came.
At the end of the day, Jesus gives us the greatest commandment in Mark 12:30: love him and love others. If your choices are motivated by this call, not by what others think, you can rest knowing your failure is forgiven and help build the kingdom knowing you are called to greater and greater things by the Forgiver.