No matter how much I practice a piano piece, I am never perfect at playing it. Even concert pianists are probably not perfect in everything they play. In fact, playing something exactly as it is written, with a metronome-strict rhythm, doesn’t even sound the best to our ears. The little deviations from exactness give the piece life, and allow it to breathe. Being robotically precise is not music. When a teacher tells you to ‘play with feeling,’ they are not telling you to make mistakes on purpose, but, in effect, playing with feeling does require deviations from computer-like precision.
But what about in our lives? Making mistakes isn’t a good thing, is it?
The analogy comparing musical deviations with spiritual deviations is not exact, of course, but God knew, when He created us, that we would not be perfect. He gave us free will, and the choice to make mistakes – to sin – in order that we would be living creatures, and not robots.
Perfection is a hard thing. We may never even want to be perfect all the time here on Earth. We may always be tempted to give in to some pet sin that is just so enticing to us. In reality, discipline will never be complete while we still live here on Earth, and that can be discouraging. Why keep trying, if we’re never going to be perfect?
Even Paul, the writer of so much of the New Testament, was not perfect. Even after Jesus spoke to him personally and audibly, changing his life so dramatically, Paul couldn’t be perfect. How depressing! If even Paul couldn’t be perfect, how can we ever hope to be perfect? Paul thought about this a lot, and God revealed some amazing, and comforting, truths to him: we can’t be perfect here on Earth, but our imperfections and weakness actually reveal God’s perfection.
For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing.
Romans 7:19
But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.
2 Corinthians 12:9