07may06

Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without one -- Chinese Proverb

A FRIEND told me she needed glasses but was avoiding the inevitable because she did not wish to see people "as they really are".

"Without glasses everyone looks good, if slightly fuzzy. I think if I saw people as they really were I might not like them," she said.

Another friend, with a disabled child, was shocked when she tried to enrol her son in a French school for children with special needs.

She was told such schools were rarer than they used to be. A doctor told her: "Tests in pregnancy now can tell so early that a baby is disabled, so fewer people are choosing to have them."

It seems the quest to live in a more perfect society is affecting our good judgment. We no longer accept human flaws.

Johann Goethe, the great German poet, knew the truth. "The flaws make up the whole," he said of humankind.

"It would seem strange if my old friends lacked certain quirks."

No one is perfect. That's why computers have "undo" facilities. Perhaps the closest to perfection a person ever comes is when filling out a job application form.

My best friends are imperfect people. They are sometimes difficult and unlovely, but so am I.

Martin Luther, the great religious reformer, was vulgar by modern standards, Shakespeare was a bit filthy at times and Winston Churchill was a drunken warrior. As for Jesus of Nazareth, some saw him as rude and offensive.

One of the great freedoms of life is the freedom to be ourselves. The freedom to be imperfect in this imperfect paradise.

We might all want to be Superman, but there's a bit of Lex Luthor in all of us. Being human is a complicated business.

"Strange is our situation here upon Earth," said Albert Einstein. "Each of us comes for a short visit not knowing why."

Well, if the reason for us being here is to become perfect, we might as well pack up and go home right now.

As Churchill said, the human story does not always unfold like a mathematical calculation on the principle that two and two make four.

Sometimes in life they make five or minus three; and sometimes the blackboard topples down in the middle of the sum and leaves the class in disorder and the pedagogue with a black eye.

That's the wonder of things.

Where did we get the idea that we must be perfect to be worthy of love and acceptance?

From parents who always wanted us to do better? From our teachers, who spent more time pointing out what we did wrong than praising us for what we got right? Or from religious teachers who emphasised the seriousness of our moral infractions?

We make a mistake if we think God loves us more if we say our prayers and do all the right things. That's not how it works. Christianity is not a secret club that only the "good" kids can belong to.

Saints were never people without faults.

Francis of Assisi, who has been portrayed as a non-threatening hippie who talked to birds, had a temper so hot that he once ripped the roof off of a building in a fit of self-righteous pique.

Mother Teresa was bossy and self-opinionated.

Dorothy Day, who spent much of her life helping the poor of Chicago, drank too much and was arrested in a flophouse, mistaken for a prostitute.

THE saints know that striving for excellence motivates us; striving for perfection is demoralising. They also know that perfection is God's business, not ours.

Thomas Merton said it was useless to try to make peace with ourselves by being pleased with everything we have done.

He said we must withdraw ourselves, to some extent, from effects that are beyond our control and be content with "the good will and the work that are the quiet expression of our inner life".

We might be imperfect, but that doesn't really matter. God's attention isn't just for the religious, the pure, the talented, the humble and the honest. Nobody is so bad, so insignificant, so outside the circle of faith, that he or she is outside God's loving orbit.

Bryan Patterson