High Standards

Last night, Mom, Joe, and I watched some of the Olympics; a little bit of figure skating and a few runs of snowboarding, but it's the figure skating that I want to blog about. The commentators were some kind of perfectionists. The first skater was pretty much perfect. The commentators said he was a little shaky at one point, if I recall correctly, but I didn't notice any shakiness. The second skater, though, fell down. To be fair, he fell down trying to land an impressive spinning jump maneuver that most people on earth don't have enough skill to even attempt. But this is the Olympics. The standards are set impossibly high. The commentators spoke of a terrible year for this certain Olympian where he landed all the way down in 15th place. That's 15th place out of the entire world. This man has nothing to be ashamed of. He's one of the greatest figure skaters in the world as far as I'm concerned. Sure, he got tripped up when he got nervous, and he fell down once. The commentators said that, during the practices, he was making (and successfully landing) jumps like that with ease. The man is an incredible athlete and anyone who otherwise has their standards set extraordinarily high.

We have some pretty high standards in the church, too. We have missionary standards and temple standards and standards for entering the Celestial Kingdom. The highest standard of all is perfection, which we don't demand, even from Olympic athletes, but is what's asked of all of us. "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." - Matthew 5:48 Why do we have such high standards, and how can anyone ever hope to reach them?

I believe that the reason for the high standards is to bring out the best in us. We can't reach our full potential unless we really strive for it, and the standards in the church give us something to shoot for. The more we strive for perfection, the closer we get to achieving our full potential. But do we really have the potential to become perfect, or is the standard literally set impossibly high?

The commandment asks us to be perfect, even as our Father which is in heaven is perfect. As children of our Heavenly Father, we were born with a seed of His divinity in us. Just as any child has the potential to grow up to become like their parents, we have the potential to become like our Heavenly Father, who is perfect. We can reach the goal of perfection. But it's going to take a lot of time.

Just as a person doesn't become an Olympic athlete overnight, we (probably) can't become perfect within one lifetime. Thankfully, we have more than one lifetime to work with. We will have some time (God only knows how much time) after we die to continue progressing toward the goal of perfection before the final judgement. So what does that mean for our goal of perfection in the here and now?

As I'm sure I said in a previous blog post, our goal down here is to get the ball rolling. We don't have to achieve perfection now, but we do have to commit ourselves to that goal and make the first few steps. We have to be humble enough to accept the Lord's reproof and guidance, and faithful enough to follow that guidance. We don't have to become perfect now, but we do have to make progress.

In the meantime, mission and temples standards are high, but still achievable in this life, and will help us along the path to our eventual goal of perfection. The Lord asks great things of us because He knows that we're capable of great things and He wants us to reach our full potential. I hope that I can someday have enough faith and diligence to accomplish what my Heavenly Father knows that I can do. Our standards are set impressively high, but only because God knows that we can reach them.