The Perpetual Pursuit of Perfection

First published in The Daily Sentinel, Friday, February 8, 2008

Last Sunday’s Super Bowl was a thriller – and a welcome change from the way it’s been most years. The game was actually more fun to watch than the commercials! Who would have expected such a defensive game when the most prolific offense in National Football League history was on the field? I didn’t publicly predict a final score, but I anticipated something along the lines of a Patriots win: 42-17.

Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots were poised to complete a perfect season – something only one other NFL team in the modern era has ever managed to do. The 1972 Miami Dolphins went 17-0 en route to their Super Bowl VII victory. Technically, the Patriots had already won more games without losing than the Dolphins. They were 18-0 going into Super Bowl XLII. But since the NFL expanded from a 14-game regular season schedule to 16 games, it takes more effort to pursue perfection.

The New York Giants, on the other hand, were a team with nothing to lose. Tom Coughlin’s team was already a “Cinderella” story, finishing their regular season 10-6 before going on the road and winning throughout the playoffs. They even knocked off my own beloved Dallas Cowboys and “Miracle-man” Brett Favre’s Green Bay Packers to earn the trip to Phoenix, Arizona to face the NFL’s “real giants.” The opinion in most places where such things were debated was that the Giants didn’t stand a chance.

But when the game started, someone forgot to tell the Giants they couldn’t hold the Patriots. Their defense refused to sit back and allow Tom Brady to rip them apart. Instead, Brady was spending more time dodging Giants than finding Patriots downfield. And after hearing how poor little Eli Manning had only a token of the quarterbacking talent of older brother Peyton, the younger Manning proved that sometimes only a token of great talent is needed to make great plays when the game is on the line. End result: Giants 17 (glad I got that part right), Patriots 14.

The perpetual pursuit of perfection must start again next year. And the ’72 Dolphins celebrated their uniqueness in football history yet again.

I love when sports lends themselves to religious analogy. Jesus used analogies in parables – stories using everyday activities and events - to explain things with heavenly significance. Football is often a parable for us today. And I can see several religious themes weaving through the Super Bowl XLII story, but I want to focus only on one: the perpetual pursuit of perfection.

In Matthew 5:48, during his “Sermon on the Mount,” Jesus said: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” That’s not a suggestion, that’s an instruction. Jesus is making a bold statement about God’s expectations of our behavior while on this earth. Perfection is something that every Christ-follower should perpetually pursue. But it’s an idea that’s difficult to accept – then and now.

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement in 18^th century England, wrote a sermon called “Christian Perfection” that formed the core of the most distinctive and controversial of all Methodist Christian ideas. Wesley tried to explain what he meant by “Christian perfection,” both telling what it was NOT as well as what it WAS. It was NOT perfection in knowledge – to be free of ignorance. It was NOT perfection in action, as to be free of error. And it was NOT a perfection of health, as to be free of infirmities. Finally it was NOT a perfection of attitude, to be free from temptation. In all these things, Christians were still prone to failure.

Rather, Wesley preached that Christian perfection WAS about no longer willfully and habitually committing sin – either by action or inaction. Wesley held firmly to the promise in 1 Corinthians 10:13: “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” For Wesley, this meant that a Christian could resist temptation through God’s help and should no longer commit willful sins!

One of the most interesting post-game quotes I read was from Patriots’ defensive tackle Vince Wilfork: “Going 18-1, a lot of people look at it as a great year,” he said. “We accomplished a lot, but at the end of the day, I'd rather be 10-6 with a Super Bowl ring than 18-1 without one. To me, 18-1 doesn't mean anything. You play this game for one reason and one reason only, and that's to get to the Super Bowl and win it. We came up short.”

The ultimate goal in pro football is winning the Super Bowl, and as good as they were, the Patriots still fell short. The ultimate goal in life should be achieving that goal Jesus set for us: be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. But striving for perfection in our own ways and under our own strength is impossible. The Apostle Paul said it best: “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) The only hope for perfection is to cooperate with GOD’S ways and rely on HIS strength. Paul wrote in Philippians 3:12-14: “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

You and I are still in the middle of our “Super Bowl.” And just as the Patriots will start over again next season by not dwelling on last Sunday, you and I should be like Paul and forget what held us back in the past, and press on in God’s strength – perpetually pursuing perfection the way Wesley helped us understand it: by choosing not to submit to temptation and taking on the attitude of Jesus.

The ’72 Dolphins were the only NFL team to complete a perfect season. But the next year, they didn’t even make the playoffs. Jesus was the only human to ever complete a perfect life. But we have access to something the Dolphins did not – God’s desire for us to be perfect in God’s definition of perfection. In the game of life, we must keep on keeping on. See you at the game!!