Raising the Bar

There are two games you can play with a horizontal bar. In limbo, the bar keeps dropping and the winner is whoever can bend lowest without falling. I remember growing up when we'd go to the roller rink, seeing people do the splits, bend backwards, it requires something like flexibility and a strange ability to contort one's body. In the high jump, the bar keeps rising and the athlete who clears the greatest height wins. Both games use the same (or very similar piece) of equipment.

Well, I'm not going to undermine the athletic prowess it takes to limbo. I can't do it for squat (and squatting is never really the winning posture anyway). But it's a totally different kind of athleticism than the strength it takes to clear a high bar.

But a lot of us play a game kind of like "limbo" with our faith. Setting that bar lower, and lower. Except we do the "limbo" thing with the bar, while playing high jump. Making it easier and easier. Requiring less effort, less commitment, less exercise to make it possible.

We ask how little we can pray and still count ourselves faithful, the least amount we can "give" so that we don't look too greedy, how far we can bend toward the world without actually falling down. We set the bar exactly where we know we can clear it, and then we congratulate ourselves for clearing it.

Jesus does not play limbo. In the Sermon on the Mount He says something that unsettles a lot of us, and even leaves some theologians and preachers who don't quite "get it" trying to explain it away, soften it, or make it more palpable: "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48).

That is not a bar set at a comfortable height. It is a bar set at the height of God. And the game isn't "limbo."

Before we panic, we need to hear the word Jesus actually used. It doesn't make it "easy" but it does take it out of the realm of impossibility.

The Greek is teleios, and it does not mean flawless in the way we use “perfect” today, as if God were grading our lives against a checklist of infractions. Teleios comes from telos, meaning “end” or “goal” or “purpose.” Something is teleios when it has become what it was made to be.

A seed is teleios when it is a tree.

A child is teleios when he or she has grown to full maturity.

A cup of coffee is teleios when I'm finally wide awake (ok, that one isn't a perfect example, but you get it).

The word describes completeness, wholeness, something that's doing what it was designed to do.

This matches the Hebrew word behind it. When God called Abram, He said, "I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless" (Genesis 17:1). The word translated “blameless” is tamim, which carries the sense of whole, undivided, entire.

It was used of sacrificial animals to differentiate those suitable and non-suitable for the offering. To be tamim before God is not to have never stumbled; it is to be all there, holding nothing back, undivided in heart.

So when Jesus says “be perfect,” He is not saying “never make a mistake.”

He is saying “become fully what you were created to be.”

And what were we created to be?

The context tells us. Jesus has just finished commanding His disciples to love their enemies, because the Father "makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous" (Matthew 5:45).

The perfection of the Father that we are to imitate is the perfection of His love, a love that does not calculate who deserves it.

Luke’s Gospel records the same teaching with a subtle but significant variation: "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful" (Luke 6:36). Perfection and mercy are just different ways of looking at the same bar.

This is why the great teachers of the Church have consistently said that Christian perfection consists chiefly in charity. Not in the absence of faults, but in the fullness of love. St. Paul says as much: "Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony" (Colossians 3:14).

Love is what makes a life whole. Love is what makes a person complete. The bar God sets is high, but it is not the bar of a perfectionist. It is the bar of a Father who knows exactly what His children can become when they are wholly given to Him.

Because God is Love.

St. Irenaeus captured this in a single line: “For the glory of God is a man fully alive; and the life of man consists in beholding God” (Against Heresies, IV.20.7).

God is not glorified by shrinking down, trying to get by, trying to be the "least" righteous we can get away with while still calling ourselves Christians.

He is glorified when we are fully alive, and we are fully alive when we are turned toward Him in love. A low bar does not honor God. It insults the dignity He gave us. And the dignity He calls us to as He restores us in Christ.

Here is the second thing we must understand about this high bar: we do not clear it by working out our legs, by keeping the weight off. It's not our own "leaping" that gets us there.

The high jumper trains alone and wins alone. Sure, a "track team" can win collective medals, but it's mostly an individual sport.

Discipleship is not an individual sport, despite what some people claim.

Paul, who knew more about striving than most, wrote near the end of his life: "Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own" (Philippians 3:12).

Notice the order. He presses on because Christ has already taken hold of him.

The pursuit of perfection is not an anxious climb toward a God who stands at the top with a clipboard, or behind a table waiting to score us 1-10.

It is a response to a God who has already come down, taken us by the hand, and begun the work Himself. "I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6).

This kind of high bar isn't cleared because of our strength. It's cleared in our surrender. The Lord told Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9).

The same word again: teleitai, made perfect, brought to completion. God’s power reaches its goal precisely in our weakness, because a weak person who trusts is more whole than a strong person who tries to clear that bar by his own strength.

So what does it look like?

First, name where you have set the bar low. Be honest. Is it in prayer, where you give God the leftovers of your attention? Is it in forgiveness, where you have decided one particular person is exempt? Is it in generosity, where you have quietly settled on a percentage that's easy and painless?

Second, raise the bar. Maybe not all the way, all at once. His bar remains at "perfection" but remember, Paul said he was pressing on toward that goal. He didn't even claim, despite being an Apostle, that He was already a gold-medalist in the high-jump. So start with one notch. Choose a single area and ask what wholehearted love would look like there this week. Not heroic love. Just undivided love. Pray for the person you resent, by name, every day. Give just a little more than feels comfortable. When you wake up, pray before you check your phone.

Third, when you fail, don't listen to the lies you're sure to tell yourself. The first lie says, “Lower the bar; this was never realistic.” The second says, “You are hopeless; give up.” Instead, do what Paul did: get up and press on, because Christ has already made you His own. The bar is high because the Father loves you too much to leave you small.

The goal was never a flawless record. The goal is you, whole and alive and fully given, standing in the love for which you were made.

 

God Bless,

Judah