Over my career, I have had numerous patients with good hearts, people who passionately, desperately even, want to do what is right; in fact, they are so intent on doing what is right that they get caught in loops of worry, rumination, fear of making mistakes, fear of doing the wrong thing, and become paralyzed with indecision. Many of these precious souls end up crushed under a burden of uncertainty, doubt, and terror of doing bad, doing wrong.

Their emotional fear often leads to thoughts that reinforce their fears of getting it “wrong,” such as, “What if there is a better way that I don’t know? I am no expert; there is so much I don’t understand, so much information I am unaware of, so how can I know what the right choice is or the best way to do it?” And even, “If I do know the right way, I am so imperfect, so weak, so clumsy, that even if I do my best, I will likely mess it up. What if I do? What if I make a mistake and do it wrong? Oh, I could make it worse. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to let God down, my children down, my spouse down. I want to be perfect even as my heavenly Father is perfect.” Such thoughts only inflame the feelings of fear and doubt that reinforce the negative thoughts—a destructive loop.

These sincere people simply want to do things right, and they don’t want to fail. This good desire to be right, to do good, to not do evil, to not be negligent somehow gets twisted, and rather than motivating and stimulating development, advancement, and maturity, it instead becomes a negative reinforcing cycle of decompensation, mental torment, fear, with loss of excellence and competent function.

The primary problem is one of unhealthy motivation, which is compounded and reinforced by lies, cognitive distortions, and falsehoods. The unhealthy motivational drive, energy, attitude, or “spirit” is that of fear—fear of failure, fear of wrongdoing, fear of mistakes. And under those fears are fear of rejection, abandonment, condemnation, guilt, and shame.

These fears lead people to believe that being “good enough” comes from how well they perform, rather than in who they are in Jesus. Their sense of worth, value, lovableness, and goodness comes from their task performance—getting straight A’s, first place, best of show, hair done and makeup applied “perfectly,” house in “perfect” order, etc.—rather than the truth of who they are as a child of God. Rather than living as a human being, they live as a human doing. They do not recognize that their value and worth originate in who they are, not in what they do. They confuse motive with performance. They ignore quality of character by focusing on precision of performance.  

And building one’s sense of worth from performance instead of from a Christlike character built from love and trust in Jesus leads to another falsehood that reinforces the negative loop of perfectionism: the conflation (seeing two elements as one and the same) of making mistakes and sin; the lie that making mistakes is the same as choosing evil. The perfectionist will experience the same internal guilt, shame, fear, self-loathing, condemnation, and critical self-flagellation for making a mistake as the non-perfectionist will experience when they choose evil.

Consider a person who makes a math mistake in their checkbook registry that causes them to overdraft a check. Is that the same act, process, method, and motive, the same manifestation of character, as the person who knows they have no money in their account and willfully writes fraudulent checks? While in both situations the checks bounce, and on the surface could appear to be the same, they are not, in fact, the same. The first is an innocent mistake in which no evil was done; the second is choosing evil.

Mistakes are not evil!

But the perfectionist doesn’t differentiate honest, innocent mistakes from the choosing of evil. In their mind, making mistakes is bad and evil is bad, so both are evil. Thus, they experience terrible guilt, shame, and inadequacy from mistake-making and end up living in fear of making mistakes because they don’t want to be bad, don’t want to feel guilt, don’t want to be rejected, don’t want to be condemned.

This is a trap of Satan built upon fear and lies designed to ensnare good-hearted people into cycles of mental torment and anguish and prevent them from not only experiencing personal peace, joy, thriving, and advancement, but also to interfere with their usefulness in God’s cause, to get them to be paralyzed into loops of perfectionism rather than honest, loyal, loving, service for God’s kingdom. Why? Because the only way we can grow, advance, develop is by engaging and applying ourselves to activities we don’t already know or haven’t already mastered.

The only way to learn mathematics is to work problems. But learning math will result in getting problems wrong, doing one’s best but making mistakes, such as adding when one should have subtracted and then learning from those mistakes. Or taking piano lessons—if one wants to learn, they must apply themselves and practice, but that will result in hitting wrong keys. Learning anything new, whether a physical task (writing, typing, golfing) or mental task (memorizing Bible verses), the process of learning is a journey filled with honest and innocent mistakes. The healthy person seeks to identify and correct, which, over time, results in increased proficiency and reduction in mistakes. The non-perfectionist recognizes this and gives themselves permission to make honest mistakes, learn from those mistakes, and improve, develop, and mature. The non-perfectionist, then, lives a richer life in which they are not afraid to try new things.

But the perfectionist, living in fear of mistakes, chooses to restrict themselves, limit trying new things for fear of making mistakes, and, thereby, doesn’t apply themselves to the fullest, impairing their own growth, development, and maturity.

Voltaire is credited with saying, “Perfect is the enemy of good.” God is good and, sadly, many people with hearts that want to do good for God have been ensnared by the trap of seeking the perfect and not only are impaired in their ability to do good, but, in fact, are experiencing in themselves torment of heart and mind as fear, doubt, and uncertainty grow. And that is not good.

What is the solution?

The Solution to Perfectionism

The problem of the tormented perfectionist is rooted in fear and lies (cognitive distortions), and the solution is truth and love!

At its root, the perfectionist, while claiming to believe in God and have faith in Jesus, in practice, in function, finds that they really don’t trust God with their heart, life, family, fortune, and future. They don’t trust God with how things will turn out and, thus, ruminate constantly on their choices and performance because they want things to go a certain way, whether it be the task itself or how they are received, experienced, accepted, and valued. But while the conscious rationalization for the pursuit of perfection is to be the best person in God’s cause they can be, to glorify God, to be good, to be a person who carries out the love and truth of God, in reality, the motive is not love and trust but, rather, fear that focuses on self, on self-failing, on self being bad.

However, the righteous, the just, the friends of God, are those who choose to do in the governance of self that which they understand is their duty at any given time and place and trust God with how things turn out. They trust that if God calls them to a task, then He will provide them the ability to carry out the task in the way that He wants it done.

Jesus has said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9 NIV84). Anything God calls us to do, He provides the ability for us to carry it out in the way He would like it done. And God factors in the weakness of our humanity, and He knows we will sometimes not carry out the task with perfect task performance but with perfect love performance for the glory of His kingdom—and this is exactly what He is counting on!

Consider that the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet with the alabaster oil was motivated by her perfect, selfless love for Jesus. This love came from the indwelling Holy Spirit, who had renewed her heart and recreated her to live her life in harmony with God’s methods and principles of truth and love. In that love, she was motivated to anoint Jesus’ feet with the most expensive oil she could obtain. Yet, she was not seeking to bring any attention to herself. She sought only to honor Jesus, and, thus, she snuck into the dinner and attempted to secretly anoint His feet and then quietly sneak back out. But she didn’t consider the potency of the fragrance permeating the atmosphere drawing everyone’s attention to her and resulting in public criticism. She made a mistake—and she was called out publicly by the selfish in the audience. But she did not sin; there was no evil in her heart; there was no rebellion. In fact, her act was motivated by love and trust in Jesus, which made her act “perfect”—perfect in motive, intention, and spirit. She did not carry out this deed because she was thinking of self but because she was thinking of Jesus. She did not carry out this deed because she was motivated by fear but because she was motivated by love. Yet, she made a mistake, from her human perspective, as she did not intend to bring attention to herself. But God foreknew that she was motivated to this action by the Holy Spirit. And because of her willingness to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, despite her “mistake” in drawing unwanted attention to herself, her actions allowed Jesus to address the selfishness in Simon the Pharisee’s heart, as well as the critical disciples, and become a story told throughout the ages. In other words, her “mistake” was not sin, was not evil, and was useful in God’s plan for the advancement of His kingdom of love.

And this reveals the truth about what Bible perfection is truly about; it is not about perfect task performance but, rather, a heart that perfectly loves and trusts God—in other words, a heart that loves God more than fears for self. As Jesus said,

You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:43–48 NIV84, emphasis mine).

Jesus described what being perfect means: to love everyone, consistently and reliably, just like the sun and the rain treat everyone exactly the same. But it is understood that this is possible only by first being restored to a love and trust relationship with God. When we know God and trust Him, despite our past, we experience a change of heart from fear to love and trust, and in that new life, with the new motive of love and trust, we are no longer paralyzed by fear. Instead, we engage in applying ourselves to the best of our ability in loving others and glorifying God, and we no longer fear making mistakes in task performance but trust God with how things turn out, trust God that even if our weak human self doesn’t perform a specific task with technical inerrancy, but is done with a heart that loves, then God will bless and good will result—just like the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet!

But those who live trapped in the cycle of fear-driven, self-referenced, personal performance would be vulnerable to seeing their action (if they were that woman) as blowing it, “How could I have been so stupid? What was I thinking? Of course, the ointment would permeate the room; of course, everyone would notice; of course, people would think I was just trying to make myself look good, and how I hurt Jesus, me, with my history, how could I have thought my touching Jesus would uplift Him. I probably have caused some people to think Jesus has taken advantage of me. I am such a loser.”

We must stop looking at self, stop living empowered by and driven by the animating energy (spirit) of fear, and turn our eyes upon Jesus; we must surrender self to Him and experience His love. And in that love and trust relationship, we must choose to act motivated by love in applying the truth we know is our duty to fulfill and then trust God with how it turns out. We must stop looking merely at the task performance and look to the heart. As the Bible says, “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7 NIV84). Sinful humans judge themselves and others by how well they perform tasks, but God judges by how pure the heart is, the motive for the action, not the precision of the task.

If you have struggled with perfectionism, have lived in fear of making mistakes, then stop and embrace the truth, the truth that mistakes are not evil and that making mistakes is the natural process of growth and development as we apply ourselves to carrying out life’s duties and learning. Commit yourself to never choosing evil but give yourself permission to make honest mistakes. And daily surrender your life to Jesus, invite in the Holy Spirit to empower and motivate you with the Spirit of love, and then choose to act in love and trust your future and the outcomes to God.