Rabbi Harold Kushner was once asked: “Rabbi, how good do we have to be?” His reply: “I think that we have to be good enough.”

Often times, it seems as if our expectations, of ourselves and others, set a very different bar. We expect, sometimes even demand, perfection. We expect that we will always do the right thing, always treat and be treated by others in the best possible way, always live according to our highest ideals and be surrounded by others who will always do likewise. We expect that our relationships will always be operating on the highest plane and that our feelings and emotions will only get more perfect. We expect our faith communities to be perfect models of justice, reflect back perfectly the beliefs of its members and image God precisely as God is. We expect more than “good enough.”

We fall into the false idea that pefection means to be without flaw, to be super-human, to be other than what we are. This idea of perfection strips away our fundamental humanity. By expecting this false kind of perfection, we can expect only perfect disappointment, perfect pain and perfect destruction in our most important relationships.

There is another way to look at perfection. If we take seriously the belief that every human person is a manifestation of God, then we are already created, brought into life, with the potential to be as we are meant to be, the original meaning of the word “perfect.”

So maybe we should start out by acknowledging our fundamental goodness. It is said that the worst temptation is to make perfection the enemy of good. As Rabbi Kushner suggests, let’s start by being “good enough.” Our relationships with ourselves, our beloved ones and our God can grow even stronger from there.

Peace.....

(Excerpt from a submission to Southside Pride)