Psychiatrist Gerald May: "We have this idea that everyone should be totally independent, totally whole, totally together spiritually, totally fulfilled. This is a myth. In reality, our lack of fulfillment is the most precious gift we have. It is the source of our passion, our creativity, our search for God. All of the best of life comes out of our human yearning, our not being satisfied."
One can read what May says with mixed feelings. It can be a case of good news and bad news. The good news is that our frustrations with our failures are part of our natural longing to be fulfilled, to be satisfied, to finally find what we are looking for. The bad news is that we may never know what we are looking for, cannot even define what it is that would satisfy and fulfill us. That could lead us to simply being satisfied with the status quo and never striving for anything more than what is. It can allow us to accept our failures as part of human nature, a what-did-you-expect-from-a-limited-sinful-human-being-? approach to life. It can do that.
But there is that part of us which prevents this in all of us. It is that search for God or, rather, our desire to draw closer and closer to our Creator. That desire, I think, is innate. It arises from the fact that it is God who has created us and that godliness is part of our being and we want to know and understand what all that means.
As Christians we are quite aware that we always fall short of perfection in our lives. We also will not allow ourselves to be satisfied with anything less than with what we know is to be our goal in this life. And that is to be as God-like as Jesus was as frightening as that can sometimes be when we actually are like that. Knowing that we will never totally arrive at that point in our life in this life does not deter us from trying every day to be better than we were yesterday and to be even better tomorrow. And when we fail to accomplish this today, we know tomorrow is another day and another opportunity to be a better person than we were today.
Nevertheless, knowing all this, there is still that nagging feeling, as May intimates, that there is always that possibility that we will find a way to be perfect, to be fulfilled, to be physically and spiritually altogether. If that were not possible, we would never begin to try in the first place. We don’t start off on any adventure or project knowing that we will absolutely fail. Perhaps the reason for our making the attempt each day to be as perfect and fulfilled as possible is that our Creator is perfect and we have that part of God in us that believes perfection is possible.
What all this means to me is that life will always be a struggle between being satisfied with what-is and never being satisfied because what-is is not enough and what-we-want-to-be is an impossibility – in this life, of course. Perfection and complete satisfaction only come, of course, in eternity.
In the meantime, the grace of God, which is the Holy Spirit living in and working through us, keeps us never being satisfied with what is, no matter how good it is, because we know we can always do and be better. And it keeps us from being dejected by our failures because we know we have tried our best even though we have come up short. I guess it means that there is good news in the bad news and bad news in the good news and that no matter what, God always loves us and will never abandon us. Never.
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