The Problem with Perfection
Faith, Telos, and the Freedom of Being Carried
I heard a familiar verse quoted in church last Sunday:*
“Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the originator and perfecter of our faith.”
—Hebrews 12:2
It’s a beautiful line.
It’s also a dangerous one—depending on how we hear it.
Because the word perfecter carries baggage. Heavy baggage.
Perhaps made the worst for many at the holiday season as people are looking for the “perfect” gifts, while they hope for a “perfect” family time, spent around a “perfect” meal.
We hear perfect and immediately imagine flawlessness. Moral precision. Spiritual mastery. A life with no cracks, no contradictions, no unresolved tensions. And whether we say it out loud or not, we often assume that this is the direction faith is supposed to move us toward.
More maturity.
More certainty.
More victory.
Less mess.
And quietly, almost invisibly, perfection becomes the goal.
That’s the problem.
The Weight We Were Never Meant to Carry
When perfection becomes the imagined aim of faith, the journey itself becomes exhausting.
Every failure feels like regression.
Every doubt feels like disqualification.
Every unfinished place in us feels like proof that we’re doing it wrong.
Perfection leaves no room for being human along the way.
It subtly turns faith into a performance—something we must polish, refine, and present as acceptable. And the longer we try to live under that weight, the more faith starts to feel like pressure rather than promise.
But here’s the quiet relief hidden in the text itself.
What Perfecter Actually Means
The Greek word translated as perfecter in Hebrews 12:2 comes from telos.
Telos does not mean moral flawlessness.
It does not mean “error-free.”
It does not mean spiritual superiority.
It means end.
Completion.
Destination.
Jesus is not being described as the one who pressures our faith into perfection, but as the one who brings it to its end.
A more faithful way to hear the verse might be this:
Jesus is the beginner and finisher of our faith.
The starter and the one who sees it through.
The origin and the destination.
Or, as Scripture puts it elsewhere:
The Alpha and the Omega.
Faith Is a Journey, Not a Scorecard
When telos is understood as destination rather than perfection, something profound shifts.
Faith is no longer about achieving an impossible standard.
It becomes about being faithfully carried from beginning to end.
The emphasis moves away from our performance and back to God’s faithfulness.
Jesus does not stand at the finish line evaluating how clean our journey was.
He is the one who walks the road with us—and promises that the road actually leads somewhere.
Completion is not something we accomplish.
It is something we are brought into.
Why Perfection Keeps Failing Us
Perfection assumes that growth looks like upward movement without detours.
Real faith looks more like a long walk with switchbacks, injuries, rest stops, and wrong turns.
Perfection leaves no space for grief.
No space for unhealed places.
No space for the kind of wisdom that only comes through failure.
Completion, on the other hand, assumes process.
It assumes time.
It assumes patience.
It assumes that becoming whole is not the same thing as becoming flawless.
Letting Go of the Wrong Finish Line
When we release the demand for perfection, faith becomes less about arriving right and more about being led well.
The goal is not to become spiritually impressive.
The goal is to become fully formed in love.
The promise of Hebrews 12 is not that Jesus will make us perfect—but that he will not abandon us halfway through what he started.
He begins the work.
He holds the thread.
He brings the story to its end.
And that end is not a performance review.
It is home.
A Gentler Hope
Maybe faith was never meant to feel like pressure to improve ourselves endlessly.
Maybe it was meant to feel like trust—
that the One who began this work in us
will carry it through
to its completion.
Not because we finally got everything right.
But because love finishes what it starts.
*These reflections are not meant to be disparaging of the pastor who spoke. He is a great person, and offered a great message. He did not use the word perfect in any necessarily negative sense. But as I listened, it sprang to my mind how many people hear the word “perfect” read from Scripture and their thoughts go straight to the stressfulness of performance rather than the restfulness of trust in the alpha and omega of our faith.
I needed to hear this. Thank you.