The Perfect Picture

Sometime last two years after I had rehearsed assiduously under the tutelage of one of the best directors (Napoleon Ehi), of my great church, Royalty Christian Centre I got a role to play ‘pastor Tim in one of the major drama event we use to have yearly in my church. We had rehearsed for some couple of months… say like five months ahead of the event-day. We had gone through serious scrutiny and disciplines under his (Napoleon Ehi) training to bring to the church’s audience a script that will not just entertain but teach some salient spiritual truths.

If you had ever been in a drama rehearsal you will understand with me the rigours that come and go with it… ‘Fortunately for me, I got the lead role (thanks to my director for seeing the pastor Tim in me) and it wasn’t long before I got the name, ‘Pastor Tim’ added to my plethora of names… and there was one that really appealed to me, it was the name I got from our First Lady, ‘perfect man’. It though may just have seemed like any other name anyone could bear, but it was a name that taught me a great spiritual lesson. I have learnt something about God that He basically calls those things that be not as if they were so they can gain the potential to become what they are being called. That, was the reason I love that name….

Like calling Jacob, Israel, while he is yet a Jacob and like calling an impotent old man like Abram, Abraham while he is yet an Abram… such inner sight that carries with it an insight that brings out the hidden greatness in the most baseless of us… and so I saw the name calling as a bigger ‘perfect’ picture of me which I am yet to be. I loved that name not merely because it relates me to the play but because it re-affirms a truth that I believe in… that I could be better than whatever I am now.

While we rehearsed for this play titled, ‘The Perfect Church’, I realised that my director did not just want us to act but to deliver a perfect line with a perfect act. I will say we did, like my director will say, ‘we killed it!’ this was more affirmed after we rounded off the play. It was as eventful as we projected… the applause and commendations we received from people were overwhelming. At the close of the event my pastor having enjoyed the spiritual-professional content of the piece uttered in amazement these two words, ‘Whoa! Whoa!’ with applause that still echoes motivations into my head.

I knew at that moment that this piece was well written and directed by my director, Napoleon Ehi. But some few months after the event I have had to face the realities of the lessons this script had taught me…. Most of which had been flashed in my eyes in previous times but the realities just dawned….

I remembered that while we were rehearsing the scripts, some of us got our lines quite early… that however was after much yelling and scolding from my director, but some of us still couldn’t get their lines even when the days were staring at us and close to our eyes like our noses. At that point I gave my director my consent to be angry with those who didn’t get their lines and to as well change the cast if the need occurs (I didn’t say it to him literally I just said it to him in my mind), and I was happy when he did a little of that.

Later, I learnt that this was very selfish of me, while I was trying to get my lines, I never thought about that and infact when my director sometimes correct me, it sometimes doesn’t go down well with me… not most times. But I have also learnt that ‘he who didn’t grow through corrections will someday fall because of the lack of it’.

The thought that my director should change was unfair coming from someone like me who had at a point been in the same shoes with them.

Many of us find it easy to stay at the judgmental angle to correct others of what they did not do right and if we as well were to be placed in their conditions and circumstances and with everything that has interplayed and evolved in their lives we would not have emerged a flawless winner, we would have carelessly fallen a thousand times than they and make more mistakes than they ever did.

While we acted, that very day, I was though very meticulous not to miss my lines and I really did not miss any (I do not brag about this, it was God and a little bit of commitment), but I really didn’t get to that point by my effort, it was the radical approach of my director to ensure that we deliver our lines with precision and exactitude that drove me to such radical commitment. It is not like there were no cast that didn’t miss some lines but we also had to learn to flow above such when they occur.

At a point when some of them miss their lines, we form lines around them to remind them like prompters and even when they still do not, we act it out like that was how the script was designed. The result? The audience applauded us calling it a master piece even when we knew some of us fumbled. The goal? We were able to help others even in their mistakes and as a result we came out fine like a master piece crafted with God’s hands.

The goal in life is not to always point out judgmentally everyone’s mistakes like feaces on their faces but to help them navigate through those mistakes while letting them know their mistakes but not pulling them down with echoes of the mistakes.

My director? He still pointed out the mistakes, not while the act was going on but after. Why? You ask, ‘so that they can know they made mistakes and we knew but we hid it so that it will not affect the perfect act from the perfect cast  for the perfect church.

That’s quite simple! I suppose that is Christ’s pattern too save that some religious folks might make me say that ‘was Christ pattern’, like He doesn’t do that again… ‘forgive the sinner and detest the sin’. The last time I checked Hebrews, ‘Jesus is the same as He was yesterday, today and with a standing promise of forever’. (paraphrased..my version).

You could check Hebrews 13 verse 8 before you tell me I do not know the Bible.

Now what some of the perfect people with the perfect picture do is insult the sin and refuse to tolerate the sinner… correcting with hatred and not with love…. They are the perfect people with the perfect picture.

…And it was because we could float above those errors and press further even when we made mistakes that made our play the master piece it was. We set our perfection standard and when we didn’t reach it we didn’t fall into the blame circle to name names and nail ourselves to the cross, rather we played on and that was it… that is the true beauty that is revealed in our perfection voyage…something ‘Asa’ one of Nigeria’s best music act calls, ‘beautiful imperfection’.

The goal of perfection therefore is not to reach a point where we do not have a pint of fault, but to keep growing to be better even when our steps to perfection is still farther than a life-time walk. For those of us who seem close to perfection, we should learn to grow our perfections by forbearing those we started with and still do not seem to be growing…while we are at being our own best we should as well try to understand that our battles are different and as a result we should bear with others for there is no one in life that we can ever be in their shoes and that is why we have no right to condemn. I feel our struggle to perfection varies to a large extent, so while you seem to be growing rapidly than the other understand that our struggles differ and if perhaps we were to find ourselves in their own struggles we may not have even survived seven steps.

Much like in our lives, when we were younger we have had this picture of a perfect life where no bruises, scars, pains, errors, regrets and mistakes will ever find their way through. I as a young child loved the tranquility that comes with imagining the possibility of being in a state where I find happiness in getting all I want. My perfect picture was to have a father that everyone answers to and be the same. That I will have sisters that will marry the number one citizens of the world and that we would all live together having no moment of pains or sadness.

The weirdest of my perfect picture is one that I kept relishing the imagination of having all the most beautiful women I love at my beck and call, marrying them all and they all loved me and were not jealous of each other (if I hear)… and sometimes when I watched movies and there is another that appeals to me, I will bring her picture into my perfect picture and marry her into my clan of eves, all in my imagination…

What if such ‘perfect pictures’ came through for me, what would have been the perfect picture other folks like? And if all our perfect pictures happened would we not have successfully made the world a chaotic place?

Yemi my friend, who is a professional photographer, will sometimes take some imperfect pictures that he would have deleted, if not because of the possibilities that Photoshop affords him to make corrections on the little imperfections and they come out to become the perfect picture he desired.

My point, ‘there really is no perfect picture whatsoever, either we are expecting it of ourselves or in certain people we look up to’. But we can only (like my friend will make slight corrections on pictures) make some few corrections on our assumed perfect picture and sometimes in others we just forbear as we pretended in our drama that the other cast didn’t make mistake so that we can give the audience the picture they want… it is this method that gives our lives and the lives of others the harmony, beauty and tranquility that the perfect picture cannot afford us.

The perfect picture therefore is unreal… it is just one of the unrealistic expectations we set for ourselves to frustrate us when we can’t reach it and to taunt us because we couldn’t reach it…. even the perfect picture is nothing but a mere perfect picture… a mere picture created by our own human figment and not the real substance... in no way does a picture equate with reality… for there is no perfect picture, whatsoever.