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.
