Resources for Youth

I was grateful to see this article in the For the Strength of Youth magazine a few months ago. I’m glad youth are given an opportunity to see perfection in a healthier way. 

The Savior said, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). This is not an invitation to do everything flawlessly. It is an invitation to better understand Heavenly Father’s plan and follow Him.

In the New Testament, the Greek word for perfect means complete, whole, or fully developed, having reached an end-goal. Jesus Christ invites us to strive for that kind of perfection. And He alone can help us to reach it—eventually.

Our Father in Heaven wants us to have the physical and spiritual perfection He has. Then we can have a fulness of joy like He has. Through Jesus Christ’s Resurrection and atoning sacrifice, we can be made perfect—eventually.

Heavenly Father knows that we cannot be perfect in this life. But in His plan, we can choose to have faith in Jesus Christ, make covenants, strive to keep God’s commandments, and repent whenever we falter. Then He can bless us in this life and—eventually, after this life—make us perfect.

And this article by Elder Holland was in the same issue of the FSY magazine—also giving hope to youth. 

The scriptures were written to bless and encourage us, and surely they do that. But have you noticed that every now and then a passage will appear that reminds us we are falling a little short? For example: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father … in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). With that commandment, we want to go back to bed and pull the covers over our head. Such a celestial goal seems beyond our reach. Yet surely the Lord would never give us a commandment He knew we could not keep.

“Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him,” Moroni pleads. “Love God with all your might, mind and strength, then … by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ” (Moroni 10:32; emphasis added). Our only hope for true perfection is in receiving it as a gift from heaven—we can’t “earn” it.

Except for Jesus, there have been no flawless performances on this earthly journey we are pursuing, so while in mortality let’s strive for steady improvement and avoid excessive expectations of ourselves and of others.

If we persevere, then somewhere in eternity our refinement will be finished and complete—which is the New Testament meaning of perfection.

I wish I’d had articles such as these in The New Era when I was a kid. But then, I don’t know that perfectionism was talked about, much less understood on a general level in the ‘70s. With more helpful information, youth today may be able to avoid some of the pitfalls of past generations. 

To be continued . . . with Part 98.