Real holiness rarely looks like the clenched jaw, tight-fisted perfectionism that haunts so many souls. On Father Simon Says, in a caller’s heart-aching question about her own long battle with scrupulosity—and now her daughter’s—Father Simon peeled back a layer of the Gospel we often skim past.

And it all hinges on a single word: as.

The caller asked what it means to “be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect” without sinking into the suffocating trap of perfectionism. Father Simon went straight to the Greek. Teleios doesn’t mean flawless performance. It means reaching the goal, going the full distance. The Latin root mirrors it: per-ficere –to make something through to completion.

God doesn’t expect spotless behavior, checklists, or moral bookkeeping. As Father Simon explained, God “is not punctilious, dotting of i’s and crossing of t’s.” His perfection is love—self-forgetting, sacrificial love. “To love is to will the good of another.” That’s the Father’s goal. And that’s the “perfection” Jesus invites.

But here’s the key: we are asked not simply to love but to love as He loves. Forgive as He forgives. Not “if” we forgive, but “to the degree and in the way” He forgives. We may tell God, “I’ll forgive, but I won’t forget,” while God casts sins “into the sea of His forgetfulness.”

Real holiness isn’t passing every test, paying every bill on time, or avoiding every human blunder. We will all “do stupid things,” Father Simon said. Just don’t let them distract you from the true telos. Love as Christ loves. Seek forgiveness for your shortcomings. Return to the Father in humility and contrition and begin again. 

We will never be flawless but we can foster an undying pursuit to imitate Christ in everything, and that is the freedom the scrupulous heart aches for.

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