Becoming Perfect

I love the sport baseball. I have loved this sport since I was a little kid. I was never any good at it, but it didn't stop me from enjoying it greatly. I would watch players and see how magnificent they were on the baseball diamond, that I thought they were the greatest players in the world. To this day, I have seen players that make me marvel at their ability.
Baseball is a fascinating sport for this very reason - it is a game you cannot be perfect at. There is no way to throw a perfect game - meaning nine pitches per inning, all resulting in a strike out. Or have a perfect batting average through the entire season if you have the regulated amount of at bats to declare yourself eligible for statistical significance. I have seen games where a batter was never allowed on base and that has been declared a perfect game, but in the actual sense of the word perfect mixed with the rules of the game, no one has ever been perfect on the mound. And, taking those same rules of hitting and declaration of an at bat, no one has ever been a perfect batter.
Hence, the game marvels on those who fail, but only fail less times than their opponents and that is what I really like about the sport. Do your best, even when you fail, and you can still succeed.
Baseball has different statistical definitions to determine the strength of the players. For a pitcher, those statistics include the ERA (earned run average), strikeouts, wins, losses, innings pitched, WHIP (walks plus hits per innings pitched), opponents batting average and walks, just to name a few. These statistics give you an idea of how strong a pitcher is on the mound versus their opponent and these statistics can even be broken down to which side of the plate the hitter is standing. The batter is under the same statistical category crunch. There is batting average, slugging percentage, on base percentage, home runs, singles, doubles, triples, walks, stolen bases, runs batted in and runs scored. There are so many more as well, but we won't get into them all. All these statistics teach us what type of batter is at the plate and help the pitcher know how to approach the batter and vice versa.
Now that I have prepared you for what makes a pitcher or a batter, let me put a scenario in front of you. I want you to picture a perfect pitcher - do you know what that is? Now picture a perfect batter - do you know what that is? Now, have the pitcher face off against the batter - who wins? If your brain is a mess by now, don't worry, so was mine. I got a headache and stopped thinking about it. I recommend you shake this scenario out of your head and leave it alone.
My question is, how difficult was it to determine who would win the battle? The answer I came up with is we can't quantify exactly what the outcome will be because we can't really know what perfection is since we have never seen it out on the baseball field. Certainly we have seen glimpses and possible similarities, but never have we seen the whole.
Could we create a program or computer software that would give us a final output? The problem would be that we would be limited in our ability to fully comprehend what we are going to see because of the inability to define true perfection.
Here is what I mean, an imperfect creator cannot make a perfect outcome. If we don't know what perfection is, how can we model it? Simple enough. The reason we cannot come up with a final scenario in the baseball analogy is we don't know 100 percent of what all the characteristics are and how those characteristics work to create perfection. And since we don't know all the true characteristics, we don't know what will happen when the ball leaves the pitchers hand.
So we are left with a problem. How can we know what the perfect baseball game would be since we can't truly define the variables entirely without putting an imperfect slant on it.
So let us put baseball aside for now. Instead of focusing on the ability to succeed by failing, let us focus on learning from our failures so that we can succeed. Or, become perfect.
In the Sermon on the Mount, we learn quickly what the Saviors agenda is for the children of God: “... he elaborated extensively upon the requirements for exaltation,” said President Spencer W. Kimball, the twelth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Savior even goes further by declaring at the end of the Testament of Matthew chapter 5:

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

And He added one more part during His visit to the children of Lehi in the third book of Nephi, saying:

Therefore I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect.

And later on in that same book to the Disciples he added:

... Therefore, what manner of men out ye to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am.

As I showed with the baseball analogy, it is difficult for imperfect beings to conjure up what perfection is like. And now the scriptures, in very similar settings on the very same topic to different crowds, gives the charge to us, “be perfect even as I.”
It seems impossible. We are asked to be perfect by the only person who could. But listen to what Pres. Kimball said on this very subject: “One of the great teachings of the Man of Galilee, the Lord Jesus Christ, was that you and I carry within us immense possibilities. In urging us to be perfect, Jesus was not taunting us or teasing us. He was telling us a powerful truth about our possibilities and about our potential. It is a truth almost too stunning to contemplate. Jesus, who could not lie, sought to beckon us to move further along the pathway to perfection.”
Which brings me from the baseball analogy to the reality of a plan that was truly created by Perfection for the imperfect to become perfect. As Pres. Kimball said that the Savior was beckoning us to move along this path, that was the intent of the plan from the beginning.
If we contemplate further into history and reflect on the council in Heaven with the Great Creator and his offspring, we see the laying of a plan that did not contain missing links, loopholes or any adlibbing measures to help the plan obtain its final outcome. It was, in no other term perfect for what it needed to accomplish and there was no other plan that could do a better job.
Let's discuss why. The council came together and two plans were presented. Here is the nutshell of both of them. First plan as Elder Bruce. R. McConkie, an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, explained it: God taught His spirit children, including the Savior and Lucifer the “gospel of God” and those spirit children had agency to accept or reject the plan as truth. The plan included the creation of the earth, followed by the obtaining of mortal bodies that would then lead to being tried and tested to see if they would keep all of God's commandments. The plan called for one to be “the Only Begotten in the Flesh” to work out the Atonement so that the fallen could obtain Eternal Life. Elder McConkie added, “… this plan had been taught to all the hosts of heaven” and “it was known and understood by all.” As part of the plan, he asked for one to volunteer to put all the terms and conditions of the plan into place. Which leads to the second plan: Lucifer rejected the plan and rewrote the terms and conditions that all of God's children would not be lost and the power and glory would be Lucifer's and he would raise himself above God. In Moses 4, we read: “Behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor.”
The difference with Lucifer's plan, it didn't offer the ability for us to change from our plain prior to the mortal experience, to the plain that God resided on. Hence, the earthly experience would be worthless because it didn't contain two necessary ingredients to becoming perfect - agency and opposition.
Lehi taught Jacob prior to his death after reaching the promised land this infinite principle:
For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, rightesousness could nto be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life niether death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.
Wherefore, it must needs have been created for a thing of naught; wherefore there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation. Werefore, this thing must needs destroy the wisdom of God and his eternal purposes, and also the power; and the mercy, and the justice of God.
We also clearly learn that necessary characteristics of a perfect plan of salvation must have opposition, if not, then we find that the creator would have no power, nor wisdom and therefore, no ability to offer mercy or justice. Without these, there would be no way for us to obtain perfection and gain all, since the creator would not be perfect, having lost all for not having all the necessary ingredients to the plan.
The failure that Lucifer's plan would offer. We would gain nothing and “this thing must needs destroy the wisdom of God and his eternal purposes.” The choice, which was agreed upon, would be one that kept agency and opposition as key ingredients into the plan, but by doing so, would create a plan that would drive us away from our Creator, who wanted us to become like Him from the beginning.
Elder Bruce R. McConkie explained further: “God the Eternal Father, the Father of the Firstborn and of all the spirit hosts, as an exalted and glorified Being, having all power and dominion, possessing all knowledge and all truth, personifying and being the embodiment of all godly attributes, did, of his own will, ordain and establish the plan of salvation whereby Christ and all his other spirit children might have power to advance and progress and become like him.”
If we believe what Lehi is telling us, that mercy and justice are part of the plan, then we understand two more key ingredients and gain an ability to make up for the carnal nature of the imperfect body that truly is “an enemy of God.” How does that happen? This brings up another key ingredient.
A perfect sacrifice would allow us to bind or seal ourselves to and make up the difference for our shortcomings. How would we do this? The Savior, who in the beginning as Pres. John Taylor asserted: “Thy will be done;" `I will carry out thy plans and thy designs, and, as man will fall, I will offer myself as an atonement according to thy will, O God. Neither do I wish the honor, but thine be the glory;'" and a covenant was entered into between Him and His Father, in which He agreed to atone for the sins of the world; and He thus, as stated, became the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world.” (Moses 4 and Abraham 3) This covenant then met the terms and conditions set forward by God himself in the plan. And the Savior made this a teaching point for his Twelve saying:

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Interestingly enough, our lack of complete obedience or ability to overcome and follow the commandments perfectly left us without an option to forsake our sins as a result of the Fall of Adam and Eve, which rested on the shoulders of justice in the plan. But, the plan also called for mercy, which, through our ability to yoke ourselves to someone who was perfect, would allow us then to return because we would then be declared whole.
The Savior, in that declaration, makes a covenant with us. If we follow him, do what he asks, then he will make up the difference by yoking, or sealing himself with us. Because we cannot reach perfection in this mortal body, whatever failures or shortcomings we have, we can still obtain perfection because we are sealed or yoked to a perfect sacrifice.
Elder Bruce C. Hafen of the Quorum of the Seventy put it this way: “His words do not describe an event, but a process. He does not request the answer to a yes-or-no question, but an essay, written in the winding trail of our experience. As we move along that trail, we will find that he is not only aware of our limitations, but that he will also in due course, compensate for them, “after all we can do.” That, in addition to forgiveness for sin, is a crucial part of the good news of the gospel, part of the victory, part of the Atonement.”
Elder Hafen further adds, “The basic doctrines of the holy Atonement relate first to the transgression of Adam and Eve and to our personal sins. The Fall subjected Adam and Eve and their children to death, sin and other characteristics of mortality that separated them from God. To allow humankind to be united with God again, divine justice required compensation for these consequences of the Fall. God's mercy allowed the Savior to make that compensation through the Atonement.”
If God, then, is going to allow mercy to be an ingredient, we then are bound, if we accept, to the covenants then we are going to make with His Son and Him. Which brings up the last ingredient I wish to bring up in this perfect plan: Covenants.
To quote President Faust on this subject: “We honor the Lord by keeping our baptismal covenants, our sacrament covenants, our temple covenants, and by keeping the Sabbath day Holy. The Lord has said, “All among them who know their hearts are honest, and are broken, and their spirits contrite, and are willing to observe their covenants by sacrifice - yea, every sacrifice which I, the Lord, shall command - they are accepted of me.””
To better tie everything together, to help show the perfectness of the plan and our ability to actively engage ourselves as participants of the plan and able to yoke ourselves with the Savior and obtain perfection. From the hymn I read:

More Holiness Give me
More strivings within
More patience in suffring
More sorrow for sin
More faith in my savior
More sense of his care
More Joy in his service
More purpose in prayer
More Purity Give me
More strength to o'ercome
More freedom from earthstains
More longing for home
More fit for the kingdom
More used would I be
More blessed and holy
More Savior like thee

In conclusion, we learn from the council in Heaven and through modern revelation, that the Plan of Salvation has key factors, characteristics that we must understand and follow in order to become, as the Savior instructed, perfect. We learn that perfection isn't something we can obtain on our own, nor is it something we can do without a perfect sacrifice. Since we are mortal and have natural tendencies that we give in to, we are left unable to overcome. Yet, there is hope in the plan, hope that we can be come one with the Only Begotten in the Flesh, who lived perfectly and offered himself up a sacrifice to pay the debt for Justice that through Mercy and by yoking ourselves to the Savior and doing so, adhering to the covenants and commandments that would be part of the terms and conditions, we could, in the final judgement, be declared "perfect."