Fénelon’s Letter for the Perfectionist Christian
⏱ 11 min read
Dear one,
Your perfectionism is killing your relationship with God, and you cannot stop it. You have tried. You have read the books on grace. You have underlined the verses on mercy. You have been told, with kindness, that God loves you as you are, and the kindness has not made the inner voice quieter. The inner voice still measures every prayer, every quiet time, every act of obedience, against a standard no one set out loud and no human soul could meet. You know the voice is not Him. You also cannot quite turn it off. This is the place François Fénelon, the seventeenth-century French archbishop and pastoral writer, wrote his letter to the perfectionist soul into. He had seen, again and again, that the most devout women in his care were often the most punished by their own inner courts — and that the punishment was, in their reading, sanctification. It was not. He named it. He said it gently, and he said it firmly, and his letter to them, gathered in Spiritual Progress, is one of the quietest acts of mercy in Christian pastoral writing.
The perfectionism, Fénelon said, has mistaken its own self-judgement for the work of God. The work of God is gentler than that. The self-judgement is not making you holy. It is wearing you down, and the wearing-down has been confused with growth. The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women is built around the slow practice this letter walks — for the soul who needs the page to already have a shape on the evenings the inner voice is loudest. We will get to it. For now: the chair, the open book, and the slow read of Fenelon for christian perfectionist hearts.
What he meant by self
Fénelon’s word self runs through the letters and it is doing more work than the modern reader notices. He did not mean self-esteem, or self-care, or the modern psychological self. He meant the curved-in interior watching that keeps the soul preoccupied with its own state — its own progress, its own purity, its own failure. The perfectionist Christian is full of self in this old sense. She is not vain. She is not selfish in the ordinary way. She is, instead, unable to stop watching herself for traces of fault. The watching feels devout. It is actually the self-attention dressed as holiness.
The cure is not less devotion. The cure is the slow turning of the gaze away from the self and toward Him. The perfectionism cannot survive in that direction of looking, because the perfectionism is fed entirely by the lamp pointed inward. Turn the lamp, and the inner court has nothing to prosecute against.
The first passage: harsh watchfulness, full of self
“If, then, we never lost sight of the presence of God, we should never cease to watch, and always with a simple, lovely, quiet and disinterested vigilance; while, on the other hand, the watchfulness which is the result of a desire to be assured of our state, is harsh, restless, and full of self.”
— François Fénelon, Spiritual Progress
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly.
Hear the two adjectives Fénelon attaches to the right watchfulness. Disinterested. Quiet. And the three he attaches to the wrong one. Harsh. Restless. Full of self. Dear one, you have been practising the second kind for years. The harshness has been mistaken for high standards. The restlessness has been mistaken for diligence. The fullness of self has been mistaken for self-examination.
It is none of those things. It is the inner court running its case against you in the language of devotion. The case has no end. The verdict is always the same. Not yet enough. The perfectionism is not God’s voice. God’s voice is the simple, lovely, quiet one — the one that lifts the heart toward Him without measuring, the one that loves without prosecuting, the one that does not require the soul to pass an interior audit before being allowed near.
You have been confusing the prosecutor for the Father. The prosecutor is loud and certain. The Father is quieter and slower, and He has been waiting, all these years, behind the prosecutor’s voice. Lose sight of the self. That is the small command Fénelon gives. Not lose the desire to be holy. Lose the self-watching the perfectionism has been calling holiness. The desire to be holy will be carried by Him. Your part is the lifting of the gaze.
The second passage: fidelity without lively emotion
“God does not call you by any lively emotions, and I heartily rejoice at it, if you will but remain faithful; for a fidelity, unsustained by delights, is far purer, and safer from danger, than one accompanied by those tender feelings, which may be seated too exclusively in the imagination.”
— François Fénelon, Spiritual Progress
Read it slowly. Twice if you can.
The perfectionist Christian has often been using her interior emotions as the report card. If I felt nothing during the prayer, the prayer did not count. If the worship did not move me, the worship was not real. If today did not produce the right interior state, today was a failed day. Fénelon names this for what it is — a fidelity that depends on delights, on tender feelings, on the inner weather being right. He says, gently, that this kind of fidelity is seated too exclusively in the imagination. It is fragile. It is at the mercy of sleep, food, hormones, the morning’s news, and a hundred other small things that have nothing to do with the soul’s standing with God.
The purer fidelity is the one that does not depend on the feeling. It is the small lift of the heart toward God when no warmth accompanies the lift. It is the showing-up to the chair when the chair produces nothing. It is the choice to love Him today, faithfully, without the inner climate cooperating. This fidelity is what God is forming in you. It is safer from danger, Fénelon says, because it cannot be dismantled by a bad week or a flat morning or a year that does not feel particularly devout.
For the perfectionist, this is the second relief. The lack of feeling is not the verdict on your day. The day was faithful if you lifted the heart toward Him at all, however briefly, however dryly. The grade you have been giving yourself based on your inner climate was always based on the wrong measure. The right measure is the small bare faithfulness. He sees it. He counts it. It is enough.
A somatic for the shoulders that have been holding the standard
Pause here. The teaching has a body to it. The body of the perfectionist Christian is usually held in one place — the shoulders, which have been carrying the silent I have to do this right for years. The shoulders are up by the ears more often than not. They are not aware they are up; they have been up so long that up has become their resting position.
Sit somewhere still. Notice the shoulders. Let them lower by an inch. Not by trying to relax them — by stopping the small ongoing effort of holding them up. Let one slow inhale come in. On the exhale, let the breath go all the way out, longer than the inhale. As the breath leaves, let the small phrase form. I do not have to pass an inspection. I am loved already. Repeat once more. The shoulders stay lower. The breath goes out long. Something in the chest may loosen by a fraction; let it.
Then go on with what you are doing. The shoulders will rise again within the hour; that is not the failure. The minute of release was the practice. The body of the perfectionist learns, slowly, over weeks of small minutes, that it is allowed to lower its standard-carrying. The slight drop of the shoulders is the simple, quiet vigilance, made bodily, before the inner voice has caught up.
(The same slow practice is what the Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women is built around — one page each evening, one short passage, room for the honest sentence, no demand that the soul perform the inspection she has been performing for years. The workbook is not the cure for the perfectionism. He is. But the daily small return is the format Fénelon’s letter to the perfectionist was always going to need on a Tuesday.)
The third passage: love without loving self
“We must renounce, forget and forever lose sight of self, take part with Thee and shine, O God, against ourselves and ours; have no longer any will, glory or peace, but thine only; in a word, we must love Thee without loving self except in and for Thee.”
— François Fénelon, Spiritual Progress
Read it twice. This is the line, dear one, to keep near the page.
Hear what Fénelon is not saying. He is not saying you must hate yourself. The phrase lose sight of self is not contempt for the soul. It is the opposite — it is the soul finally being released from the relentless self-watching that has been calling itself devotion. To lose sight of self, in Fénelon’s grammar, is to stop running the inner court. It is to look at Him instead of at yourself. It is to love Him without loving self except in and for Thee — to receive your own self only as something He loves, not as something you have to perfect before He can love it.
This is the deepest reframe for the perfectionist. The perfectionism has been a way of trying to love yourself the right way — to be the version of yourself you can finally approve of. Fénelon hands you the inverse. The approval is not yours to give yourself. The approval is His, already given, in the love that does not depend on your improvement. Your part is to stop trying to manufacture an inner self worthy of being loved, and to receive the love that is being offered to the self that is here, right now, in its current half-formed state.
The perfectionist Christian who reads this line slowly enough — and slowly enough may take weeks — begins to feel something loosen. The inner court does not vanish. It quiets. The prosecutor does not retire. He simply finds less to feed on, because the soul has stopped supplying him with the daily self-judgement he was running on. The relationship with God begins to breathe again. The prayer becomes less of an inspection and more of a being-with-Him. The day becomes less of a performance and more of a slow walking in His presence. The perfectionism does not die in a week. It thins, over months, as the gaze keeps turning back toward Him.
(For the wider sibling letters in this pastoral cluster, Fénelon’s Letter to the Soul in Scruple walks the over-careful conscience, Fénelon’s Counsel for the Christian Who Cannot Be Still the restless soul, and Fénelon’s Letter to the Woman Who Has Lost Her Way the soul whose spiritual map has stopped working. The Andrew Murray companion reads are Andrew Murray’s Counsel for the Christian Who Cannot Pray and What to Do When You’re Doubting God — Murray on the Soul in Crisis.)
What the cure for perfectionism actually looks like
It looks like the lowering of the shoulders. It looks like the released chest, the slow exhale, the small lift of the heart toward Him without measurement. It looks like the new sentence the soul learns to say when the prosecutor begins his case. He has me. I do not have to win this argument with myself today. It looks like the daily small turning of the gaze away from your own interior wall and back toward His face.
Dear one, the perfectionism has been your way of trying to give Him a self worth loving. He has not been waiting for that self. He has been loving the one He has been given. Your sanctification was never your responsibility to engineer through self-judgement. It was His work, done in you, while you consented to be held. The consenting is the small daily practice. The being-held is the rest of your life, made of His love rather than your inspection of yourself.
Fénelon for christian perfectionist hearts is not a method. It is a slow turning of the lamp. The inner court will protest. Let it protest. The court has been wrong about you for years. You are loved in your current state. The growing will come, slowly, in the way growing actually comes — through the company of God, not through the prosecution of yourself.
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A daily home for the practice
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Bible Study Workbook for Women. One page each evening, one short passage, room for the honest sentence — the small daily showing-up that holds the soul in proximity to God without the inspection. We are also slowly working toward reprinting Fénelon’s letters through Everspring Press, so the gentle pastoral voice that has steadied the perfectionist for three centuries can be back in her hands in a clean modern edition.
The cure for the perfectionism, Fénelon would have told you, was never a higher standard. It was the small slow turning of the gaze away from the self and toward Him. Your part is the daily turning. His part is the loving, which has not stopped while you were busy holding yourself to the standard He never required of you.
With you in His love,
— the slow voice underneath this page
