Therefore, just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing love to everyone, so also you must be complete. -Matthew 5:48 CEB
I love how the Common English Bible (CEB) renders this verse. While other translations tell us to be perfect as God is perfect this rendering seems to make more sense. It does mess with us though. All of our lives we have been told that God is perfect in every way.
To be sure, that last sentence may be right? God may be everything we think that he is and more. Yet I wonder if seeing God like that can be problematic. I mean, questions arise. Like is it possible for perfection to create imperfection? Or, can perfect love permit hate and disease?
I have asked a few folks this question: "Would you still love God if you discovered that he was not perfect?" Each person I asked indicated that God's perfection is not a prerequisite to their love for him. I think the question bleeds into our understanding of the gospel accounts.
Jesus was certainly a human being. Many of us also believe that he was divine - a man that had the Holy Spirit without measure. So some understand that Jesus was a mixture of both heaven and earth. The question is whether that heavenly part of him was perfect?
Some might argue that only the human part was imperfect. I know that I once did. Yet do we think that his divine part was perfect. I think that, for me, the jury is out on the answer to that question. Issues arise if Jesus is, as we read in the New Testament book of Hebrews, the exact image of God.
To be sure, that last sentence may be right? God may be everything we think that he is and more. Yet I wonder if seeing God like that can be problematic. I mean, questions arise. Like is it possible for perfection to create imperfection? Or, can perfect love permit hate and disease?
I have asked a few folks this question: "Would you still love God if you discovered that he was not perfect?" Each person I asked indicated that God's perfection is not a prerequisite to their love for him. I think the question bleeds into our understanding of the gospel accounts.
Jesus was certainly a human being. Many of us also believe that he was divine - a man that had the Holy Spirit without measure. So some understand that Jesus was a mixture of both heaven and earth. The question is whether that heavenly part of him was perfect?
Some might argue that only the human part was imperfect. I know that I once did. Yet do we think that his divine part was perfect. I think that, for me, the jury is out on the answer to that question. Issues arise if Jesus is, as we read in the New Testament book of Hebrews, the exact image of God.
So what am I saying? Is God limited to what we see in Jesus? In other words, is God the image of Jesus in the same way that Jesus is the image of God? It is an interesting question. Firstly, it makes sense to think no because the Father is most certainly a Spirit.
Yet it does seem that Jesus puts substance to what that divine Spirit might look like. Unlike the warrior deity we often envision in the Old Testament, Jesus presents a different image. He shows us a softer side of God. More loving. Compassionate. Encouraging. Kind. Passionate.
In dealing with the religious leaders and practices of his day, I think that we see the glorious passion of God. Jesus showed us bravery when he confronted them and called them hypocrites. He turned over tables and chased people out of the temple areas declaring it to be a house of prayer.
I love these images presented in the gospel accounts. They help us to understand the nature of God. Who he is and what he is like. Yet it speaks little to whether God is perfect in every way. Can God be perfect in areas of character and not in other areas?
In essence, is it possible that God has limitations? Years of teaching demands of me, that I should think that he does not. I wrote here that I think that God may not know the future. So, in that respect, he may not be all that I have once imagined him to be.
But are there other limitations that God has or ones that he has imposed on himself? He certainly seems to have limited himself with regard to interfering in the decisions and actions of human beings. Every day awful things happen and he seems passive - even towards those who love him.
God at times seems to have created a world full of chaos. Natural disasters, like earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes, speak of a flawed creation. While some apologists speak to the need of such things, these disasters convey an image of a flawed creation.
Yet the most flawed part of creation might be the human being. Creating people with the ability to hate others and do harm to them, I think, teaches us of a God with limitations. To be sure, I may be way off base in this. Yet I sometimes think, is this the best that he could do?
I am thinking that some may read this and think that I am writing blasphemy. What I am writing goes against the grain. It contradicts much of what we have been taught all of our lives. I mean really. How can it be possible that God is not perfect? It seems incredulous.
I think that many of us have the perspective of an ant. We see huge creatures and maybe imagine strange things about these large overlords. It is pretty natural when we consider our evolution and history. Once we imagined sun and moon gods. We deified that which we didn't understand.
Perhaps that is the whole point? We really do not understand God all that much but have a need to describe the indescribable. To attribute perfection simply because we do not understand what we are trying to understand. In some sense, perfection becomes a form of idolatry.
In the end, I don't think that it is wrong to see God as perfect. Yet I think that it could become problematic as we experience trauma and pain. Thinking that God 'perfect will' (Is there such a thing?) involves such things can place a wedge in our relationship. And that might be the saddest part?
Again, the question is not 'Is God perfect?' but rather does he have to be? Can we worship an entity that is not flawless? Can we build a relationship built on something other than perfection? Can we pray to such s One? In reality, what would such a relationship look like? Maybe more on that later?
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