Perfection

Mankind yearns for excellence.  It underlies virtually everything we think about, when we think seriously about human life and accomplishment – and try to gain improvement for ourselves and society.  Perfection, as we commonly define it in the natural context, is a motivator that we may believe leads us to heaven or a heavenly society, but may lead to hell on earth.  We likely do not understand perfection’s context as God reveals it, so we create other definitions and launch ideas and contexts to gain it.  Thus far in history we have failed.  Human stabs at progress pointing to perfection go back for many centuries, with both blessing and cursing in them.  The story is well told in the speech of Isaiah Berlin on the acceptance of an honorary degree in law from the University of Toronto in 1994.  The speech of the aged Berlin was read at the ceremony.  Given the human perception of perfection the speech is magnificent and needs to be read, understood and widely considered for wisdom in guiding human events.  In the light of the biblical view it misses the mark related to the human condition, a condition that only God can amend to achieve what the citizenry of the world want in their souls for humanity in love and peace.  There is an underlying feeling sometimes celebrated in social context that there is a kind of perfection (human improvement) that leaps over our imperfections and society to peace.  It is social whistling in the dark. 

Berlin noted the persons of the twentieth century who sought in their depraved way to perfect society: Lenin, Stalin. Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, and we can add others like Mussolini who set out to purify the social world through the state.  The concepts and movements seeking perfection were noted by Berlin as: Athenian philosophers, Jews and Christians, the thinkers of the Renaissance, the French radical reformers, and the revolutionaries of the nineteenth century.  He believed the twentieth century culminated much of this to become the worst of all the centuries in its horrors and evil.  He was struck by the contradictions of the ideas and theories of the searchers for perfection – that led to so much sorrow, evil and death.

Scripture identifies perfection in the natural creation as maturity, and it is a developing factor for an individual or society.  We can have lesser and greater maturity, as we can have lesser or greater love, effort and service to others.  Scripture refers to love and much love.  Words relating to all this in the King James Version are several relating to holiness, perfect, maturity, and their derivatives.  There is the sense of growing up as Christian norm that when it is complete leads to perfection – maturity in the context of nature.  Only God is perfect, as we discover in Scripture, and whatever we gain that relates to perfection as found in God’s nature.  Until immortality and the gift of perfection emanating from the nature of God, absolute perfection of human beings is impossible.  It is made up for Christians in the doctrines of justification and sanctification.  An important part of the Christian perception is that Christ indwells his children.  His character is put to the accounts of his children.  Perfection in God is related to morality, and from that base understanding expresses itself in righteousness.  Righteousness relates to the quality of life, and righteous acts are to be evaluated first in morality.  Natural life has difficulty with all this because, unless there is acknowledgement of God, there is no sure source for values (morality in thought and action).  Righteousness is quality in the person, followed by righteous (right) actions.  We have no rights for heaven as natural life is constituted, but values are afforded to us in nature by righteousness that reflects the nature of the Creator.  Christ verified all this in his presence with mankind, taking on natural nature showing that those who follow him can become like unto that signified in the incarnation.  Persons can only be directed toward perfection until God declares those to whom he will gift it from his perfection.  For the thoroughgoing humanist this is all illusory, the imagery of some sincere persons who yearned for a way out of, or through, the cycle of life to death.  Those accepting the cycles of nature as final are presented as strong, and those requiring faith orientation are interpreted as weak.  For those with faith understanding, the concept is reversed.