Badly Drawn God 3:
Perfection & Imperfection
The third image is one I really struggle with – after all Thomas Aquinas wrote reams on demonstrating that God must be perfect and perfect in every way. So if God is perfect, his standard is perfect and Jesus said "be perfect just as your Heavenly Father is perfect" – Suddenly God can become a tyrant who's standards I can have no chance of meeting – as I am imperfect.
But this is a distortion, as I have conflated Gods perfection with my own imperfection and grace has been replaced by work.
Back to JB Phillips again:
"The tragedy is often that the "one-hundred-per-cent god" is introduced into the life of the sensitive by the comparatively insensitive, who literally cannot imagine the harm they are doing. What is the way out? The words of Christ, "Learn of Me," provide the best clue. Some of our modern enthusiastic Christians of the hearty type tend to regard Christianity as a performance. But it still is, as it was originally, a way of living, and in no sense a performance acted for the benefit of the surrounding world. To "learn" implies growth; implies the making and correcting of mistakes; implies a steady upward progress toward an ideal. The "perfection" to which Christ commands men to progress is this ideal."
One day we will be perfect – but for me anyway – not yet. Not that that will stop my trying, making mistakes, learning and growing.
Ask God to show you where you are trying to be unrealistically perfect.
"In a word, what I'm saying is, Grow up. You're kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you." Matthew 5: 48 [MSG]
Guy Mowbray
| 
No comments:
Post a Comment