Tlaloc
Member
Be ye perfect as you're father in heaven is perfect right? But the further we get from God the more difficult it is to see what that means. Its rooted in the idea of something being fully mended and functional, a perfect net was the one that had no holes in it (that fish could get through, of course). The net is broken, when its mended it's made perfect. That is apparently what the original meaning was.
Now the English word is very muddied as English people get further from understanding God. The word perfect now refers to some kind of unattainably high ideal, it is tied to concepts like being the best at everything or having everything go exacly, meticulusly the way someone wants it too. Its to the point where the word itself is offensive or ridiculus. This holds true among Christians, but I'm not sure most realize what effect this has on testimony outside the church.
Back when I was ministering to a new age\neopagan freind (the psudo-intelecual kind, not the complely detached from reality kind) I layered on numerous intelecual wins with everyting from anti evoloutuion to the idea of wrong existing. The critical loss point was heaven. Heaven was hell to her, the idea of a perfect place was so bad to her that she maintained and stayed that God could not be good because of heaven. Not because he keeps people out of heaven mind you, but because heaven is a perfect place. Just as christians shoot down other Christians at the very idea of being perfected, those against God can now shoot down God for the very idea of having a perfect place. For all the strongholds I broke down in the weeks of conversation that one could not fall. Christians embrace too readily that perfection is evil, so we give to our enimies the weapon that ANY perfection is evil.
To that end we must take back the word to what it was, not some abstract, high minded ideal but the basic objective of every Christian. To be dead to sin, to be holy, to be transformed. We are fallen, we are torn nets, and we seek to be fully mended. We do not have a goal to be a supernet, to some kind of idealized godlike (in the Roman sense) person, but only to be what we are supposed to be.
Lets face it, were bad employees. We come in late, pilfer from the till, slack off on the stock and are rude to coustomers. When anyone is hired that is interested in actually coming in on time and doing the job he was hired for we want to tear him down and make him quit so he stops making us look bad. We marginalize him, we call him goody goody, we dont invite him to any of our get togethers and we sabotoge him any way we can. It isnt like he's doing anything special either, he's just doing his basic job.
To most Christians, the bare minimum intention is way higher than we want to go, so we treat the bare minimum like it was impossible and anyone who tries to do it like a heretic.
Anyway, like I said, idealized perfection is a supernet, actual perfection is any net that isnt broken. We are all broken though, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But the other side effect of the supernet ideal is the idea that there can only be one perfect just like there can only be one best. Because to us English to be perfect you have to be best. Really it just isnt so.
I make a nice fried chiken, its buttermilk marinated overnight, double battered with a nice blend of spices, and deep fried to perfection. Yesterday I switched powedered onion for brown sugar. It was less robust but had a sweet tang to it. Which recipie is beter? Who knows, the girls said they liked it the same, though it tastes quite different. Both of them are perfect recipies, and many more variants are too. There are surely hundreds of small varients in herbs and spices that would produce fine chicken.
That said, there are nigh infininte combinations that are horrible. Grass, dirt, arsenic, glass, cotton, drywall, wood, a lightbulb, on and on and on and on would not ever be ingredients in the prefect chicken. The overwhelming majority of substances on earth have no place in fried chicken. For the hundreds or even thousands of variants that are acceptable, the road to perfect fried chicken is extremely narrow and not to be stumbled upon by combining random objects.
Now the English word is very muddied as English people get further from understanding God. The word perfect now refers to some kind of unattainably high ideal, it is tied to concepts like being the best at everything or having everything go exacly, meticulusly the way someone wants it too. Its to the point where the word itself is offensive or ridiculus. This holds true among Christians, but I'm not sure most realize what effect this has on testimony outside the church.
Back when I was ministering to a new age\neopagan freind (the psudo-intelecual kind, not the complely detached from reality kind) I layered on numerous intelecual wins with everyting from anti evoloutuion to the idea of wrong existing. The critical loss point was heaven. Heaven was hell to her, the idea of a perfect place was so bad to her that she maintained and stayed that God could not be good because of heaven. Not because he keeps people out of heaven mind you, but because heaven is a perfect place. Just as christians shoot down other Christians at the very idea of being perfected, those against God can now shoot down God for the very idea of having a perfect place. For all the strongholds I broke down in the weeks of conversation that one could not fall. Christians embrace too readily that perfection is evil, so we give to our enimies the weapon that ANY perfection is evil.
To that end we must take back the word to what it was, not some abstract, high minded ideal but the basic objective of every Christian. To be dead to sin, to be holy, to be transformed. We are fallen, we are torn nets, and we seek to be fully mended. We do not have a goal to be a supernet, to some kind of idealized godlike (in the Roman sense) person, but only to be what we are supposed to be.
Lets face it, were bad employees. We come in late, pilfer from the till, slack off on the stock and are rude to coustomers. When anyone is hired that is interested in actually coming in on time and doing the job he was hired for we want to tear him down and make him quit so he stops making us look bad. We marginalize him, we call him goody goody, we dont invite him to any of our get togethers and we sabotoge him any way we can. It isnt like he's doing anything special either, he's just doing his basic job.
To most Christians, the bare minimum intention is way higher than we want to go, so we treat the bare minimum like it was impossible and anyone who tries to do it like a heretic.
Anyway, like I said, idealized perfection is a supernet, actual perfection is any net that isnt broken. We are all broken though, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But the other side effect of the supernet ideal is the idea that there can only be one perfect just like there can only be one best. Because to us English to be perfect you have to be best. Really it just isnt so.
I make a nice fried chiken, its buttermilk marinated overnight, double battered with a nice blend of spices, and deep fried to perfection. Yesterday I switched powedered onion for brown sugar. It was less robust but had a sweet tang to it. Which recipie is beter? Who knows, the girls said they liked it the same, though it tastes quite different. Both of them are perfect recipies, and many more variants are too. There are surely hundreds of small varients in herbs and spices that would produce fine chicken.
That said, there are nigh infininte combinations that are horrible. Grass, dirt, arsenic, glass, cotton, drywall, wood, a lightbulb, on and on and on and on would not ever be ingredients in the prefect chicken. The overwhelming majority of substances on earth have no place in fried chicken. For the hundreds or even thousands of variants that are acceptable, the road to perfect fried chicken is extremely narrow and not to be stumbled upon by combining random objects.