Bible Study Reflections: Perfect or Flawed?

Today's Bible Study Reflection comes from the third edition of our Theology on Tap group.  This event just keeps getting better and better.  I had to leave around 9:00 to attend to some family things but I understand the event, having started at 7:00 p.m., lasted into the wee hours of the morning.  I'd judge that to be true considering the sleepy eyes of many of the participants at church the next morning!  Apparently this stuff is fun. Who knew?

In any case, our question today was posed by a couple of participants.  One began a discussion about doing good and then lamented how flawed we are as human beings.  After a few other comments another participant piped up saying that we're not flawed, we're perfect as God has made us.

We spent a few minutes talking about this dilemma before clearing a table and making both people engage in a best-two-out-of-three arm-wrestling contest to see who was right.  Sadly the results were inconclusive, as both were distracted by a passing box of chocolates before the third round could commence.  So we're left with the question:  flawed or perfect?  Which are we as God's followers?

Click through for some ruminations...

It's likely that, in a rush of humility and good theological upbringing plus a touch of self-awareness, your mind jumped immediately to "Of course we're flawed!"  And that's true.  Who among us has not made a mistake?  Who among us does not continue to make them?  Can anyone claim to be perfect?  Certainly if you've ever been married or had children any one of them will quickly disabuse you of that notion!  Go ahead...ask your spouse now.  "Honey, am I perfect?"  I dare you.

Acknowledging our flaws is an important part of our theology.  In some ways the entire story of the Bible up until Jesus arrived was the story of How We Messed Up.  No matter how bright and brilliant the example, how steady and firm the words of direction from God, how favorable and glorious the circumstances, humanity blew it.  We blew it biting the fruit.  We blew it running our nations.  We blew it in our relations with our neighbors.  We blew it in our promises to God.  That's why Jesus came!  Because we couldn't save ourselves no matter how hard we tried.

Even if you read the stories of Jesus' time on earth and all the apostles and their epistles that followed, we were still blowing it left and right.  Jesus' followers never really got him or understood his purpose until it fell on top of their heads in the form of the Holy Spirit and tongues of flame.  All those letters they wrote basically told us how to not mess up even more.  If you read them with any seriousness you'll soon come to the conclusion that not only were the people they wrote to messed up, we today are messed up in exactly the same way.  And what is the story of Revelation except God coming and saying, "OK...that's it.  You guys have had long enough.  Now I'm going to make things right..."?  We pass through the gates of death beyond our control and are raised by a power beyond our control because something in us needs to die, never to return, before we can rise and live as we were truly meant to.  Making that happen is not in our power.  We can't even reliable decide what should be raised and what should remain dead.  We're so screwed up that what seems right to us is often wrong and what seems wrong is right.

This is why we need God.  This is why we depend on God.  This is our connection to God:  that helplessness we experience not being able to be perfect or fix ourselves and the reaching out to the only One who can make it right.  Our first, and in some ways our most dependable, connection to our Lord is actually through our sin!  He is the one who forgives, cleanses, raises, loves despite our faults, gives himself up for our sake when we can't sustain on our own.  This is what the cross was all about.  That's why it's the central symbol of our faith.

Put another way:  if we were perfect, why would we have needed Christ?  Jesus Christ came because God searched the world for righteous people, fit to live with him eternally in heaven, and through all continents in all times and eons found exactly...none.  Had there been even one righteous person, one person capable of living with God by virtue of his or her goodness, Christ would not have been necessary.  Instead God would have said, "Come, you one person who is righteous!  You made it!  Enjoy heaven!  Have you met my Son?  He's a cool dude."  Instead God found nobody without flaw...nobody who could live eternally without their sin also living eternally along with them and ruining everything.  So instead he sent Jesus to die for our sins, to take them upon himself into death and to leave them there that he, and we, might have a new beginning.

In short, saying, "I am perfect and have no sin" is the same as saying, "I do not need Jesus Christ.  Him dying for me was a waste of time."  This is why 1John 1: 8-10 says:

 8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.

No sin, no relationship with God or his Word.  It's that simple.  On that final day none of us will be able to stand before God and say, "I did it!  I was perfect!  I deserve to go in!  Give me the good stuff, Big Guy!"  At best we'll be able to say, "I'm sorry.  I didn't do what I was supposed to."  Then when God's brow furrows hopefully we'll hear the voice of Jesus say, "Uh...Dad?  What he says is true but I love him.  I died for him.  Can I keep him, please?"  And then God will look at us and say, "OK."  But that won't be because of us, but because of the love he bears for his Son and the love his Son bears in turn for all of us.

Understanding that you understand that loving Jesus isn't really a choice or belief, it's embedded in the very fabric of your existence...that you can't be you--can't be anything really--without that love.  Then you begin to understand what "love the Lord your God with your whole heart, soul, and mind" really means.  But you'll never reach that understanding if you think it's all about you and how good you are.  It's not.  The true miracle, the real story here, is how good he is!

So the "I am flawed" person won the argument, right?  Not so fast...

When God's love touches us, it does something.  It doesn't just sit there like a piece of information stored in a musty file drawer.  God's love changes, heals, redeems, renews, transforms.  We don't just have confession every Sunday, we have confession and forgiveness.  We don't just dunk people under the waters of baptism and hold them there, we dunk them in and bring them back up.  We don't just walk through Lent 365 days a year, we have 40 days of Lent and then Easter.  Sin may be our first and most reliable connection with God but it's not the ultimate, nor the enduring, connection.  The ultimate connection is grace, joy, life eternal without sin.

Just saying we're flawed an then stopping there is like having a ticket to a concert without ever going to hear the music.  The ticket is necessary to get in but you don't go just to hold onto the ticket.  The concert is the purpose for the ticket, without which it becomes meaningless.  Unless we talk about God's transformation of us in the same breath in which we talk about our own shortcomings, the conversation becomes just as meaningless as that un-redeemed ticket.

Jesus did not die on the cross so we could keep seeing each others' sins.  He died and rose again to cover us with his own body, blood, and Spirit so that when God looked down on us he didn't see our imperfect selves, but his perfect Son living in and through us, making us worthy of his love and salvation.  That's exactly how we are supposed to see ourselves and each other.

Sin and the shortcoming of the world (including our own failures) dig craters inside of us.  You can't always see them, but each of us knows they are there.  Each of us carries a hole or two that will never be filled.  Every time we try to fill them, pouring the things of this world into them to make ourselves feel less empty, those things just go down the hole and nothing gets better.  You can't party and drink your way out of those holes.  You can't marry your way out of them.  You can't work your way out.  You can't think your way out.  You can't even get therapy to get rid of them.  The only two things you can manage are to cover them sometimes and to cope with them at other times.  Neither of those fixes the holes.

God's gifts--grace given through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ--actually fill those holes.  The waters of baptism run infinitely and pour into them.  The body and blood of Jesus at communion patches them up and strengthens the ground around them.  God's Word reverberates in the air around them, letting new things grow on the ground where the holes once were.  Jesus did not die so we could remained hole-filled people, always staring at craters and mourning.  Jesus died so that we could live!  Jesus died so goodness and life would abound in us.  And through this process of forgiveness and grace we do indeed become...perfect.  To deny this is to say sin and its holes and craters are more powerful than God.  Denying this makes an idol of our own faults and shortcomings, adding an even greater one onto them.

Recapping, then...Saying we are not flawed and only perfect makes an idol of ourselves and our own perfection.  Saying we are not perfect and only flawed makes an idol of our sins.  Both deny the power of God, just in different ways.  Both cause us to lose connection with him and the truth.

This is why Martin Luther gave us a handy phrase explaining where we stand on these issues.  He said human beings are at the same time saints and sinners both.  We are humans, flawed and in need of God's mercy and care.  We are saints, receiving a "YES!" answer to that plea and all the aid God can provide, sufficient for our health and salvation, sufficient to turn even our mistakes into good.

With our left hand we hold onto the truth of our sinful nature, with our right to the truth of God's redemptive power.  As long as we live on this earth we dare not let go of either, nor to say that we are only (or even primarily) flawed or only (or even primarily) perfect.  We do, however, have the assurance that when all things are made new we can finally let go of our left-handed flaws and grasp redemption with both.

So who won the argument?  As it turns out both parties did!  For now they are equally right.  And in heaven it won't matter because we'll all be busy enjoying ourselves.

In practical terms this means that we are to understand ourselves and each other as flawed people, employing tolerance and forgiveness whenever necessary, not judging and separating as if some were perfect and others not, and letting go of the idea that everything and everyone will cater perfectly to our desires and expectations.  We are to treat each other like we are perfect people, though, reaching out welcoming and trusting hands, loving and nurturing, celebrating the goodness we bring to each other instead of getting hung up on frustrations, annoyances, or differences.  Circling back to the beginning of our discussion, think of how you treat your spouse and children.  You know they're not perfect but you love them endlessly anyway.  They're saint and sinner both to you.  When we've come to regard all of our friends and neighbors in this fashion we will be closer to God's will for us and our relationships.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)