I read the Still Speaking devotional today (from UCC website). Because of Lent, it is of course dealing with sin, quoting 1 John. She makes quite the emphasis about God being the only one that is perfect, and therefore Jesus, being both God and man, was the only perfect human. This really troubles me. I'm of course a raging Process feminist, but that doesn't mean i don't believe in sin or repentence. I just choose to think about perfection differently. The way she was describing it, perfection is jsut another dichotomy/hierarchy to separate us from God and Jesus. When you think of God being perfect, do you think of us humans being imperfect? To me, that doesn't make sense. I tend todefine her way of thinking as more "worm theology" (me lowly worm:God magnificent greatness).
Humans are perfect in their humanity. To compare us to God is a bit futile, I think. I want God to be perfectly God, in the way I think of God (aka perfect love, perfect relatedness) but I'm a co-creator with God, created and creating. Sin exists, but to say that we are not perfect means we are failures from the beginning and smacks of original sin, which is not my gig at all. To say there is pre-determined perfection is to say the entire existence of the universe is already predestined and categorized into good and evil... and that's definitely not my gig.
Now, really I'm breaking down the etiology of perfect, when really what the author means is the popular understanding of perfect... which may seem inocuous, but there are underlying roots of inaccuracy and inconsistency in using that word. It really really bothers me. It sets us up to fail. Her message is to depend on the perfect God because we can never be perfect. i understand where she is coming from, but it's a slippery slope to imply or directly claim those things. I rely on God to my support and comforter for things I have no control to change. What do ya'll think?
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