Elsewhere I
listed the top five crazy things Christians believe. But not everything in Christianity, or even
in religion in general, can be considered crazy[1]. In fact, there are some things that I view as
obvious and, I think, receive general agreement by most human beings. I think these more generally-accepted ideas
or beliefs can be a good starting point for discussion. Sometimes it helps to find some common ground
when starting a discussion.
Well, here’s the first of my “not
so crazy things” that Christians believe:
#1 – Nobody’s perfect.
I think I’ve
only ever met one person in my life who seemed to seriously believe they were
perfect[2]. Most people acknowledge that they make
mistakes – some more readily acknowledge it than others. Obviously, there are plenty of people who
think they are better than everyone else around them, but that is different
than considering yourself to be truly perfect.
Christians
will generally phrase this concept as “All have sinned.” That phrase comes directly from multiple
places in the Bible, most notably in Paul’s letter to the Romans. By the way, regardless of your belief system,
you should read the book of Romans. I
know that there is a lot of skepticism out there about the Bible and many
consider it mythology and so on. But not the book of Romans. Good luck finding anyone who has a serious argument that this book was not written by
Paul in the AD 50s or so. As
well-preserved ancient writing goes, it is one of the best, so on that basis
alone, you should read it. It won’t take
long.
Anyway, back
to the phrase “nobody’s perfect.” I know
that in this day and age, where few people want to acknowledge that there are
any moral absolutes, some might start to argue that the idea of “perfect” is
outdated. Personally, in my experience
as a human being among other human beings, I don’t think it really matters
whether you use an absolute moral standard to judge perfection with respect to this
general concept. If you want to redefine
a moral standard based on your own reason, personal experience, or whim of the
moment, that is fine – the concept of “nobody’s perfect” still applies. Maybe you feel differently, but I don’t know
anyone who can even live up to their own
standards 100% of the time. I know I
can’t. Even something as simple as
staying on a diet or not getting upset with other drivers or paying state sales
tax on items ordered off of the internet…we all fail even at the things we say
are important to us. We fail to love the
people we say we love. I don’t mean we always fail. But we
are not perfect – not even when we get to establish the rules!
I will take
it a bit further: we can’t become
perfect, either. By that I mean that
regardless of how many self-help books we read, or how hard we train, or how
much will-power we can muster, or how much Oprah we watch…we can maybe become a
better person, but never perfect. We’ll fail again. We’ll make mistakes again. And, again, we don’t even need to agree on
any kind of moral standard for this statement to be true. No matter how hard we try, we cannot become
perfect. I mean, even ignoring the fact
that we can’t eliminate our past mistakes, we cannot make ourselves perfect
going forwards for any reasonable period of time. For an hour?
Sure, maybe – if we’re sleeping during that time! For a day?
For a week? I suppose we can all
say facetiously “I was perfect once – for five minutes…” But even that was in the past!
The funny
thing about the statement “nobody’s perfect” is that most of us get upset when someone
tries to get into specifics. We say “I
know I’m not perfect”, but if someone tries to point out a fault, we get very
upset. We know that “theoretically” we
are not perfect, but when it comes to the practical implementation of that
concept, we often function and act as if we are perfect. That’s just human nature. “I know I’m not perfect, but I don’t have any
faults!”
Well, if it
is true that we almost all agree about this general concept, it seems like it
ought to be a central theme of any belief system that we might have. Or, at the very least, our belief system
shouldn’t contradict that general sentiment.
Not that there isn’t the possibility that we could all be wrong…although
in this particular case, if we were all wrong, wouldn’t that just reinforce the
truth that “nobody’s perfect”??? But it
just seems to me that we’d be fighting against the overwhelming evidence of our
personal experience. A belief system
that says: “I will strive to, and must
achieve, perfection” seems doomed from the start.
Finally, to
me, this issue illustrates the inadequacy of science to comprehensively address
the human condition. I am a scientist
and I place a high value on science. I
just don’t think it addresses everything, nor is it designed to address
everything. I don’t think science can
confirm for me that I am not perfect. I
don’t think science can tell me what, if anything, should be done about
it. That’s why, for me, science is not
“all”. We need more. Whether there is more is another topic entirely.
But as faulty human beings, we need
for there to be more.
It may be
that I have misread my fellow human beings.
Maybe everyone will not agree with my original statement above. I would be interested to hear any dissenting
thoughts on the matter. But, barring a
significant misread on my part, I feel that the imperfection of human beings
may be a good place to start discussion, because it can be a point of common
agreement among many disparate views.
[1] I
use the word “crazy” because it is a fun word, not because it is the best word
in this context. To me, things that are
“crazy” are things that are surprising, unexpected, unlikely, shocking, and/or
hard to believe. Miracles would fit into
that category, but so would most of the predictions made by quantum physics.
[2]
And they were quite obviously wrong!
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