#13 Humans simply aren't perfectable. Besides, perfect is boring! Our faults, eccentricities and quirks make us interesting.
The philosophy of Zen makes reference to the “charismatic imperfection of man”. I fail to see where “eccentricities and quirks” need be sinful or malign in nature. If we limit our personal faults to those which harm only ourselves is that such a disgrace? I agree that our idiosyncrasies give us delightful individuality but still maintain that we must hold ideals as worthy of striving for. Happily settling for second best is the highway to hell.
Man is NOT perfectible. I've seen too many of them, I know better.
While I deeply respect your own well-taken positions, OldSpook, I think we can safely agree that your career has forced you into contact with some of humanityÂ’s most flawed specimens. Just as in how one cannot prove a negative, none of us can comprehensively state in provable terms that mankind is unalterably flawed. Yes, our bodies are not immortal and must eventually fail us, but that in no way prevents the spirit from seeking and finding purity.
being good isn't good enough, we all sin.
It is impossible for me to believe that not once in all earthÂ’s history has there ever existed a blameless person. In fact, the overall conduct of mankind must be, in the majority, good otherwise our cumulative evil would have erased us from this world centuries before now.
Long ago, neither before God was even consciously conceived of nor Jesus born on earth, there had to have existed some of those blameless folk. Shall they be condemned to everlasting Hell solely due to their personal ignorance of God? Eternally damned despite their having lived a pure life? This is something I refuse to imagine. Furthermore, if there is a God, that being is a loving, forgiving and tolerant spirit which could not possibly be of such shallow or fragile ego as to resent one whose soul is pure but ignorant of His existence.
How do you fix that breach between your imperfections and the perfection of God?
You bridge that gulf by holding ideals as a standard, even if they are unreachable, they must be held nonetheless. Goodness must be chosen over cruelty. Mercy over brutality. Justice over prejudice. With or without God, each of us can uplift ourselves while bearing witness to the splendor and dignity of human life. To insist that only through some arbitrary conduit such as a priest or church can man thereby redeem himself is to deny manÂ’s ability to bring his world to order or conduct himself with righteousness.
God's capacity to forgive us FAR exceeds our capability to sin.
This must be so or else such a petty and vengeful deity would long ago have tired of His creationÂ’s human errors and vanquished the lot of us.
People are not perfectible. Improvable? Absolutely! I have ever this hope for my very own self. But, perfection is not possible so long as biochemistry is part of the equation, and probably not even were we to become encoded in the universe's raw energy, given the unavoidable fact of entropy.
Which is why I fully recognized the mortality of our material bodies but still hold that our spirits must strive for perfection. Indeed, if our spirits were created by the hand of God, must not there then be the seed of perfection in us? How could God knowingly create a hopelessly flawed being? I cheerfully admit that many people somehow manage to willfully ignore the need to do good in this world. This in no way eliminates any and all possibility of us attaining our ideals.
Pursuit of the ideal is a core element of optimism. That eternal hopefulness is a fundamental component of love. It is the love of all that is good which invalidates pessimism or cynical thought. This is what has allowed the human spirit to flourish through the ages with such abundant genius and creativity.
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Pope Benedict XVI has reversed centuries of traditional Roman Catholic teaching on so-called limbo, approving a Vatican report released Friday that says there were "serious" grounds to hope that children who die without being baptized can go to heaven.