My wife and I were talking this morning about what it means to be perfect. In context, we were talking about how the angels are often considered perfect, and yet according to Revelation there either was or will be a war in heaven fought by them, as well as a good many of them malfunctioning and choosing delusion over Truth.
As I was thinking about this, I was also thinking about Jesus Christ, who was and remains without sin, and perfect at least as far as God and Scripture are concerned, and yet who, by virtue of His parthenogenetic birth, at the very least had a weak physical heart, and likely a low or non-existent libido for the same reasons (see my previous ramble about Christ’s virgin birth). And then my thoughts wondered to the creation itself which God declared good for millions of years until the fall of human beings. During that time, predators ate prey, animals died and were born, volcanoes and natural disasters happened, an asteroid hit the planet and wiped out most of what we now call dinosaurs, and yet God still called it good.
My thought about all of this is that God’s definition of perfect is very different from what we as human beings consider perfect. Consider, for example, the resistance natural philosophers had to the idea that the planets did not orbit in perfect circles, or that they themselves were not perfect spheres, because they believed God wouldn’t make anything less than perfect. And yet the planets generally orbit in ellipses, and at the very least, the Earth is roughly a spherical egg shape from pole to pole.
The thought occurred to me that God’s definition of perfect is “the way He wants it to be,” neither more nor less. His definition of perfection has nothing to do with mathematical symmetry, physical health, or strength, or appearance, and it certainly doesn’t line up with any conceptions we might have about what it means for something to be perfect.
Thus, someone can have a developmental or congenital disorder, and yet still be perfect because that’s how God wanted it to be. The planets can travel in and be irregular shapes because that’s how God wanted it to be. The entire creation can look so raw, savage even, and unpredictable, and still be perfect and good, because that’s exactly how God wanted it to be whether it offends our sense of decorum or asthetics, or not. Human beings and angels both can have the freedom to make their own choices about what they do and how they live, and this too is perfect and good, even if the choices they make are not always.
God considers something good and perfect as measured by His own standards, not by ours, whether or not we understand why or even agree. If God says something is perfect or good, then it is, even if it doesn’t match what we would consider either good or perfect. One of the biggest mistakes we can make is assuming that God judges things using the same measurements or standards that we do.
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