Something that was said at the meeting yesterday made me think about this. You know how the organization is always using the illustration of the broken mold and how Adam could only pass on imperfection to his children because now he was imperfect. How do they rationalize the fact that a perfect Creator made people who were capable of making an imperfect choice? If Jehovah is indeed a perfect God, he could only have made a creation in his image that would always make perfect, pure decisions just like he would. The fact that Adam, and also Satan, were capable of making choices that were the wrong ones indicates that they could not have been perfect to begin with, so their whole illustration falls apart. Jehovah would also have to be a broken mold. Believing as I do that the Garden of Eden story is just that, a story, I don't put much stock in it to begin with, but now that this thought occurred to me, I can't reconcile the whole JW version of it. It's making my head spin.
How Can Jehovah be Perfect If We Aren't?
by WalkTall 7 Replies latest jw friends
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AGuest
Adham absolutely was made in God's image, dear WalkTalk (may you have peace!)... and the Most Holy One of Israel IS perfect. Adham had the ONE thing that made him perfect: choice.
And that is what it is ALL about: whether we love God... or not... is our choice. Whether we serve God... or not... is our choice. How we serve God... is our choice. How we respond to the challenge made by the Adversary... is our choice. If we love our neighbors... and how... is our choice. If we love our enemies... and how... is our choice. How we treat one another... and strangers... what we do... and think... is our choice.
How we hear, see, and follow Christ... and thus, hear, see, and follow God... is our choice. Thus, the only One who WAS/IS perfect, my Lord, the Holy One of Israel and Holy Spirit, Christ, showed us that perfection is made manifest by ONE thing: our choices. And ALL "free will agents"... have choice. The angels have a choice. Satan had a choice. And Adham... had a CHOICE. And he used it; he chose.
YOU... I... and all of us... have choice. In ALL of these things. And it is our CHOICES that PROVE... whether we are "perfect" and thus, sons of God.
I bid you peace... and ears to hear when the Spirit and the Bride say to YOU:
"Come! Let ANYONE wishing... come! Let ANYONE thirsting... come! Come! Take 'life's water'... FREE!"
Because that, too... is a choice. No one is stopping you... except you.
Your servant and a slave of Christ,
SA
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Fester
The idea is that the character is perfect until he/she/it/god does something against the standard. God could very easily violate his own standard but chooses never to do so, and never has. That makes his record perfect. Adam was given the same gift, created perfect, also with the ability to choose to do that which is wrong in the eye of the one who created him. Adam chose to do something wrong, and violated his creator's premises.
You could argue that humans are more experienced with sin and imperfection than God is though, so there's something humans have that God never did.
OF course later on this biblical god commits all sorts of hypocrisies, (i.e, teaching Moses "not to kill" then ordering an army of Israelites to slaughter all kinds of people).
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notverylikely
God was made in mans image. That is all.
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Fester
I somehow doubt that man would drum up the selfless teachings though found in the ancient texts despite where they're originating from.
For instance, the concept of giving up all your possessions and leading a truly humble life (something that very few professed Christians actually do) is a feat that no man on his own accord would devise. That comes from the far eastern meditation mountain men. Of course they lived in a much more serene environment, at peace with their high altitude and even higher level of thinking. The western world mentality at least could never come up with such a humble concept.
I would gambit that much of the Persian influence on the NT has quite a bit to do with it's outcome.
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HintOfLime
I think it is biblical anti-wisdom to say humans are not perfect. What we some seem to perceive as imperfection can often be attributed to mutual-exclusive compromise.
For example, imagine someone gives you a number of parts and asks you to build an electric toy car (assuming you had the knowledge to do so). After selecting and assembling the pieces, you find that your car is faster than a fellow builder's car, but less durable. Does that mean your car is imperfect? Is his?
Likewise, any imaginary creator would have to have chosen to either design man with independent perspectives and motivations - or with predictable, precisely defined behavior. The two are mutually exclusive. As we are obviously the former, are we 'imperfect' because we excel at having unique opinions and behaviors, different approaches and different responses?
When someone says humans are not perfect - I assume they are talking almost exclusively about decision-making skills, emotional responses, and health/life-expectancy (because they usually are). There are a lot of activities and abilities that humans could be measured on that are not considered in deciding we are 'imperfect' - Would a 'perfect' human run faster than a cheetah? Because we can imagine a higher bar, does that make something imperfect? Would 'perfect' human skin be softer than a child's, or tougher than a turtle's shell? Do 'perfect' humans have a sense of smell better than a bloodhound? Can 'perfect' humans calculate faster than the world's largest supercomputer - 10 15 calculations per second?
Just as a particular car design must inevitably have strengths and weaknesses when measured across multiple performance dimensions - so it's true with life. Of all creatures we've physically encountered, we humans have the most measurable intelligence - we are the high bar.
- Lime
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notverylikely
I somehow doubt that man would drum up the selfless teachings though found in the ancient texts despite where they're originating from.
Why? What does that have to do with God/Jesus/FSM?
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Fester
It's really just as simple as a text not being original with the bible. The concepts of the bible in the Hebrew mostly originate with Egyptian thinking. The Greek concepts were mostly generated from a conglomeration of folklore, mainly that of Persian influence.
The fact of the matter is that much of it is inspirational in some way, and for that, I am grateful to still have access to the way many people of ancient cultures thought and lived. If anything, the biblical drama is a good tool to keep simply to look into how the ancient cults and religious institutions thought and acted. We have come a long way since then, of course.