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    Perfection
    Perfection
    Perfection
    Ebook97 pages1 hour

    Perfection

    By Steve Copland

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Perfection! Within the human soul a voice calls us to reach for perfection. So often we demonstrate a desire to know, experience and create that which is perfect. The clothes we wear, the flowers we choose, the religions we practice and love we seek. We reject what we perceive as flawed, and strive for beauty, contentment and fulfillment. Can we know and experience perfection? The answer is 'yes'.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSteve Copland
    Release dateAug 22, 2011
    ISBN9781465791269
    Perfection
    Author

    Steve Copland

    Steve Copland is a self-supported missionary from New Zealand, serving The Lord in Ukraine since 2003. He is member of the pastoral team at New Life evangelical church in Kiev. He lectures on Systematic Theology and Church History at the Ukraine Evangelical Seminary, and also Biblical Studies, Apologetics and Church History at the International Christian University in Kiev.

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      Book preview

      Perfection - Steve Copland

      Perfection

      Perfection

      Published by Steve Copland at Smashwords

      Copyright 2011 by Steve Copland

      Cover Photograph "Reach" by Donald Boyd, New Zealand

      All rights reserved solely by the author. The author guarantees all contents are original and do not infringe upon the legal rights of any other person or work. The author expressly allows the copying of this book for the purposes of helping people to come to know perfection.

      All Biblical quotes are taken from the New International Version.

      Chapter One

      Limitations

      The 'fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom', but love is the perfection of it.

      The Author

      What is Perfection?

      A little boy is playing on the beach. He scoops handfuls of sand into a plastic container, pats it down, holds his hand over the top and quickly flips it up-side-down. Very carefully, he lifts the container off the packed sand and sits back to see the result. A piece of sand has stuck to the container and there's a broken corner on his sandcastle. Frustrated, he knocks it down, flattens the sand and starts again.

      A girl is picking wild flowers to take to her mother. She holds the stems and inspects the petals. This one is out of shape, that one has been partially eaten by an insect, another has a brown spot. She rejects them all until she finds that one which looks perfect. She picks it, a smile on her face as she runs to her mother and offers the gift.

      A guy is cleaning his car. He isn't religious in any way. Indeed, if I asked him his opinion about spiritual perfection he would likely tell me he never thinks about it. He soaps up the car, rinses it off, dries it with another cloth and steps back for a look. He walks around the vehicle searching for a spot he may have missed. Finding one, he rubs and rubs until it's gone. Then he gets his wax and does the whole 'wax on, wax off' thing until that car is shining like a new one.

      A teenage girl is choosing a pair of shoes. Her boyfriend is sitting on a chair in the shop trying to look interested and wondering how on earth she knows which ones look better or worse 'cos they all look much the same to him. She stands in front of the mirror; she turns, lifts her foot and puts it down. She looks to him for an opinion and he nods encouragingly. As far as he's concerned she looks good in any of them. However, she pulls them off, takes them back to the shelf and tries another pair.

      A young man stayed at my apartment the night before his wedding. The next morning he got up early and went for a hair cut. On his return he dressed for the wedding. New, white, pristine shirt, black bowtie, dark suit and immaculately polished shoes. After everything was on, he stood in front of the mirror trying to get a disobedient lock of hair to sit in the place he truly believed it should be. He patted, he coaxed and fiddled with it for several minutes, combing and combing. When he was done, it looked exactly the same to me; I couldn't see the difference at all, but he did.

      All over the world, every day, people strive for perfection. We may not even be aware of it. We are renovating the house; spending hours pouring through wallpaper books, color charts and trying to imagine what that perfect room would look like. We are buying vegetables at the supermarket. We grope our way through tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots and cabbages, discarding anything which appears to have a flaw. We are shopping for new clothes. Hundreds of racks of different brands that are there because someone will buy them, but we have a specific idea of what looks best on us and we seek it out, try it on and reject it, unless we are convinced that it completes the image we desire to create about ourselves.

      There is no doubt in my mind that humanity has an inbuilt desire for perfection which is manifested in many areas of our lives. But what is perfection, and can we ever hope to experience it as a permanent companion?

      Imagine, for example, perfect knowledge, knowing all things. Imagine being able to understand perfectly the dynamics of quantum physics as though it were a kindergarten class, or to know every minute function of every cell within the human body as simply as understanding a child’s jigsaw puzzle; to know the names of every star ever formed, or the movements of every ant in every place in the world at the same time, or how many liters were in the oceans at any given moment, and to know the actions, emotions, choices and destinies of every person ever born or to be born. These few examples force us to recognize our human limitations.

      And how would we imagine perfect power? We can imagine having incredible strength, we can imagine having a powerful mind, but what would perfect power mean? Whenever we think of such a thing we are forced to begin with something outside of ourselves and admit that we are essentially pretty powerless beings. We can create nuclear bombs. Wow! Does that make us powerful? Compared to fish and potatoes we are powerful creatures. But hey, the sun emits more energy in one second than all of the energy produced by humanity in our entire history, including all of the nuclear weapons we currently have in stock. Who could create such a thing, millions of such things? A being of perfect power could create our universe as easily as if He was making a pot of soup. Perfect power! I cannot even begin to get my mind around such a concept.

      People use the word ‘perfection’ to mean something which may not be perfect at all. In fact, every day we demonstrate our limitations in the way we speak of perfection. When a child is born we say ‘a perfect baby boy or girl’, when we ask for a cup of tea or coffee to be made a certain way we may say ‘it’s perfect’, and when we see an athlete or performer give an incredible show we may say they have perfected their specialty. Then the child grows, it throws a tantrum, the tea gets cold, the dancer trips and the athlete misses his timing, and we know that what we were witnessing is not perfection at all, but rather people being what we are, limited creations trying to do our best.

      If we are honest, it seems almost impossible for us to imagine perfection because we are trying to imagine something that, left to ourselves, is impossible for us to be. If we look up and compare ourselves to a being of absolute perfection, the one many call God, our limitations become obvious, therefore, we lower the bar, we bring perfection down to manageable levels and compare ourselves to less advanced life forms or other human beings. And yet, despite the impossibility of us ever reaching anything like perfect knowledge or power, something drives us to head in that direction. In fact, we seem to be almost obsessed with perfection. It is as though something within us beckons us upward, calls us to be more than earthbound creatures.

      All around us we try to create images of perfection. Take advertising as an example. Glamorous pictures of beautiful women, airbrushed, flawless, the work of the creative designer using computer programs to eliminate that which we perceive as imperfections. The nose is too big, the eyes too narrow, the mouth needs to be fuller! How about a nip and a tuck, a few lumps of silicon, and while we're at it, remove the moles, the scars, that weird birthmark, and get those teeth straightened and whitened. The cosmetics, fashion, beauty treatments and cosmetic surgery industries can testify to our obsession with trying to look perfect.

      And what of those photos of

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