Perfect God, stupid humans

In an interesting opinion piece in the New York Times, philosopher Yoram Hazony asks an important theological question.

Is God perfect? You often hear philosophers describe “theism” as the belief in a perfect being — a being whose attributes are said to include being all-powerful, all-knowing, immutable, perfectly good, perfectly simple, and necessarily existent (among others). And today, something like this view is common among lay people as well.

Hazony goes on to point out two stumbling blocks for belief in God as a perfect being. First, if God is perfect, then why is there so much imperfection in the world, particularly in the human element? Everything else around us has its place and purpose, but we are willful, selfish, greedy, and often malevolent creatures. Second, the God of scripture is depicted as surprised by our sinful nature, prone to collective punishment, easy to anger, jealous, and the spitting image of an abusive parent incapable of unconditional love. The scriptural literalists have no answer to why the God found in Genesis looks so different than the loving and merciful God described by Jesus and New Testament writers. He goes on to suggest that perhaps the best way to reconcile all of the head popping contradictions is to argue that God is not perfect and does not have to be. It is the more "realistic" view.

The ancient Israelites, in other words, discovered a more realistic God than that descended from the tradition of Greek thought. But philosophers have tended to steer clear of such a view, no doubt out of fear that an imperfect God would not attract mankind’s allegiance. Instead, they have preferred to speak to us of a God consisting of a series of sweeping idealizations — idealizations whose relation to the world in which we actually live is scarcely imaginable. Today, with theism rapidly losing ground across Europe and among Americans as well, we could stand to reconsider this point. Surely a more plausible conception of God couldn’t hurt.

There is another possibility. The flaws are not in God but in us.

First of all, no one, absolutely no one, can claim to understand what God is. God defies our senses and far exceeds the bounds of our puny intellect. We cannot begin to imagine God as a being that existed before matter sprang forth in a glorious explosion of energy. God spans time and space. We can get our head around some Titan-like human entity residing in the stratosphere above our little planet, meddling in human affairs. While that conception readily fits within our constructions of reality, it creates God in our image. A being that transcends all the boundaries of our existence defies comprehension.

Equally problematic is the concept of perfection. The attributes that define a perfect God are human-centered. We call God all knowing and all powerful, but then struggle with why there is suffering and injustice in the world. If an all powerful God stands by as we struggle with death, disease, and injustices at the hands of our fellow humans, then you begin to think of this deity as callous and unloving. It renders us no more valuable than the animals we slaughter for food or as potential threats to the quality of our lives. We want a God that grants our every wish, dries every tear, and rights every wrong. That is what we expect from a perfect God. Such a God looks like a rich and powerful parent that allows us to live like royalty as long as we obey a few rules, worship, and make a few ritual sacrifices in our daily lives. What an embarrassingly immature theology!

Let's face reality. We are woefully imperfect creatures in our ability to comprehend the universe around us and our place in it. The same goes for our understanding of God. While we may be instinctively drawn to believe in a being that exceeds the limits of our senses and intellect, only in arrogance can we claim to have clear and true picture of God. A life well-lived brings the hope and promise that one day we will come into a more complete understanding of God. As Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13: 8-12, faith, hope, and love hold the keys.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

As for perfection, everything that happens, even the terrible things we do to one another, may be part of a plan in motion. Creation is not static; it is dynamic. We cannot see or understand the end-game and how all the pieces fit. The process may fall short of our hopes, desires, and expectations, but that does not mean it is flawed from a big-picture perspective.

Perfection is in the eye of the beholder. Everything in the universe may be unfolding as God intended. Ultimately, that is the only perfection that counts. As for our understanding of God and our wish-fulfillment model of perfection, it falls far short of perfection.