Heavy philosophical stuff today.
I woke up this morning thinking about how God (Who in the Judeo-Christian heritage is perfect) could create a universe (which, logically, as the creation of a perfect Being, should also be perfect) from imperfect materials.
For the moment, let’s ignore floods, famine, plagues, etc. and just concentrate on people. Some groups – Unity comes to mind – may try to say that in spite of our obvious flaws, we are actually parts of God and therefore perfect pieces of the Universal Jig-saw Puzzle. It’s a lovely idea, but I really can’t get my mind around it.
I’m not complaining, it’s our little imperfections that make us interesting.
Actually, the whole concept of sin casts doubt on God’s ability as an architect – if the design was perfect, then the QC at the factory sucked, which sort of takes us back to flaws in the design since He/She created the factory, too.
Going back to my original question – and the graphic at the top of this post – it occurs to me that we can approach perfection in much the same way that mathematics approaches pi. Start with a polygon with sides that are tangent to the circumference of a circle and keep clipping off the angles – a triangle becomes a hexagon and so forth ad infinitum. The greater the number of sides, the closer the polygon approximates the circumference of the circle.
The problem with that is that it is still an approximation, imperfect, flawed.
Assuming that creation is ongoing and that while it may have been created, the world wasn’t finished in those seven days, God just may not care. After all, a perfect Being probably possesses infinite patience, and God can keep clipping off angles until the end of time.
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