Apologetic Tuesday: The Longing for Perfection

This is not a fully fleshed-out argument, so please bear with me on this one. I have noticed, as have many others, that we tend to require perfection of people to whom we look up. We want our politicians to be perfect, we want perfection from our sports heroes, and we want our favorite theologians, philosophers, and writers to be perfect. We don’t tolerate any mistakes, and, as a result, we defend everything our heroes do to the death.

What if that human longing for perfection is due to a recognition of something more—something that can only be divinely fulfilled? Perhaps we desire perfection so greatly because we recognize that perfection describes a state of affairs that is exactly the way things ought to be. That might be a strong modal intuition that we think such a thing is possible (misplaced as that belief may be toward our politicians). Perhaps instead of idealizing human persons, we should idealize the one who created us all. Perhaps the human longing for perfection is our innate desire for God Himself. In that case, the only ultimate hope we can have is God. Just something to think about!