The yearning for perfection, for consummation does not exist in this world of three dimensions.
Mankind is a fallen creature in a fallen world with a fallen Enemy. Scientists have diagnosed one sickness which envelops everything: entropy.
The static element which leads to everything winding down in this world, reducing even the most rare of metals into rust and rubble. Every material object in the Universe has a half-life. Human beings have one life to live, and that life is cut short sometimes in the most arbitrary of ways.
From the progressives of the mid-nineteenth century until the Leftists of the today, there remains a pursuit of perfection in this fallen world. A leader who will bring together disparate elements in one country, or a manager who will ensure that everyone has all that they need.
With these lofty goals comes the necessity of ignoring the cruel and glaring realities of a limited world. Cosmic justice sounds ideal, yet time and money and the limited energy of even the most charismatic individual cannot achieve the certain solace of every person getting his due, at least by the hands of man.
Yet this yearning for perfection persists.
This need for purpose cannot be removed by dismissing this life as a hollow shell with no sense beyond whatever we give to it. This life is not a life that we choose, not a life that we created, not a life that we define with our limit means.
Mankind as the problems and the questions, but with his own resources, using his limited intellect, he does not find the answers. Revelation reveals the truth and hope for one who seeks better from this world.
The realm of the invisible, not discernible to our senses, that is the solace that man seeks in this finite world. The God who made the realms with His speech, who promises all things to all men if he will receive the Life of His Son, then the perfection which man is looking for finally finds rest in him.
The perfection that we seek must begin with our conscience. The element of guilt and unrest starts within us.
One professor at a local university detailed all the wrongs committed by the United States in Vietnam. He then show-cased all the young Vietnamese children who were born disfigured or diseased because of napalm bombing. "Why do the good suffer?" the professor seemed to suggest. "Why have we not suffered more than we already have?" should be the guiding question.
Like the ancient Pharisees of antiquity, a group of diligent "truth-seekers" become "rule-keepers" seeking to keep in line every person and every power in this world. The same evil which they witnessed perpetrated in the world, this same propensity to fall, this fallen nature lives within them, as well. The smug self-righteousness of one academic against the war-time atrocities of the United States neglected to indict the South and North Vietnamese, particularly the Viet-Cong which would pillage their own people as much as attack the Americans in the region.
This longing for a perfect world in which everyone gets what he deserves will lead to another unequal world, one where a select elites harms everyone else to their limited benefit. Freedom, not equality, better responds to the evils of this life and a grand design greater than the emptiness of "here and now" with nothing to stand on for the future.
The liberal dilemma sees nothing wrong with spending money, but when the supplies are exhausted, and the depths of evil in the hearts of man remains intractable, what is left to spend?
The desire for perfection must rest on what a man can receive by grace through faith, not in something that he does or says or even thinks.
The liberal dilemma: searching for perfection in an imperfect world.
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