Closer to Perfect

Continuing to go on to perfection re: what it means to go onto perfection…

Raydean Davis says: I believe we get into trouble with this “perfect” stuff when we forget that the word has roots in two languages. One is Latin, which means “without flaw.” The other is Greek, which means to do the job something was designed to do. I had a perfect junker truck—perfect in the fact that it could haul things, which it was designed to do. Now it was not without flaw—Latin. And of course the New Testament was written in Greek. Which gives insight into this “going on to perfection.” {I always knew Raydean is a linguist, but I thought his two languages were Little Egyptian and Pingpong.}

Clayton Daughenbaugh and Bob Parsons both note that “perfect” doesn’t necessarily mean “good.” It can mean “total,” as in “perfect mess” or “perfect excrement exit.”

Clayton, close to perfect in putting faith into practice, says that it may be that he never became clergy because “…I never dreamed any of us could possibly become perfect—well, perfect mess maybe—much as we might strive.”

Bob Parsons, close to perfect in integrity, which is no small feat when you live in TX and drive a school bus, says: I always rationalized the word “perfection” in the since of “being perfected” or “finished.” … “I do expect to be a finished “Bob Parsons” in this life time…not Jesus Christ, God, or even John McFarland… I just expect to be “me.” … I think I am pretty good at being a perfect me. Some people look at me and say, “Look at that arrogant excrement exit”… even they can identify me for who I am… a perfect excrement exit. One of God’s finest examples.

{The author has “perfected” some of Raydean’s punctuations and some of Parsons’ words.}

Bob Butts says that when he was ordained in the North MS Conference of The Methodist Church, several of the ordinands balked at the “perfection” question. The bishop called them together and asked: “If you aren’t moving on toward perfection, what are you moving on to?”

Bob says, “We agreed. Moving on is one thing…arriving at perfection is another.”

Bob also notes that in those days [50 years ago, give or take a few] there were no questions about “faithfulness in marriage and celibacy in singleness.” There weren’t any questions about drugs or booze, either. I think it was taken for granted that clergy were supposed to be physically “pure,” in all circumstances, including sex and booze. I mean, if you vowed to go on to perfection in this life, didn’t that cover everything? Well, not totally. There was a question about abstaining from tobacco, which we noted, when I was a student at Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, the southern conferences did not ask, even though it was in The Discipline. [Duke Divinity, after all, was built on tobacco money.]

Which brings us to the issue of sexual perfection v. tobacco perfection. Seymour Halford and I went together to a N. IL Conf. symposium a few years ago that featured Scott Jones, the newly elected bishop in KS, and Ted Campbell, the Pres. of Garrett-Evangelical Seminary.

Campbell, an historian, told of the preacher/denominational executive, Four-Square Church, I believe, who often went from Los Angeles to Chile to oversee mission work there. The folks back at the home church began to suspect he had a mistress there. [Even though he told them he was walking the Appalachian Trail… oh, wait, that’s another story…] They sent someone to spy on him. That person noted that he went into a hotel with a woman. When they both came out not long after, they were rumpled and disheveled, and he was smoking a cigarette.

That told the home church folks all they needed to know. They threw him out. No, not for the affair. For smoking the cigarette. They said: “All men are subject to the temptations of the flesh. We can forgive you for succumbing. But smoking the cigarette is an individual CHOICE, not a universal urge.”

Is that perfection, or what? If you just say “No” to tobacco…