Jesus and Moral Perfection

It seems to me that Christians, though perhaps this could be expanded to other religious groups, are trapped between two horns of a dilemma. On one hand, they want to say that Jesus’ divinity entails some conclusion regarding Jesus’ moral perfection. For some people, like my parents, Jesus’ divinity means that Jesus was morally perfect and blameless. And because their image of Jesus is perfection, I believe their image of moral perfection is wrapped up with a human face. This conscious or unconscious link between a human face and moral perfection may have important ramifications that aren’t being sufficiently appreciated by liberal Christians. I will go into that deeper later; for now, I want to talk about the idea that Jesus’ divinity does NOT entail moral perfection. There are some, like me, who are not concerned with defending Jesus’ behavior and do not care if Jesus does not satisfy my own ideas of moral perfection or justice. Jesus called a woman a “dog” (kind of like calling her a bitch) before he finally relented and gave her healing as she requested, in one story. Jesus may have prevented a woman from being stoned for adultery, but Jesus certainly didn’t do anything to address the systemic and cultural issues that may have forced her into adultery (such as the lack of women’s rights, prohibition on women owning property, lack of ability for women to be witnesses in court, and the plight of the poor under the Roman empire, etc.). In my mind, it’s easy for one to say “your sins are forgiven” without confronting and changing the societal ills and evils. Of course, one might disagree with me on that point, but the simple fact that Jesus didn’t bring about revolutionary changes in the society of the time to enact perfect justice means that I cannot attribute moral perfection to him. I believe we humans are embedded within cultural systems, and no one can be morally blameless if one lives within an oppressive and unjust social system for the simple fact that one’s collusion and cooperation, however tacit or unconscious or latent, will be sufficient to render one “unclean”. For liberals, and others who have a strong sense of “social sin”, Jesus and moral perfection are incompatible. However, I wonder if our strong sense of social sin comes at a cost. For instance, if one views Jesus as morally perfect, then one’s sense of moral perfection has a human face. Yes, the “human face” of justice will be remarkably similar to one’s view of Jesus, which probably conceals our own misogyny, sexism, classism, racism, heteronormativity, etc. but at least one’s sense of justice has a human face. When liberals get caught up in social sin, they may view the world as more complex and they may recognize the embeddedness of humans in their social webs – but do they have the human face when they have an image of justice? Because we liberals emphasize systems of power and oppression, I think that we may be prone to view humans as weak and without agency (including the capacity to resist and oppose systems of oppression). We often seem to encourage or envision vast social changes, even being sympathetic to revolutions, without, I believe, fully appreciating the complexity that accompanies wide changes, such as individuals falling through the cracks or individuals getting overtrodden when they cannot keep up with such changes. I think we liberals secretly entertain simplistic notions of “if this happened, the world would be so much better” even as we oppose “simplicity” when we think it leads to sexism and racism and empire. If and when this occurs, I think that religious conservatives have a lot to teach us liberals. Maybe in our struggle for justice, we lose the human element. Maybe we lose sight of the fact that people are intrinsically free, even free to oppose “universal” and “dominating” systems. I am amazed at people’s creativity in their resistance, and maybe us liberals are slow to recognize it, appreciate it and, hence, to encourage it. We liberals also need to remember to focus on love because sometimes love and justice seem to be opposing – even though they’re not. And when they seem to be opposing, I think our conservative brothers and sisters can remind us that justice, like love, requires a human face. There are dangers to both perspectives. The religious conservatives, who maintain a human face, may unwittingly hold racist, sexist, classist, and empire perspectives because we humans unfortunately view “human faces” like ourselves. The religious liberals, who may struggle to maintain a human face in our justice efforts, may be better at recognizing and calling out perspectives that hinder and silence others, but we may do so at the cost of viewing others as weak and without agency. Moreover, we may maintain justice without love, too easily dismissing those that fall outside of our system(s) (that we’re fixing or replacing). Both sides need each other, and the human life is, in the words of George MacDonald, an oscillation between two extremes. I think he was right.