If I ever get through school, to the point where I could get ordained, I wouldn't have any problem with question of perfection because I do believe it is not only possible, but nearly always the case with everybody. Why? Because everyone is perfectly themselves.
And what we think is perfect probably isn't anyway. For instance, hanging out with the brilliant, the beautiful and rich only makes you feel dumb, homely and poor by comparison- what is so perfect about that? On the other hand, after a steady dose of underachievers and misfits, it might be refreshing to be with someone that stretches you and makes you believe it is possible to do more and be more. I have a friend who is an oil millionaire who fantasizes abut being homeless, and wants to try it for awhile just to prove to himself he could do it. Weird huh?
So what seems good can be bad, and what seems bad can be good at any given point in time by any particular person.
Having said that, I think we are getting "perfecter" all the time. Sometimes by bouncing around from one extreem position to another just for the soul to gain perspective. This explains the Convergence Movement I think. The minute we think we have arrived the pendulum begins to swing the other way, but anywhere along the path is perfect.

To think, or not to think, that is the question.
It seems like a real divide; the biblical interpretation that comes out in sermons is so intellectual and dry. I wish there were more “touchy- feely” sermons. But then again, in the women’s bible study that I participate in, the ladies who know a lot about the bible are anti intellectual as if it is wrong to study the bible and wrong to study theology. They think you shouldn’t read bible commentaries for instance, but just read the words of the bible without any interpretive aids.
There is a misperception that bible study/theological study equals bible bashing, bible hating. I suggested that actually people study the bible and what the church has discovered and maintained throughout the centuries because they love the bible and love God.
I’m not sure why people are anti intellectual in Malaysia. But in America we have an anti intellectual heritage because once we were a country with a huge frontier. Our pioneers were very religious, often migrating to the US for religious reasons. But there were no universities around and therefore few educated pastors. Churches didn’t equate learning with religion.
When I do bible study, or any study, I do read what the books have to say, but then I take a walk or something and see if the Holy Spirit will help me understand- he speaks my language, or at least I think he does, so I understand him better than a textbook. But I wouldn’t throw away my textbooks.

By virtue of being alive, we are chosen because God made us when he didn’t have to. I am trying to understand what chosen is all about; maybe not so much a one time event, but a series of events. It seems like we choose some things, and other things choose us. We are chosen to be beings with free will, so everyday we are choosing all sorts of things- like our attitudes and reactions. And today, since I just ate a big candy bar and had 2 pieces of pizza, I think I am choosing to be fat. Then there are the things big or small that we don’t seek out, but happen anyway- we can be chosen to be the one who rescues someone from a burning building, because we are the one walking down a particular street at a particular time, or the one chosen to smile at someone because they smiled at us (same street, different time/same time, different street). In the scheme of things, maybe the smile was the most critical assignment.
I don’t know how much is under our control, how much our prayers or wishes affect things. If things are going my way, the thought I had input isn’t so bad. But if things aren’t working out, who wants to think that you have chosen the wrong path with every step? Hopefully God will always trump our poor decisions with better ones when we need him to.

We won't have class Friday, so I'll write about the movie, the Island. It reminds me of the story of Frankenstien.
The sad truth is that everyday science marches closer to making sciencefiction reality. We can't even deal with the knowledge level we already have; morality doesn't keep pace. We are playing with dynamite and think we are gods while we don't even think others are human.
I don't know what it is about science-people look up to it as so pure, just a quest for knowledge. And yet no one can beat the medical experiments of the Nazis for premeditatied cruelety. Then there were the tropical disease experiments of the Japanese and the sysphillis experiments conducted on prison inmates by my government.
They say serial killers get started by inflicting pain or death on animals, then they graduate to peope. Maybe by reversing the order we can reform society by revolutionizing how we treat the animals. Maybe if we work for animal rights, we will create human beings with a consciousness of respect who learn to see all other humans as worthy to have access to all the good things in life. All along, people do the sorts of bad things to animals that the movie the Island depicts happening to clones. And besides PETA, no one seems to care.