It took billions of dollars and thousands of minds to build the nuclear power plants in Japan. It took one unforeseen quake and subsequent tsunami to not only destroy the plants, but also the lives of millions nearby. This is the nature of our world, the struggle to create order can be dismantled quickly.
Sure, no one expects a 9.0 earthquake, but the asymmetry shows up in other ways. The World Trade Center took hundreds of people tens of thousands of hours to build and was destroyed by a handful of people in a few. Consider how much labor goes into building grand things and yet how a single act intentional or not can destroy them.
This asymmetry exists in our definition of perfection. If we have perfect attendence at our classes and miss one, we can never have perfect attendence again, no matter how many additional classes we show up to. The same is true with our grades. A single B removes the possibility of a 4.0 GPA. Imagine pure water. Now add a little cow dung. Stir it up. Now add 1,000 gallons of pure water. How about a drink? Perfection can never be restored just by diluting the imperfect.
This is the nature of the Christian gospel. Our sin taints our perfection. No amount of perfect acts can remove that taint. We need something to replace our sin, that can stand in our stead. This is why Christ had to come. We can’t add any act that bring us back to a state of perfection, only Christ can.
We live in a world where it is easier to disprove than to prove, it’s easier to destroy than to build, it’s easier to critique than create.
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