God, the perfectionist
"Speak to the whole congregation of the Israelites and tell them, 'You must be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy." (Leviticus 19:2) "You must be blameless before the Lord your God." (Deuteronomy 18:3) "So then, be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:48) These are tall orders here. They make out God to be quite the perfectionist: nothing less than holiness and blamelessness will suffice if people want to live in God's presence. And this is not just blamelessness of deed we are talking about. Jesus said that the two greatest commandments, in which the whole Law could be summed up, are to love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind, and our neighbor as ourself. (Matthew 22:37-40) In the Hebrew Bible version of these commandments, neighbor only extended to fellow Israelites, but Jesus made it clear that neighbor was anyone, including members of a hated 'other' community, to whom one had the opportunity to ...