Some of the people I pray for as they drive by, I also lust after. Just vaguely, you know, ooh a cutie, or whatever. I like this vague lusting after; it reminds me that I’m alive, that I’m human, that I’m a sexual person, just as God created me to be. That I’m an actual human being, an animal, and neither a machine nor an angel.
Being either a machine or an animal is about perfection. A machine ought to be mechanically perfect, functionally perfect, do it all right, do it the right way every time. An angel is morally and spiritually perfect. To be an angel when one is a human, one has to lie, put forward a front of utter perfection. That’s also true that if one is pretending to be a machine. If you’re not a machine, you can make mistakes. If you’re not an angel, you can be a sinner, but you can be a forgiven one. That may be why we are ‘higher than angels.’ If we have the ability to sin, we have the ability to turn back to God, to repent, and then amend our ways as best we can. This does not mean that we so perfect our lives as to be either machines or angels. We can be just ourselves. ‘Just as I am without one plea….’
Note: Management in business and wherever it has spread seems to be based on learnings from managing machines, so it’s effort is to have us be machines, and not persons, in the work place. Note the old term, factory ‘hands.’