Was The Original Creation of Paradise Perfect
How would you define “perfect”? l’m not sure that too many people have pondered how many things in life are perfect. Perhaps most Christians would regard only two things as ‘perfect’: (i) God, and (ii) The original Creation.
I try to teach my church that Biblical literacy involves being able to discern what is indeed a Biblical statement, and what is meant by a Biblical statement. When it comes to pondering what “perfect” means, we may have a problem if we look to support our two examples with Scripture. Firstly, Matthew 5:48 asserts that God is perfect. Not only is God essentially perfect, but so are His ways (Deut. 32:4), and His will (Rom. 12:2).
But the second assertion is a little more difficult to demonstrate from Scripture. In fact, it’s so difficult we may have to concede that it’s impossible. Yet, despite this obvious difficulty the idea that God’s original creation was “perfect” is so widely assumed that to suggest otherwise meets with astonished bewilderment. Yet it is this unquestioned assumption that forms the foundation for several seriously important teachings. I want to suggest that what we regard today as being “flawed” with our world (earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, storms) were probably a part of God’s original design. Therefore the “perfection” of the original creation which is described as being “good” and “very good” may not have been the kind of perfection that might have romantic notions of.
