And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
(Genesis 1:31) KJV
The prevailing belief among most people, whether they think it’s true or not, is that God created a perfect world which became corrupted through human disobedience.
Good isn’t Perfect
We can see a statement like this in Genesis 1:31, in which God saw the world that he had created and it was very good. However, very good isn’t the same as perfect. The nuance has to do with intent and purpose.
Good: ט֖וֹב – towb
- pleasant, agreeable, good
- pleasant, agreeable to the senses
- pleasant to the higher nature, giving pleasure, happiness, prosperity, and so agreeable, pleasing, well
- good, excellent of its kind
- good, rich, valuable in estimation
- good, appropriate, becoming
We don’t want to belabor the point but there’s nothing here along the lines of without spot or blemish. God made the creation as good as He could get it given the nature of the material that He was working with.
We all have the same evidence. Our choice of paradigm determines what we think it’s evidence of.
– Matty’s Razor
Perfect isn’t Good
And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.
(Mark 10:18) ESV
God can’t abide sin, he can’t look on it. Yet in order for free will to be a possibility, sin has to be possible. How does a perfectly pure and righteous God, a good God, create a system which allows evil to exist? He has to go against his own nature and become sin for us.
The Earth was created in a corrupted state. The command “let there be light” caused formerly pure water of the deep to become impure. This was when God the Son, Jesus Christ, became sin for us. How could a corrupted world be described as very good, or perfect?
And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
(James 1:4) ESV
Perfect means lacking nothing. The corrupted universe lacked nothing. It was perfectly suited to carry out its purpose: the permanent physical separation of light from darkness, good from evil.
The purpose of creation is to bring about the permanent physical separation of light from darkness, day from night, good from evil.
– The Purpose of Creation
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The Naked Prophet 