If God is "perfect..."

[Magster]

It is not so much a question of why God did not create us to be perfect, but more that God created us with free will which we often fail to exercise in accordance with God’s plan. When we freely choose to act in accordance with God’s divine plan, we demonstrate our faith in Him.

I believe that God created us with free will so that we can freely choose to love Him, in other words, to freely choose to conform our own will with God’s which, eventually, will allow us to join Him in heaven. His creation of people, who can freely choose to love and serve Him and, thus, join Him in heaven is indicative of the greatness of God’s love.

He also created us with the ability to procreate so that we can bring forth more people, who also have free will and, thus, can also freely choose to love God and, eventually, join Him in heaven.

It is through choosing to exercise our own free will consistent with God’s will, which would include procreating, that we are responsible for helping to populate Heaven.

 

[maendem]

kyle8921:

What I’m saying is that to be “perfect,” you no longer require anything! No wants, needs, or desires, because you are perfect! My argument was that a perfect being needs nothing, and would not have had the desire to create, unless if alterted by an outside force.

I don’t really know, but I’m going to bed. I’ll pray to God to understand.

HI, Kyle,

I like your questions; they imply a such a true and earnest searching. You are absolutely right - a perfect being lacks nothing, and has no needs, wants, imperfections, etc.

But we know above all else that God is love. So this must prompt us to ask what the nature of this love is. Why did it bring us into being, when God has no need of our love, no need of companionship, etc. We have to conclude that this love is perfectly gratuitous; it doesn’t desire anything except to love more, to give itself.

I don’t know if you have ever been in love, or are married, but surely there are people you have great love for in your life. Your love, as it were, simply springs up and overflows for this person. It desires to give itself unconditionally and freely and completely, at least if the love is not hampered by utilitarian or selfish motives. Love desires union, it desires self-gift, it desires to be poured out for another. That’s its very nature.

I believe that in the same - but infintately greater and more perfect way - God, who is love, needs nothing, and yet because the nature of love is self-gift, and because God’s nature IS love, it God’s desire, so to speak, to give HImself completely. (In a sense, one has to speak of desire metaphorically, because it can also imply a lack, a wanting of what one does not have.) We believe that this giving and recieving of love is a dynamic of the HOly Trinity, three persons in one Being who are in complete communion in love as well. And yet, remarkably, this love also spills over into the creation and maintainence of finite creatures like ourselves who can never return God’s love completely.

There is nothing of “need” or “lack” in God’s love, which demonstrates how profoundly pure it is. It is purely gratuitous, completely given.

We can’t understand God’s love completely. But questions and observations like yours can help free us from misperceptions about God and HIs love. When we assert that God is perfect and therefore lacks nothing, we can also know that God’s love is not conditional, because He doesn’t require good works or our own love in return before He loves us (although He desires our love.) Since He lacks nothing, we also know that He is not a “puppet master” in the sky, as some have portrayed God, who just likes to “play” with us, who enjoys tormenting us or interfering in our lives. We also know He doesn’t and can’t decieve us - because craftiness and deception also imply a lack. Etc. Etc.

Don’t know if this can help…

 

[Kevin_Walker]

kyle8921:

So, if God made us, and has existed forever, then he must’ve been doing things before we existed, because we certainly haven’t existed forever.

Maybe God felt unloved… but… he’s perfect.

I think the Bible contradicts itself way too much!

It is the anthropormorphic fallacy to give God human attributes such as lonliness, boredom, etc. This is the erroneous literal interpretation of the Bible. For God to be bored or lonely, it would follow that he would also have other unpleasant human aspects as well, such as bad breath, scabies, acne, hemmoroids, hang-nails, and so on indicating he was not perfect.

Since God is perfect, then he is without these human failings which also means God is incorporeal, for only an imperfect being would have corporeal afflictions.

As the small minds of humans understand the laws of physics, nothing can move itself, and nothing can create itself, which implies both a mover and a creator. This mover and creator can be called God. Since nothing existed or moved before God created or moved it, the void was timeless, since time is the measurement between one moving object and another, then the creator is not subject to time.

God is incorporeal, infinite, and timeless, and not subject to human frailties. So God created man not out boredom or lonliness but at his will as found in Genesis.

A literal interpretation of the Bible is primitive thinking and bound to cause error.