The question, “How can a perfect God make such imperfect beings?” has been raised any number of times.
I believe the answer is that he made us perfectly imperfect for a reason.
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Let’s see what might be considered some of the “mistakes” God made.
How about mankind? It is a lot to deal with all the bad things mankind has done throughout history, so let’s deal just for the moment with the pre-flood group.
God made Adam and then Eve, and gave them pretty simple instructions: don’t eat from those trees. And, of course, we all know how that ended up. But it got even worse when they started to reproduce, and by the time the earth was filled with people, they were all sinful and hedonistic, criminal and perverse.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that was really in God’s original plan.
After the flood, when the righteous Noah and his wife, along with his three sons and their wives, got busy to repopulate the earth, we didn’t even have to wait for a new generation before things went south. Don’t you remember? Ham was disrespectful to his father (this sin later to be listed as one of the Big 10) and so things started downhill, again.
How could God have not known this would happen?
We read of Jonah, a man who God called to save thousands of lives, but who rejected his calling and fled. Again, how could God, who knows our hearts and minds, have called a man that he should have known would not cooperate, causing (in the short haul) the loss of all the cargo on that ship which could have ruined many businesses?
And what about Shaul, the first king of Israel? Oy! How could God have chosen him?
We read how Shaul didn’t even want to be found, hiding off to the side, when Sh’mu’el called for him to be anointed as king in front of the people? Why would God choose him? And to make things worse, he not only disobeyed God right from the start, but even broke not just God’s Torah, but his own law to find a Necromancer to call Sh’mu’el up from the dead when he faced a large army of Philistines.
I wonder what I would have done if someone from the dead told me that I was going to be in their golf foursome the next day?
Here we have three well-known examples of God making a “mistake”, so we are back to the original question: how can a perfect God, who knows our hearts and minds, ever choose these people who, pretty much from the start, were obviously the wrong choices?
My answer is that they were not the wrong choices. I believe God chose them to prove themselves worthy of the honor he was giving them.
God has given every one of us the opportunity to choose what we will do and say, how we will act, and who we choose to worship.
We call this Free Will.
When we read these stories in the Bible, they don’t all tell us of the life these chosen “mistakes” lived prior to their introduction to us. Why would God call Shaul or Jonah when he knew, in their hearts, they were weak and afraid?
I believe he did it because God saw their potential and wanted to give them the chance to develop into the best person that they could be.
In other words, God didn’t make a mistake calling them, they failed to live up to their own potential which God (knowing their hearts and minds) saw in them.
God doesn’t want automatons; he doesn’t want us to love him because he created us that way. God wants us to CHOOSE him over the other temptations (I should say obstacles) that direct us away from righteous living.
The truth is that God doesn’t make mistakes, he provides us with the opportunity to raise ourselves up, or to screw up.
Like it or not, no matter what happens it isn’t God’s fault: it falls directly into our laps.
Even if you are being punished, it is because of what you have done, what you have chosen, and what you have brought on yourself.
Yes, God tests us, and it seems unfair that we are never given the chance to study.
Or, am I wrong about that?
You know what? I am wrong- we do know what to study and the text book has been around for nearly 3,500 years!
You guessed it! The Torah is the textbook God gave us so that when he tests us, we can pass every time. And what is the lesson in that book which prepares us to pass God’s tests?
It is to trust in God.
God will give us all we need to live a righteous life, and if we live based on God’s textbook (as best as we can because we are, still and all, humans and weak and self-absorbed and sinful from birth) then when the test comes, we will be prepared.
Basically, God didn’t make a mistake choosing Shaul or Jonah, or creating Mankind… it was simply that they all failed to study.
So, nu? … Are you doing your homework?
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That’s it for today, so L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!