Why Didn’t God Make the World Perfect?

Actually, He did make it perfect. Today’s world is a shattered representation of God’s original creation (Romans 8:22). The Bible records in Genesis 1:31 that God declared at the end of Day Six of Creation Week that all He had made was “very good.” Of course, that raises the question: What is “good” to the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God? Answer: perfection. Logically, this should not be surprising. What else would one expect from a perfect God other than a perfect creation? Deuteronomy 32:4 states, “He is the Rock, His work is perfect; For all his ways are justice, a God of truth and without injustice; righteous and upright is He” (emphasis mine).

This original perfect creation was innocent and free of death and the Curse, which were the consequences of man’s sin Genesis 3; Romans 5, 8; 1 Corinthians 15). Death, suffering, and disease were by no means part of God’s flawless creation. This means, among other things, that in the initial creation everything was vegetarian. This is quantified explicitly in Genesis 1:29–30 when God tells Adam and Eve to eat fruit, and everything with the breath of life to eat plants. If one thinks about it, this makes perfect biblical sense. The Bible is clear from beginning to end that death is an enemy, the consequence of sin. Which means there could not have been any meat-eating until after Adam’s sin because there was no death until after Adam’s sin. It was not until after the Flood that God allowed man to eat meat (Genesis 9:3).

Of course, everything changed when sin entered the world. But that does not change the fact that in the beginning God made a perfect creation and that there is the glorious hope of restoration to perfection when Christ returns!