We often call God our creator and rightly so, but he chose to take it a step further, a fathom deeper. He made us not only his creations or his servants, but his friends¹ and his children.² In God’s master plan, human beings have always been the point. I struggled for a long time with Eden. If God made everything perfect, then why did sin enter? If we would have been perfect, then obviously we wouldn’t have made the choice we did. However, what if our definition of perfection is incorrect? We’re assuming perfection means nothing can go wrong. What if perfection, in God’s eyes, means we have full ability to go horribly wrong? What if our very ability to choose is what makes us perfect?

Let’s look at it another way. We all know that God is love,³ so what are the characteristics of love? What does love desire? “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”⁴ What if our creation and relationship with God are found entirely within these qualities? God created us with the ability to choose, because “it [love] does not insist on its own way”. If God truly loves us,⁵ then we had to be created with an ability to choose, or in a more positive spin, we were created with the ability to choose precisely because God loves us. Therefore, I conclude either we were created perfect and perfection includes the ability to choose imperfection or we simply weren’t created perfect.⁶ Either way, we still find a God who loves us–deeply, intimately, passionately.