blackobsidian said:
According to the Christian Scriptures, Genesis 1:26, God said, "Let Us make man in Our own image, according to Our likeness." I find it interesting that God referred to Himself as "Our" and as "Us."
I believe that the answer is very simple as to why God would refer to Himself as if He is plural, and that is, because He is. He has a plural triune being, yet they are all connected in some way. The word "Trinity" is a word that old Christians came up with to explain the Christian God. He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. At the beginning of the Scriptural creation account, God is the One who is saying the words, and the Spirit of God is hovering over the face of the waters. We find later on in the New Testament that Jesus Christ was the means by which the world was created. Colossians 1, Hebrews 1, and John 1 all state that the worlds were created through Jesus, and that He was very present in creation. The glue that holds it together if you will. Each person of the Trinity has an important role in creation.
So, black, to answer your question from a Christian perspective, I must note that if God the Father was existent in the beginning, and God the Spirit was existent in creation, and God the Son was existent in creation, all working together, all of the same "essence" to create the world and to create man, then that would mean that possibly there was a plan.
You see, the problem is that man does not have the same mind as does God. I think that anyone would agree with me when I say that if there is a God, then His mind should be greater than ours, and that He will have a far greater understanding of things than does man. In other words, He has the full picture of why He created the world, and would know the beginning and the end, while man can only know the past, present, and only a limited amount of that I might say. If God is the author, then He knows the end, while we are still living on page "Insert Number Here."
1 Peter 1 states that Jesus is the "foreordained lamb." Black, God may have created man in His own image, but man fell from that image in "The Fall of Man," that Scripture speaks about. So, to answer your question, "Did God make a flawed creation?" Could it be, that since God knows all, that quite possibly He would have created it to be this way on purpose, ie., created evil, and actually ordained man to fall? After all, He did have His Son Jesus, in whom the worlds were created through, existent from before time began, and anoint Him as the "foreordained lamb." The "lamb" to be slain.
As man, we only understand a little of the picture. That is the perfection of God in us. He knows all, and we don't. Our strength is weakness to Him, and our knowledge is folly to Him. Could it be that we may think it as a flaw but He views it as perfection? Paul said in Romans "who has become His counselor? Who has first given to Him and that He shall repay back?"
Black, please note that the reason that I am discussing and answering your question with Scripture is because you asked a scriptural question. Otherwise, I would not have included the Scripture. If God exists, then there are things about Him that we will never understand in this lifetime, and that is where the world deems Christians as weak, because they have faith in something that they do not fully understand.
I think that God did create evil, and that He is using it for His own purpose. If He created man in His own image, and we just lived, and there was no such thing as evil, but we all just existed, then would we really know love? Could we? Or could it be that the greatest love story ever told is of a man who died on behalf of a world who could not pay there own sin.
Again black, the reason that I used Scritpure was because you asked a question concerning Scripture, so I hope that I did not run off the track too much. This is how I view the Fall. I cannot argue without including faith. Whenever I do not understand something, I can do nothing but rely on the faith that I have, and the trust that I have that God knows what He is doing. I will agree with Andrew in that regardless of what myself, or any of us believe, the truth will be that there will be a truth at the end of our lives, and regardless if we believed it or not will never make a difference in whether it is there.
However, arguing with myself, if we cannot understand God fully, then my entire above post can be considered another "guess," lol. But, I base my understandings off of my convictions of Scritpure, and I just have faith in it. What can I say, I am "weak," lol.
Now I am going to go and ask myself why I jumped back in to this conversation, lol.
