God's Success Rate

God's Failures


He does go on a bit, but AZ asks a good question: The Bible seems to be an account of one failure after another of God attempting to make a perfect humanity. Thus, is this a description of a perfect being, one that fails?

One issue is the word “perfect”. I honestly hate that word. There is nothing—not even God—that can match up to that word. If God is faithful to His word, but isn’t successful, then He is “imperfect”? Imperfect by which standard?

God never claims to be 100 percent successful. If that was the case, then great sacrifice wouldn’t be necessary would it? Rather, He claims to be faithful, merciful, forgiving and powerful. The Bible does describe that kind of God. If God is a completely controlling God, then the Bible story might seem strange. But God is instead loving and faithful. And so the Bible story makes good sense.

Because right at the beginning, Genesis 1, God handed over rule of the earth to humanity. All creatures—including humans—are ultimately under human control. God steps in when it gets particularly bad—when violence is excessive or the poor are abused (Genesis 6, Psalm 82), but apart from that, God keeps his hands off, for the most part. So the story of the Bible is not about God’s failure. Rather it is the story of God’s occasional intervention in an otherwise human-controlled environment. Thus, if we need to point to failure, we need to look to humanity.

Why, then, does God allow humans to continue to rule? Because He is faithful to His promise. He promised humans to rule. And even when all of humanity was pretty much corrupt, God still kept eight human beings to maintain His promise. Even when all of humanity proved corrupt, God sent His Son to be a human being—the only righteous ruler of all. If this is imperfection, then give me faithfulness and mercy over success any day.