God is Better than Perfect...He is Good!

"This story (of creation) begins with something better than the perfect realm of Plato; (it begins with) the good world of Genesis. Jewish goodness, it turns out, is far better than Greco-Roman perfection… Genesis does not begin with stasis and sterility. From the first 'Let there be…' it glows, whirls, swirls, vibrates, pulses, and dances with change and fertility…Elohim doesn't pronounce this world perfect (or imperfect), but rather 'good.'…this beginning is not complete; it unfolds in  stages…none of it is perfect in the Greco-Roman sense. Instead all of it is good and wonderful, constantly evolving into something better and more wonderful. If it were perfect – in the Greco-Roman sense – the earth would have come into being fully populated, fully 'developed'. But this creation has plenty of room for reproduction and development...

"Although the evolving creation in-process would be appalling to Theos (Greek god), it is delightful to Elohim, because Elohim loves stories and seems to have little taste for states. And Elohim's story is not a 'safe' predictable story, but rather a story with unpredictability and danger written into its first chapters…We have been thoroughly trained...to read Genesis through Greco-Roman bifocals, and as a result Theos is so deeply embedded and enthroned in our minds, that it is agonizingly difficult for us to recapture the wild, dynamic, story-unleashing goodness of Elohim, a goodness that differs so starkly, so radically, from the domesticated, static, controlled perfection of Theos…"
                                                                                  - Brian McLaren (A New Kind of Christianity)