Perfection Breads Independence

Creation (Genesis 1, 2)
We all know the creation story, how God made everything and saw that it was good, very good.  He made a perfect world, without flaw, without all the bad things we are so familiar with.  He made a man in his own image, his perfect image.  He provided him with all he would need: food (Gen 1:29), kingship (1:28), companionship (2:18), purpose (2:15), fellowship with God (2:25), etc.  God creates man and sets them up for success, giving them everything they could possibly need or want, seemingly.  He also gives them a choice by placing two trees in the garden, one being dependence, and the other being independence.  God desires their willing and voluntary love and affection, thus necessitating two trees, not one.  Programmed love or forced love is not love at all.  He desires for us to choose him (Joshua 24:15), as evidenced by the two trees.  So we have here a perfect world without difficulty or hardship, and in the midst of it perfect beings made in the very likeness of God.  Everything is good, even the two trees.  How could they fail?  But it is the very perfection that is the breakdown.  Since man is given everything he needs to succeed, what more need does he have of God?  He doesn't need him for food or provision or safety or companionship or direction, because he had already been given this.  And we first begin to see this independence from God in the temptation episode.  Eve has found her way to the two trees.  After they are tempted and eat the fruit, God is said to be calling out for them (3:9), i.e. they are not in his presence.  So where was God when Eve was at the tree?  Obviously his omnipresence dictates that he was "there", but they were independent from his tangible presence in that moment.  Their perfection and the world's perfection had led to their independence from God.  They no longer needed him, or so they thought, they had everything already.  And this independence began to cultivate in them the notion that perhaps they too were capable of making their own decisions and that, like God, it would be good.  It says during the temptation that Eve saw the tree was desirous to make one wise.  And here is the pinnacle that results from perfection: complete independence.  Adam and Eve had everything set up for them, everything they could ever want or need, at their fingertips.  And it is these very conditions that proved fatal to them.  Although they "had everything", they lacked one thing.  Call it what you will, but something in Eve caused her to go to that tree, independent from God, and then Satan was able to appeal to something in her.  There was some type of leverage he had found within her, something that he offered or said appealed to her within her.  We would wonder how a person who had everything could possibly want more?  They had it made, how could they mess that up?  This is where it is vital to understand something.  Everything God made was good, not because he made it good, past tense, but because he was sustaining it as good.  God cannot bestow perfection and then bow it, he must bestow perfection and then maintain that perfection for only God is good (Mark 10:18).  Adam and Eve were perfect, only as long as they were continually dependent on God for that perfection.  The problem is that their conditions, being as easy as they were, led them to stop depending on God.  There was no difficulty to lead them back to God, no lacking to run to God with, no hurt or heartache to push them into his arms, nothing.  There was only ease, and they began to rely on this ease and their own ability to maintain this ease, not God.  We would ask how perfect beings, without the seed of sin in them, could sin.  But remember, although they did not have the seed of sin, God gave them two trees, i.e. a choice, and they could only choose God and not sin as long as they relied on God himself to maintain that perfection, to maintain that choice.  Although they were perfect, they still had a choice, and without dependence on God the choice will always be the same: self.  These are the same words that Jesus spoke to the disciples in John 15:5, telling them that apart from him they can do nothing; Adam and Eve, although perfect and without sin, were no different.  The eating of the fruit simply manifested tangibly what was already beginning to take place within (James 1:13-15), intangibly: independence from God.  And if the eating of the fruit only revealed already present inner-workings, would they have ever realized their growing independence if not for the other tree and the fruit eating?  Or would their growing independence have remained hidden until it was too late?  At least now they fully realized their separation and need for a Savior.  The other tree was a grace, the original law, serving the same purpose as the current law (Romans 7:7-12).  Because if their perfection remained dependent on their not eating of the tree, is that not "salvation" by works?  And this was not true then and is not true now (Galations 3:11-12).  But, we would argue, they were perfect and not in need of salvation.  But clearly this is not true, as evidenced by their decision.  No matter how perfect, man needs salvation and is incapable of producing himself.  We think that if there was no other tree, there would be no fall, would be no bad things, but something else was stirring within that resulted in the eating of the fruit.  Even in a perfect world with no bad things, we tends towards and ultimately choose self, Satan did also and he was in heaven.  But God desperately desires for us to learn this lesson of dependence (II Corinthians 1:8, 9), and he has given us hardship and pain to assist in this learning process, our "other tree".  It is a lie to believe that the easier things are or better things are the more we will rely on and trust in God.  In fact the opposite is true, and we see this ultimately in the perfection and fall of creation, that the easier things are the more we begin to grow independent from God since we do not see our need for him.  "Bad things" that happen, pain, suffering, and struggles are loving and gracious reminders that we need God and that he is someone and something that we simply are not, that we are lacking and he is not.  That we are finite and limited and he is not.  And as incredible as all this is, there is so much more to come (Revelation 10:7).  But, perfection, in a worldly sense, is a curse that breeds independence.  Imperfection is a gift that breeds dependence, and if this is the lesson that he desires for us to learn, then bad things are a gift and to be embraced.