Why Didn’t God Make People Perfect?

When we speak of God, we refer, as a rule, to his attributes. We say that he is holy, good, and just, all-powerful, all-knowing. God’s attributes, however, have another special property that sets them apart. Man’s qualities, while more or less part of himself, are not altogether inseparable from him. He may lose some of them, yet remain himself. A person by nature trusting and frank may, through all kinds of disappointments, become suspicious and reserved. And this very liability to change makes life difficult—that a man can be other, yet not another, and that he has to bear with the change. Not so with God. For granted it were possible to deprive him of his justice, what remained would not be an unjust God, but no God at all. Man’s characteristics are his possession, God’s properties are of his essence. In each of them he reveals himself in another aspect of his being. Essentially, he and his properties are one. This oneness, to be sure, we are unable to grasp, and can be, at best, but dimly aware of. It would be marvelous to perceive God’s justice as pure goodness. To grasp that would mean to comprehend the fullness of God’s perfection, pure and unmixed in the simplicity of his being.

Frantisek Kupka, Creation, oil on canvas, 1920

Of God’s attributes let us consider one that is but rarely mentioned – his patience. At once the objection arises: What meaning has patience as applied to God? Is he not greatness and glory? And is not patience a lowly thing – a virtue only when existence is poor and wretched? “Cursed be hope,” cries Faust. “Cursed be faith, but above all, cursed be patience.” And must not a strong soul react thus to the very mention of the word?

Patience can be, but need not be, mere abject submission. Genius has been defined as an infinite capacity for taking pains, and so it is, for extraordinary powers ripen only after a long period of preparation and perseverance. The man of action, despite his burning eagerness for accomplishment, must be capable of waiting for opportunity to knock at his door. And waiting is patience. Patience, too, is that quiet inner strength with which a person grapples with circumstances and masters them. Patience, most certainly, can be an attribute of the truly great man – it is, perhaps, the crucial quality which enables him to seize upon reality and to use it.

Certainly, then, there is real point in inquiring into the patience of Him who is greatness itself, and if the following ideas seem at first not wholly applicable, they will later be seen to merge into one adorable, consoling truth.

That God desired earthly life is a revelation of his patience, for only through patience can it thrive. He sees living creatures play, disport themselves, loiter, make digressions of all kinds, waste material, energy, and ideas. He sees the discrepancy between life as it is by nature, and that which people call “practicability,” “economy,” “efficiency.” He knows it is exactly this difference which gives life its most precious quality. He sees all the delightful “accidental happenings,” all the sweet “follies,” and gives them full scope. God is blissful and untroubled in his own existence. Were it not for his sway in the earth, in the air, in light, in matter, no plant would flower, no animal go its carefree way, no human being enjoy a single happy hour. God’s love does not desire in a short time what can be realized only in a long one. It allows play, rejoices in abundance, gives room to the superfluous and to apparent folly. It gives ample time to uncertainty and indecision. It refuses to intervene when a creature hesitates, or ties itself into a knot, but waits until it makes up its mind, extricates and rights itself. One is filled with wonder at the thought of what God must be like to have created human beings as they are, and to have fashioned existence in such a way that his creatures can subsist within it. Manifest once more is his patience.

But what about things which do not flourish – the inferior, the defective? What should we do if we had built up a kingdom of living beings, set in operation a great process of development, then noticed here a thing not thriving, there one arrested in growth, elsewhere another misplaced? Interfere right away – tear out this, root out that – should we not? And in so doing, overlook the values which those things possess, even in their imperfection. We should fail to perceive the spark of meaning they retain even in their incompleteness. And we should forget how important they are for the superior and the excellent.

One is filled with wonder at the thought of what God must be like to have created human beings as they are, and to have fashioned existence in such a way that his creatures can subsist within it.

Have we not sometimes toyed with the idea of how excellent the world would be if in every home the parents could be perfectly healthy and capable, the children gifted and beautifully brought up, the homes well administered, immaculately kept, and tastefully arranged; if there were a complete absence of poverty, illness, or other drawbacks in the environment? If such a thing were possible, it would prove unendurable, and in all likelihood would turn out ill in the end. Woe to the healthy man for whom the sick are but those who have no right to exist, and whom he would exterminate rather than help or, if help were unavailing, would refuse to tolerate. And woe to the strong man who fails to recognize his own strength to be all the more free and generous because of his consideration for the weakness of others. Such a one will be destroyed by his own unguarded power.

All this points to the fact that life without patience is impossible. For patience bears with the imperfect, uses restraint in dealing with the defective, spares the unfortunate and surrounds them with that deep-seated concern which is not only compassion, but also a sense of sharing with them a common destiny. And in so doing man, in his own way, but continues to exercise that quality which God manifested at the very beginning of creation. Yes, he who created this existence made patience the condition of human life in this world.

From Romano Guardini, The Faith and Modern Man, translated by Charlotte E. Forsyth (New York: Pantheon, 1952), 13–19.