Dunno, is yours laced with gold and diamonds?
Nope - mine is platinum with rubies.
So rather than seeing death as a consequence of evil you see death as a necessary, good and perfect part of creation. Do you think there will be death in heaven? Furthermore, do you see pain as necessary and perfect part of creation? Will there be pain in heaven?
The distinction between physical and spiritual is centrally important to this. In the physical world, some death is the consequence of evil, but a lot of it is necessary and good (hence the mantisplosion, kids, etc. - don't you agree that our world is not possible without death?). Some pain is needed - like the pain you feel to remove your hand from a hot stove, due to the physical fragility of our physical bodies. Some pain is evil - such that of war.
In heaven, there need not be death, because it's not physical - we won't need to kill every time we eat, etc. There will be no new children in heaven, and no marriage, etc. Heaven is not the physical world.
In this verse I would have thought "creation" implies animals and all plant life; anything that can die. Animals and plant life do not have souls but you are saying the "creation" only applies to mankind?
For [Mankind] waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For [Mankind] was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice
I would have thought mankind was subjected to frustration by its own choice (Adams choice) and the rest of creation was subjected to frustration not by its own choice.
I think that the "mankind" approach here works. You aren't advocating option #2, from earlier, right?
So what does this world look like, between the time Adam received his soul and the fall? Let's imagine Adam had made better choices and not sinned. So we have a world where people still die. Presumably viruses and bacteria still exist (they are part of the evolutionary process after all) so there is still sickness. Also I imagine one could still be born with a generic disorder, as we only received a soul not a perfect body. Would it be any less devastating to loose a child to disease, or a lion, or shark or any other misfortune? How different would the world be what it is now? I guess there would be no crime or war. Also we would be sure that everyone who died would be saved.
But that's very different. An awful lot of suffering is caused by crime and war. We are very sad when someone dies, because we can't know for sure if they are really saved - or even if we really saved.
I visited nuns in a convent once. One sister there had just died. There was no grief. They talked about her in glowing, happy terms. Everyone knew that they's see her again.
Compare that to this:
Franklin Graham - This week pop icon George Michael passed... | Facebook
I'm struggling to grasp that God made a world where there is pain, suffering, sickness and sorrow. Was this the best possible world God could make?
Remember that a lot of this pain and suffering would not exist. Secondly, a lot of pain is necessary due to our fragile, physical bodies. You feel pain when you put your hand in a fire, and quickly pull it back. Without the pain, you'd leave it in there longer, and might not have a hand. Pain often protects our bodies. Hunger pains keep us alive because they get us to eat. The same for thirst, cold, etc. Even the pain of an injury keeps us from hurting ourselves (pain keeps you from trying to walk on a broken foot).
Was this the best possible world God could make?
I can't know God's mind. It seems to me that this is not at all the best possible world.
Just a few things come to mind instantly - why not make everything, including animals, solar powered? Or better yet, nuclear? Then you'd be born with a tiny, internal pellet of fuel, and never have to eat, never feel hungry, never die of drowning (no need for air), etc. No need to desperately look for a job to get money to buy food.
Why not make idolatry physically or mentally painful? - no more idolaters.
Why make us need to keep a narrow temperature range? Why not make us equally comfortable in temperatures ranging from the inside of the Sun to the arctic? Why not have eyes that can see wavelengths from radar to gamma rays? That would be cool and useful. Why not have nuclear pellets grow naturally on trees to power some kind of flight? I'd like to fly. Radiation sickeness? Just make us not get it.
How about if we could instantly see any movie we want, at will? Or better yet, God could give us internal downloads of movies infinitely better than anything we humans have made. Same for music. Instead of just hearing (music) and sight (movies), why not also have 427,420,888,003,852 other senses to enjoy similar entertainment, which we could use all of them at the same time?
Why not instant, telepathic communication with anyone around the globe, and with God, at will? An omnipotent God could make all of this happen, right?
I could go on all day.
In contrast to how I'd make us if I were starting from scratch, we instead look exactly like yet another type of ape, more similar even to mice than to what I'd make us capable of.
Why didn't God do this? I don't know. Your guess is as good as mine.
In Jesus' name - Papias