Why do we consider God perfect and that God’s plan is perfect if we have the example of Noah’s ark? He claims to know that he has a plan for all of us but was it part of his plan to wipe out humanity in Noah’s ark? And if he knew that that would happen, does that mean he intended to drown the planet?  We also say that he is perfect and that his plan is perfect, but he expresses regret to Noah.  Does that mean he knew he would go through regret?

A perfectly reasonable question.  It well-deserves an answer.   I am not sure if the Bible ever says the exact words that God’s plan is perfect.  God’s plan, according to the Bible, was to create humans in his image in order that (Acc to Gen 2), he could dwell in an intimate relationship with his Creation—with those made in his image.  His plan was to create a people to love who would love and glorify him.  Was this a perfect plan?  I suppose perfection is in the eyes of the beholder.  Personally, I would not call it a “perfect” plan. His plan was to give Adam and Eve, and by extension us, freedom to love, obey and serve God or to rebel and do our own thing.  God’s “plan” involves his interaction with imperfect humans.  We mess up his “plan” to have an intimate loving relationship with him on a very regular basis.  This brought endless suffering to the world.  I am not sure there IS a perfect plan for a perfect God to interact with a very imperfect humanity.

You mention what happened in Genesis 7-9 as an example of what appears to you to be a very imperfect plan, and to indicate a very imperfect God.  But like I said, the world is a messy place because of these very messy beings that God created called human beings.  How could any plan be perfect, if sinful human beings are involved in this plan?  God’s plan is that you and I live with him in eternity in mutual love in a “place” that the Bible sometimes calls “heaven.”  Well, it looks like God’s plan was right on schedule, but a lot of imperfect, sinful rebel human beings are doing their best to upend and to destroy that perfect plan.  We might blame God for these imperfections, but these imperfections are the result of a loving God giving his loved children the freedom to love him or to reject him.

Is God’s plan perfect?  That would depend on your definition of perfect.  I am not sure I would say it is a perfect plan.  I would say it is a plan for God to love us and for us to live in an eternal loving relationship with him, which is a VERY good plan!  But not all of God’s creation is willing to sign up for this plan, and thus the problem.  Was God’s plan to wipe out humanity due to their lives being lived in “only sin, all the time?”  This certainly is not God’s will, and it is dubious to call it his plan.  But it is what happened.   I believe that when we see God expressing “regret” in Genesis, this is an anthropomorphism.  Whether God experiences literal regret, in the sense that humans would feel regret, is a dubious prospect.  But God has a sense of loss of what could have been if more of his children had chosen to love, obey and respect their Father in heaven.  I hesitate to use human  experience to decide exactly what is happening in God’s “mind,” as expressed in Genesis 6:6, when it says that he (to use a word for a human emotion) “regretted” that he had made human beings.  This is a striking statement in Genesis 6:6, but I do not believe that it reflects badly on God.  It does not mean that he is weak, but that God is a loving and, dare-I-say emotional being who experiences regret when his children rebel and disobey him.

I hope this helps.

John Oakes