Sometimes we all need to come up with a Plan B because life never goes as we plan. It comforts me to realize even God had to go to Plan B.

God had planned for humans to be in Paradise--gardening in His rich soil, planning picnic lunches, and raising children that came along without any pain. It was Plan A.

God, however, is no tyrant. He never orders anyone to do something or else! He is neither an authoritarian or libertarian. He fashions the human soul, mind, and memory with both a collective duty and an individual responsibility. A mixture of community standards and personal righteousness made the human person His masterpiece, a micro-image of God Himself.

The first humans born from the thought of God had been graced with all sorts of gifts unimaginable to us today. Perhaps if the writers of the Gospel recorded more of Mary's life, we would understand what the first humans were like, but they had more important work to do in recording the teachings of Jesus, the Second Person of our Triune God.

To understand what the first sin was, the terrible price that sin extracted from the first humans in the loss of Paradise, and what temptation by a demon won, we have to look at God's Plan B.

The reason we required God's back-up plan was our own man-made disaster of wanting our own way all the time, even when we were warned bad things would happen.

The Eternal Father, like an author of a story, may come up with many combinations of characters, plot and reactions that create a masterpiece. Whatever way He chooses, the endgame would be the same. Writers who are good at the craft have their perfect story envisioned, but seldom write it for no one would believe it. Instead they have to forfeit what they want to happen in order to allow the true human nature of their characters to be written. Then the plot develops based on what the character, true to form, does. The good writer will find a way to secure the ending he or she wanted however. That is the creative genius of those who write. So it is with God.

Without freedom, what society can be anything other than a group of people living a frightened and safe existence? Without risk there could never be art, science, music, and literature. Nothing of goodness, beauty and truth, the three marks of God, could be visible without freedom. Yet, with freedom there is a flip side too: evil, ugliness, and lies. It is the chance we may experience these we must accept to obtain what God has planned. With God's Plan A, we would have accepted His wishes, his rules. Yet God does not force us to accept Plan A and God isn't limited by the demise of His first plan.

Which brings me to God's Plan B. Sin, which brought forth death, can only be overcome by a stronger conqueror. God had envisioned the way humans would be temped, sized up his first enemy, Satan, then calculated His counter-move on the chessboard of Earth. Why did God allow His Plan A to be disregarded? Because nothing worth having is coerced. No parent wants robot children. That would be boring. We delight in the uniqueness of each life we bring forth as parents. Even when our children reject us, we still are glad to have them. We never think that we'd be better off without them. We never write off our family either, because no one is without some merit: some good, some truth, some beauty.

Satan probably thought he was too smart, too clever, until he realized God's Plan B was to move in with the condemned children on death row. Look at what good will come out of the hapless humans; they will be elevated to near angels plus one, since they can create too.

God's Plan B may be the long and bumpy road, but it has one benefit over His Plan A. Plan A was cerebral, we think that God loves us and enter Paradise. With Plan B we watch God love us as he lives with us. He cured us, taught us, laughed and cried as a man, and then died a terrible and revolting death all for us. But it didn't end with a physical demonstration of real love, it gave us a glance at the next world, the real Paradise: the Resurrected Life in God's home.

On Earth, so many times we have to go with Plan B and that's okay. Some of the happiest moments we enjoy are all thanks to Plan B. God has taught us well.