Like almost everyone alive, the great teachers of Orthodoxy saw that the world is not a perfect place. God is perfect in Himself, but His creation, the world about us, has some obvious flaws. The Fathers attributed this situation to the narrative in the first few pages of the Bible that tells the story of our first parents, “the man” and “the woman,” Adam and Eve. Through a misuse of the freedom God had given them, Adam and Eve were expelled from paradise. We, their descendants,