This is an archived copy of a post written by Conflict Of Justice (conflictofjustice.com). Used with permission: Conflict Of Justice may not agree with any alterations made.
How to ask difficult questionsDoes studying theology weaken faith?How to reconcile beliefs with new informationIs truth revealed through feelings?
Many young people reject the idea of a grand Creator who created the universe and everything in it. Popular culture ridicules belief in a ‘mystical sky-god’, a superstitious belief in the Genesis creation. But belief in creation is not so much about trying to explain the history of the universe. It is about us grasping our roles as creators, realizing our responsibility as custodians on the earth, and our empowerment over our own lives. Belief in a Creator is necessary for our own aspirations and confidence in our abilities.
In ancient times, it was easy to believe in a sky-god who pulled the ropes to make everything happen. Surely we are more knowledgeable today! We are more advanced than those barbarians who sacrificed to the sky-god in hopes of a greater harvest! Well, okay, but isn’t there still a lot we don’t know? Sure, we can study how life advances and how the planets move in the sky. Today we know about how life advances, and evolution seems to contradict a grand Creator, doesn’t it?
In Medieval times, people resisted seeking scientific advancement. If God creates everything, why explore anything? Some Christian groups still cling to such superstition. The point is not to compete with scientific advancement. The point is God’s role as creator gives God authority to be God, if he is indeed the force that fashioned everything around us. This is important for us because we all act as creators to some degree. We build houses, we create light during the night, and we reproduce. God as creator thus relates to us. We are imperfect creators. If there is a great creator, He can redeem and fulfill our imperfections, because he is Creator. We do not need social justice and a machine-like solution to life’s problems, we need a human solution. We need to become in control of our fate and our own lives.
Avoid Superstition
I do not like “intelligent design” because it smacks of the Medieval-era ignorance of scientific truth. Does the existence of dinosaurs really undermine the belief in a Creation? I don’t think so. The Medieval attitude is to label everything as the work of God’s invisible hand, and just mark it down as “God did it.” This is self-defeating to our progress. When we see tragedies and calamities in the world, if God’s hand is behind everything, doesn’t that mean God made children suffer and the innocent die? If everything happens because of God, does that mean suffering is the work of the Creator?
We therefore need to reject this idea that God makes everything happen. Superstition is the attempt to piece together a model of faith from faulty logic and explain physical phenomena with spiritual justification. For example, a superstitious person might look at a comet in the sky and conclude that it is some kind of celestial spaceship. But scientific exploration and logical reasoning tells us otherwise. We can’t just make guesses about the unknown God based on what we see.
Aren’t secular “scientific” intellectuals often superstitious as well? Many are prone to create a faith-based model on physical phenomena. Scientists collect some data about global temperatures and hastily conclude that the earth is rapidly warming. Scientists find evidence for amino acids in primitive rocks and conclude that life began by sheer chance.
Until we scientifically explore every inch of the universe and determine how the universe came about, we can not determine what created it based on what we see. Scientists are still making assumptions like primitive cavemen. We can see the great complexities of life and reason that the chances of such organization happening on their own are extremely minuscule. We can use this as evidence that there is a God. But the real proof begins inductively with faith.
Spiritual Eyes
Abraham determined the reality of a Creator through reason and rational exploration. He reasoned that the prime motivating force of the universe was a person, because an intelligent person has more potential power than any natural force. His role as creator made Him God. He prayed for a manifestation from this being, and he was so sure of his hypothesis that he was willing to be put on a sacrificial altar to stand up for this belief.
In introducing Himself to Moses, God explained why Moses should worship Him as God: “I will show thee the workmanship of mine hands.” To prove His godliness, the Lord showed Moses the vast creations he had formed. That knowledge gave Moses the capability, when Satan soon came tempting him, to declare, “Where is thy glory that I should worship thee?”
When Satan came, Moses noticed that he could look upon him with his natural eyes. This was a physical manifestation, and putting spiritual belief in it would have been superstition. But with his vision of God, Moses could only see God with “spiritual eyes, for my natural eyes could not have beheld” him otherwise. It was a knowledge of creation that did not rest only upon physical evidence, and this spiritual vision was a superior knowledge. Faith is an exploration of truth beyond physical matter, later backed up by a cause/reaction physical manifestation.
This is how Moses and Abraham gained faith in the God who created them. It transcended the physical. Aristotle taught that the purpose of physical matter is to allude to the immaterial perfect universe. The physical universe was created like a great mural, to reminds us of the heavenly universe which we can only see with spiritual eyes. Understanding of this immaterial heaven brings us faith in God who created the physical. Spiritual revelation is not some emotional tingle we get in the heart, or a phony “speaking in tongues” stunt at church. It is genuine enlightenment, which grows in the soul and then spills over into the heart and mind.
Our Role As Creators
Abraham reasoned that the prime motivating force of the universe must be a person, because people potentially have power over everything. There is seemingly no limit to our potential power as living beings with free agency if we progress far enough. Gödel reasoned whatever we conceive as the greatest power in the universe, this is God.
A man who believes in no greater power than himself is foolish and lost. On the other hand, a man who does not believe that the greatest power in the universe is a person like them does not value the free agency of his life. Our ability to act on things is ultimate. Rocks and water do not make decisions to act on other things. Plants and animals act on things to some extent, but there is only one force in the universe with willpower and inventive abilities to act on things on a large scale, and that is us. Humans.
We create, therefore God is a person who creates.
The character of God gives us structure and direction in life. We understand godly character when we build houses, explore planets, and develop loving relationships. Our creations imitate the creative acts of our god. Someone who believes in a selfish, wrathful God will sacrifice people to volcanoes. Someone who believes in a good God will seek for that which is good. Someone who believes the universe happened by chance, however, will reject his role as a purposeful creator, and he will turn to hedonism and short-sighted pleasures.
As much as secularists and atheists hate to admit it, any good morality we possess is the result of a belief in some kind of greater creator. Maybe that greater creator was just their parents, who taught them good principles. Maybe that greater creator was a wise philosopher. But if you really consider the existence of good the universe is, you will aspire for greater inspiration to emulate it. Your behavior will mimic the increasing organization and complexity of the universe itself, a vast space of unfathomable glory.
How Creation Happened
So, belief in a greater creator helps us improve, like apprentices. But in order to be apprentices, we can’t say everything is destiny determined by God and refuse to create something ourselves. So, if God does not make everything happen, how much is God responsible for?
This is a question that has split religious people from the beginning. Deists think of God as someone who created everything and then ran away to a far corner of the universe to let it sort itself out. Fundamentalists, on the other hand, see God everywhere they go. God made the water flow out of the kitchen sink faucet. God made someone cut me off on the road today.
Genesis creation – Two writings influence today’s belief in a divine creator: Genesis 1 and the Council of Nicea. Genesis 1 makes sense. First came light, then came division, then came diversity, and so forth. It is a design method, and it generally follows what we know about evolution. If God were a computer programmer, He would have set up the parameters and rules of the universe in such a fashion. A computer programmer does not get directly involved in every little thing that happens in the program, but sets it up so that he is always in control. Evolution and natural laws are simply programming of the physical universe. This gives us a method to follow in our own role as creators.
Nicean Creed – But then came the Council of Nicea, which makes no sense. The Nicean Creed tells us that things were created out of nothing, not formed. Creatio ex nihilo. What is the point of such a belief? I don’t see any.
The Nicean Creed teaches that Jesus created everything, spiritual and physical, and he created everything out of nothing. He is eternal creator and we are the created. The way I seee it, creatio ex nihilo defeats the purpose of believing in a creator. Why would God set a standard of perfection for spirits, and then conjure up and place us in an imperfect physical universe in which we could not reach the level of creator? Is that not a huge double standard?
Self-proclaimed atheists who appeal to the Big Bang as evidence against God unwittingly find themselves in this category.
Separate Creator Of Spirit – The answer is that the creator of spirit and the creator of the physical are two different people. We were formerly created as spiritual beings, pure beings. But then we were placed, through the Garden of Eden, into this physical universe. We are still held to the spiritual heaven’s standards.
Mainstream Christians get upset when I propose this explanation, because they say the bible calls Jesus the creator of spirits as well as the creator of the temporal universe. Well, does it? Colossians 1:15 declares that Jesus “is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature.” This makes it clear that Jesus was the first thing made by the creator of spiritual perfection, or God the Father.
But then it goes on: “For by him [Jesus] were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible… all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.”
Replace the word “created” with the word “formed.” The verb ktidzo refers to a construction, not a conjuring out of nothing. So Jesus formed everything in heaven and on earth. “Invisible” refers to “things which are not seen… eternal,” per 2 Corinthians 4:18. So Jesus formed spiritual, unseen, matter into a temporal universe which we experience today, and an eternal future existence.
Does this mean spiritual things did not exist before Jesus formed them in the physical universe? No. Isaiah 43:10-11 declares: “Before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. I, even I, am the Lord; and beside me there is no saviour.” Notice that it uses the word “formed” and not “created.” This is how Genesis 1 ought to be translated as well. Here Jehovah plainly states that he was himself “formed,” for the purpose of being a Savior. All things were then formed by him from a chaotic, spiritual substance.
In order to take on this role of creator, Jesus had to attain the image and character of God the Father of spirits. In him “dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” (Col 2:10) As the creator of the universe, Jesus is master of all power and glory, and is in control of our salvation. The Creator of the physical universe must necessarily be perfect in every way and possess the full glory of the Godhead. I do not dispute that. But because he is not the original creator of spirit, he can play by different rules than the original creator of pure spirit.
Intercession – God the Father sets a standard of absolute perfection. He cannot deviate from it. The immaterial heaven that Aristotle spoke of cannot deviate its form to become closer to the physical. This is the justice of God.
It helps me to think of it like a courtroom, like how the ancient Egyptians conceived of divine justice as a law court. God the Father wrote the spiritual laws, and that makes Him the judge in the courtroom. Because we do not meet or understand these laws, we need a lawyer to understand the laws and to intercede on our behalf.
How can the lawyer and judge be the same person? How is that possible? It is impossible for the judge to be impartial if he is the intercessor. Jesus therefore is not the father of spirits. He is our lawyer. God, the creator of the physical universe, sets up a program for development to meet this standard. The physical universe becomes a testing ground for us to gradually reach the perfect spiritual form. This intercession is the point of the physical universe, as our physical behavior gains spiritual significance. Creation of the universe thus inspires our spiritual growth.
Because Jesus created the temporal universe, he can bring about a universal physical salvation. We all become resurrected. But because God the Father, not Jesus, created and set the standard of spiritual perfection, there is no universal salvation. We only excel to the degree that our intercession from Jesus allows us. Does this sound unfair? Well, if you want to believe in universal salvation, then I suggest you look in social justice. Social justice is man’s effort to strive for a universal spiritual salvation.
There are three ways to deal with the reality of death and imperfection. You could throw your hands up in the air, declare yourself thoughtlessly saved by Jesus, or in some other way ignore the problem. You could turn to social justice and trust in a social compact and forced behavior to bring about utopia, a collective salvation. Or you could truly turn to the creator of the universe to make a redemption for the distance between you and your rightful role of Creator. Take your pick
Need For Mythology
We could never piece together the spiritual perfect form starting with the physical world. The purpose of physicality is not to lead us to unseen truth, because there would be no development of faith that way. Physical evidence can allude to spiritual things if we start with a spiritual model and then test it in physical ways. In order to truly be Creators, we need to act on our own without the compulsion of proof.
Once upon a time, we used mythology to allude to higher truth. Obviously there were never any sky-gods who threw lightning bolts down to the earth, and the earth does not float on the back of a huge turtle as ancient Islanders believed. Maybe these tales were superstition. Maybe. But I think myths were not meant to be strictly believed as science. They were meant to allude to the spiritual realm.
Mythology preserves history as a human memory in a very human way. People do not remember events as a recorded video. People remember events based on their impressions and how they relate to current circumstances. Mythology follows the human method of remembering.
To the Babylonians, Noah’s ark was a round boat similar to their own basket-shaped ships on the Euphrates river. To the Hebrews, Noah’s ark was a rectangular ship with the same proportions as their temple. What Noah’s ship looked like is not really important. What is important is how the allusion to higher truth relates to current circumstances.
It is unfortunate that we despise mythology today. I find it interesting that as Hollywood and the old fashioned era of cinema crashes into the ground, two genres of film still brings packed audiences: comic book movies and kids cartoons. Mythology for kids and adults. “Myth” has become a pejorative yet it appears to be more sought after than ever. This is because we need some kind of bridge between the physical and the spiritual. Is mythology the same as being superstitious? No! It is not. Superstition makes a hasty conclusion based on insufficient physical evidence, with no spiritual hypothesis from the beginning. Successful mythology does not do this. We do not believe Santa Claus is a real man in the North Pole, but we do allude to higher important truths about humanity and our moral roles because of this myth. Teachers and parents could sit down classrooms of kids and lecture them about why loving interaction is positive for childhood development. Biologists could lecture kids about why a species succeeds when individuals behave selflessly toward each other. How would that go? achine-like science could never inspire us the way Santa Claus inspires us. Mythology can help us on the path to pursue spirituality.
Science is only beginning to understand the extent of what we don’t know. Quantum physics and dark matter achieve things that we haven’t even dreamed of. There are yet laws of our physical laws that we have not discovered yet, as well as moral laws which we can’t study under a microscope. Can science help our role as creators? Of course! The physical universe is meant to be explored and understood. Every truth you learn in a science class brings you closer to understanding God. The apprentice becomes a master by understanding his master’s art. But it is all a waste if we don’t consider the role of a grand Creator. The belief in a Creator is the aspiring belief in ourselves, that we are not subject to chance or fate, but that our ability to act as our own agents is supreme and that redemption from our limitations is possible.