The Beginning is the End

The Beginning is the End. By this I mean, that what existed before the knowledge of evil will one day be what is considered “normal” again. Where we find ourselves today could hardly be considered normal when viewed through the looking glass of eternity. Ages, eons, decades, centuries, and millennia passed by before the first dark day appeared on the radar of time. It is hard for a human mind to grasp how much of our time passed before evil raised its head in perfection. Some think God created evil, but this is untrue. As life was always founded in our God, so death was always found in the opposite of Him. But ages passed and none chose to deviate from life, from love, from perfection. Till one day, the third most exalted being in the Universe broke trust with God, and decided to follow his own wisdom instead of that of the Almighty, and rather than serving others He asked the seemingly innocuous question – what about me?

When the focus of our existence is moved from making others happy to serving only our own needs we rediscover the knowledge of evil in our souls. Every act of malice, of neglect, every atrocity committed by one person against another can trace its roots back to a motive of serving self. Indeed it is trying to please the man in the mirror that requires our legal system of laws, edicts, and punishments to deter me from acting on my own interests at the expense of another. Serving another requires no such restrictions. Loving someone else requires no limits to my imagination. But me loving me must have definitive restrictions or all those around me will suffer for my cause. It is heaven’s irony that we can only find true fulfillment when giving all of ourselves to serving others. And it is heaven’s mystery that any sentient being would willfully turn away from life and love and consciously choose misery, pain, and death. Yet this is our reality.

In a time before it was measured, Lucifer turned away from God and became Satan. The transformation was not immediate, but it was deliberate. Lucifer’s argument that “different” did not by nature have to be “wrong” was illogical but persuasive. Offering an alternative to a dichotomy of only good and evil, Lucifer tried to position his alternative as just another choice. But how does one deviate from the source of all good things and find yourself anywhere you would choose to be? Straying from life can only by conclusion lead to death. Straying from happiness can only by nature lead to misery. Straying from fulfillment can only leave one hungry. So it was with Lucifer who became Satan. He strayed from all things good until what is evil consumed his every impulse. Evil is not to be trifled with. More than an aberrant concept, evil is addictive by nature, self-destructive by action, and causes any who embrace it to kill everything they love before finally seeking the peace of release only found in death.

Evil takes no responsibility or accountability for what it impacts or affects. And so Satan blames God for his very existence, and any action he may undertake. Satan places his own characteristics on God and tries to shift the focus from the evil he does to a perfect Father God. Satan’s reasoning is that since God has the power to stop evil or destroy it before it even ever existed, the fact that it does exist, makes God responsible for not stopping it. This argument as well lacks the logic of free-will. Free-will is not just the ability to make choices without being forced, it is the fundamental building block of love itself. If we are not free to love, or not love, then we cannot be said to love at all. Love is based on a choice, we choose to love, or not. Had God created sentient life with the ability only to love Him, but never choose not to, the love would be a lie. Sentient beings must have choice to love, in order for the love to be real at all. This choice has always been with us, and it will always be with us throughout the eons of time yet to come.

But then, how does the Creator of all life get rid of evil once it springs into existence? This question is further complicated by the fact that at that time, no other beings in the universe had any knowledge of what evil is truly like. They were blissfully ignorant that any choice outside of following God existed at all. They knew only peace, they knew only love, and they knew only contentment. These were not aspirations for the creations of God prior to our existence; they were what were considered the norm. Happiness was the way of life; no-one knew what sadness was firsthand. But they would learn. For the first time sentient beings saw what happened when love was rejected. The pain of rejection was one of the first forms of knowledge for the universe to encounter about the nature of evil. For you see evil is inherently connected with pain, they cannot be separated. The longer the pain of evil is delayed from the acts of evil, the larger the pain becomes. But it always comes.

So to rid the universe of evil, time must be allotted for all sentient life to witness what evil is like for themselves. “Proof” must be offered that alternatives to God end in evil, and all evil ends in death. Now that trust had been broken, choices must be made about where to place one’s faith in ideology. Lucifer was not stupid, and the effects of evil had only begun to take hold on him. Over time he would be more marred by what he embraced, but at the outset of this conflict of ideas he was universally known and appreciated as the third highest being. God sat on His throne, Christ at His right hand, Lucifer at His left. This was an honored position. The one who now only thought to serve himself had recently been known as a chief among servants. And so a third of the angels took heed of the cunning words of Lucifer and joined with him in breaking trust with God. The sadness multiplied.

Where once power was only valued in how it could be applied to improve the lives of others, now power was sought to rule in the stead of one’s enemies. Even Lucifer was aware there was no way to exceed the power or divinity of God, but if he could equal it, he thought to demand the attention and worship of the remainder of God’s creation. Where God was worshipped from hearts of love, admiration, and gratitude until now – Lucifer would be happy to be worshipped from hearts of fear, or minds bent under his control. What Lucifer wanted was the absolute control over life and death in order to keep his subjects in line. After all, what choice did he have, no one could love what he proposed, for his very proposals of serving self would conflict with worshipping him. People would love only themselves in his government and therefore have no incentive to worship Satan unless based solely on the fear of pain or non-existence. None of this could God allow.

But evil does not value reason, nor will it listen to the pleas of love. Evil demands domination and speaks only in terms of power and consequences. And so the unthinkable happened, in the very center of the universe, near the throne of God himself, there was war in heaven. War is not debate. War is not merely an argument. War is not just based on a battle of ideas, it is also founded in a physical struggle for supremacy between two opposing forces. Where once a city in perfect harmony existed, the invention of weapons would soon be another byproduct of the existence of evil. There was war in heaven. Christ and his angels, pushed out Satan and his angels. And Satan began looking for another base of operations he could call home. He went out to each world where God created sentient life and presented his arguments for an alternative to the kingdom of God. He was heard. But he was not accepted.

It was during this time, that the idea of creating man was presented within the Godhead. One could argue that it could not have come at a worse time. One could argue that Satan’s exclusion from the planning for our existence was one factor in his jealousy over the distinction he now recognized in Christ’s role over his own. Christ was always the Son of God, Lucifer only the archangel or highest of the created angelic hosts. But in an environment based on the outpouring of love this distinction was not nearly as pronounced until Lucifer was omitted from the discussions about man. Had his trust remained in place, this exclusion would not have been necessary. But as he had free-will to rebel against God, and fully intended to execute that will, he had to be omitted. Man would suffer enough under the rulership of God’s enemy without him having the inside knowledge on what was to come. But why now? Why under these condition? Is there no limits on free-will?

Love has no limits. And true love must always come from the choice to embrace it. So to delay our creation until evil was exterminated was to “load the deck” and risk that man too might someday choose to turn from God on his own. There was no reason to delay our creation if one truly believes in the power of love over evil. And God firmly believes in this premise, and has been proven right many times over. So in the middle of the greatest conflict of the ages, man was brought into existence.

Those Christians who say man was made to worship God have no understanding of what they say. If all God needed was more beings to worship Him, he could have simply made more angels, or any other assorted sentient being that he made before us. We were not created to fill a void in the ego of God. We were not created with a worship or die mantra tied to our necks. Rather, we worship God for the same reasons that all other life does – from a heart of love, admiration, and gratitude what He does for us all the time. Our worship is a voluntary reaction to our love, not a prerequisite of His approval. We cannot buy His affections, and yet cannot help responding to them. It is because we are loved that we love. It is because we are already loved that we respond. We are not looking to secure love with our responses, it has already been given to us. Anything we do is in recognition of what He has already done, not what He will do. For the end is the beginning, we already know He loves us, and will love us, for it is already so.

But where would humanity side in the conflict that raged on beyond our world’s domain? Would we be faithful to the God who created us and remain trusting in Him, or would we like the one third of angelic host decide to break trust with God and put it in ourselves. It is in this time that the story of our existence begins. It is set against this conflict that we sprang into existence. It is important for us to look back and study where we came from, value the lessons of our past, as we face the choices that will no doubt end our world. While we live in the closing chapters of our human species as we know it, there is still value in studying how it began. What the intent of our God was for us, where we went wrong, and why it will never happen again. All of this can be found in the first few chapters of the first book of the Bible. There is much in what Moses penned that we still have not learned, but can.

It is these lessons that evolution would undermine. As from the foundation of time, Satan wishes us to believe there is still an alternative to the dichotomy of good and evil. He presents us evolution as a scientific theory that can safely deny his own existence as well as God’s. Man is free to exist under the power of his own wisdom. Good and evil can then become subjective concepts left up to the conscience of each person if they have one. No need to seek to find something more, no need to try to fill the hole in our soul that cannot be quenched outside of finding our maker – only empty and vain pursuits that leave us with nothing. It is not the weak mind that embraces creation; it is the mind that hungers for something more than serving self can ever deliver. It is the enlightenment of His Spirit that can take us back into the love letter that is our Bible and begin again, reading what Creation has yet to teach us. This world is not our home. We were meant for something more. Let us return to the beginning and find out what it will be like past the end of time as we know it …

Why Me (part 1 of 3) ...

This question is usually directed in one of two ways, either "Why Me?" meaning how could something this horrible happen to someone as wonderful as me; or the less often reference, how could something this wonderful have happened to me as I do not deserve it.  We'll look at the first reference viewpoint in this section, starting with the concept of 'me'. 

If existence is to have a personalized meaning, a meaning that is unique to the individual, this would require that our origin stem from something unique in itself.  Ever wondered why snowflakes are supposed to be completely unique?  Ever wondered why fingerprints, DNA, and retinal scans, etc.. are unique?  There are no 2 people identical throughout our world, even though twins may be close, they are still individually distinguishable.  Then too look around at the world in your vicinity - note the variance in nature - the number of different plants, bugs, and animals that surround you.  Just in these three forms of life there is a tremendous level of variety, or uniqueness.  It appears difficult to find two trees that are exactly alike, same number and location of branches, same number and shape of leaves, same color, and same schedule for fall & spring.  Why so much uniqueness?  Seems to me that once the pure science of evolution found a model that worked, it would then tend to repeat the winning formula, not continue to alter it towards an uncertain end. 

I cannot definitively give an answer to the metaphysical question "why are we all unique" (though we know how), I can only guess, that the Creator God likes to continually create.  Creating is different from mass production in that it requires something new and unique in each issue.  Memorializing the same thought thousands of times is different from inventing a thousand new thoughts.  And though we may not fully understand the 'why' part of creation, we can certainly see the results - infinite variety.  Apart from the physical differences that are so plain to all of us, there are also characteristics and personality differences that again define us as unique.  Who we are, is as unique, as how we look.  Though we may share major commonality with others, there are ALWAYS defining little differences that keep us unique and make us individuals.

One of the first notions we had to decide what we believed about in this dialog has been whether we originated from purely random chance (strict evolution), or by design and intent (God based creation).  There appears to be nothing random in how God does what He does.  Everything we know about life in our world has immense order and consistency.  There are 'laws' of physics we are ALL subject too.  No one overcomes gravity on a whim.  Our biological existence follows patterns, is predictable, and the level of knowledge we know about it we are quite proud of, it is in fact what we call science.  Science and God are NOT mutually exclusive, after all God created the rules of space, time, and matter that science exists within.  But therein lies the difference, God is the author of science, not the other way around.  The point here is that God is not sloppy, careless, or random about what or how He creates - although He seems to be infinitely able to continue to be unique in the manifestation of His creations.

So 'why' do you exist?  The answer MUST be, that you were created for a specific purpose which ONLY you are capable of fulfilling.  Now let’s widen out just how unique that really is, because God thinks beyond our concepts of time, (meaning the emphasis we place on the here and now).  God created you to be unique since the inception of the creation of man until the end of the world as we know it.  You are not just uniquely created in your own time, but in all the time of man.  Your purpose then may be two fold, the first to impact the world in which you live now - the second to fill a special place in the Kingdom of God for all eternity that only you can fill.  But this means your individual life has meaning.  Your life has meaning that is different from my own.  We have different but equally meaningful reasons for our creation and our existence.  It may be hard to wrap your mind around how many possible reasons God has for creating ALL the people who have ever lived, but that is because your mind is simply finite, whereas His is infinite.  But your own limitations and skepticism do not lessen the truth.  You are individually designed for a specific purpose only you can fill.

What happens then if you choose NOT to accept God's love and to allow the meaning of your existence both now and later, to go unfulfilled?  The universe will experience the loss of your existence, and I imagine will mourn for this loss for some time.  It is not a casual thing to throw-away something that is irreplaceable.  'Evil' would have you believe that 'you' are not important, just another small little cog in a great big wheel, that matters not at all in the scheme of things.  But 'truth' states otherwise, in fact, 'YOU' are of infinite value.  If every single other human that has ever lived or will ever live decided to reject God, and 'YOU' were the only living being who would ever accept Him for all of time, He would have still come to this earth and died, just to save 'YOU'.  For just one lost sheep, God would empty heaven.  Just for 'YOU'.  But His plan for you is not just for you to be born, live, and die, then possibly live again.  There is a work cut out for you, which you alone can do.  There is something you are uniquely suited for.  There is meaning beyond the scope of the time you can measure, and the world you can imagine at this point in your existence.

The quest then of your life becomes to find this purpose and fulfill it.  To experience meaning on the most personal basis, we must find that thing for which we were uniquely called into existence and fulfill it, do the work we were assigned.  What is that meaning for you?  Only God can know.  Therefore you may want to begin asking Him, what He is mind for you, and how you can begin experiencing the meaning He intended you for.  Where 'evolution' leaves a seeker cold and alone - God offers purpose.  Where 'evolution' declares your relative unimportance - God declares your infinite value.  It is hard to outrun the source of ALL love.