Friday, January 6, 2012

What is Creation ...

There is a difference between true creation and mere innovation.  There is even a difference between invention and creation.  When humanity endeavors to express itself creatively, or wishes to invent something in order to make a task easier, in general these expressions utilize available knowledge and materials, building something new from the combinations at hand.  A musician for example generally uses instruments that already exist to “create” a series of new sounds that in combination form a new song, sometimes with new words that convey the thoughts and feelings of the composer.  As the new composition is unique, it is considered new.  A painter uses paints and a canvas that is generally available, rarely inventing a new one, putting them in a new form, perhaps using a new technique, that in combination form new art.  Similarly an engineer or inventor uses available items, and perhaps a new assembly technique to form a new invention.  All these methods generally build upon the knowledge we have amassed to date, add new elements from the mind of the creative, and form a new composition to present to the world.  Creation requires more than that.

True creation would for a musician imply the entirely new invention of a new musical instrument, not a derivative of brass, strings, percussion, or even synthesized sound, but something no one has ever heard; perhaps something no one conceived was even possible to accomplish.  Then based on the new instrument, the composer would develop a new series of sounds that would dazzle the ears and enlighten the mind, or better still, stimulate a part of the brain that had hitherto been unexplored causing a chemical reaction in the listeners that they had never experienced.  Few musicians aspire to this level of creative expression.  I imagine the first harp, the first song, and the first use of voices in singing rather than in merely communicating was the true “creation” of music in heaven.  Since its inception, other musical instruments or tools have been added to the repertoire, and voices have been honed according to pitch and tenor to form not only fantastic soloists but excellent combinations in choral form.  These innovations have radically improved music from one generation to the next, but in general they are variances on a theme, not true creation.  True creation began with nothing prior in existence and then emerged.
There are those in our world who discard the idea of an omnipotent God in favor of “scientific” theory and the natural evolution of time, events, and elements.  While we might be able to witness the adaptation of a species of plant life or animal life to find a way to coexist with its environment, the time constraints prohibit us from ever witnessing the transition of one species to another, particularly when we are discussing complex species such as mammals.  We can theorize that single celled organisms could eventually evolve into more complex forms of life, continuing to evolve until that level of complexity looks more like the life we see around us.  But these theories share a fundamental commonality with a belief in an omnipotent God whether they wish it or not; both rely on the existence of “something” beyond what we measure as space and time.  For believers this answer is God, for evolutionists this answer might be the hydrogen atom that gathered together to eventually form the big bang; regardless, “something” must have just always been.  For believers we accept that God invented life as we know it.  For evolutionists another problem exists in that to date, no combination of periodic table elements has ever produced a living organism of any kind.  So further speculation exists within the scientific community that certain gases could exist in certain conditions to form proteins that might somehow congeal into the first living organism, yet these hypotheses remain incomplete and thus far unable to be proven.  For life as we know it to have evolved from the nothingness of space and the combinations of the hydrogen atom (or God particle) that formed the big bang is perhaps a greater miracle than anything described in scripture.  Yet for some this line of reasoning is easier to accept than to have to believe we owe our existence to something greater than ourselves.
The first angel that came into existence did so, because our omnipotent God chose to express Himself creatively.  New sentient life was formed.  There were no-one else’s ideas to borrow upon for this inception.  There were no predated materials to use or amassed knowledge to vary once again.  It was genesis.  It was origin.  It was non-existent one moment, and then existent the next.  Perhaps the plans for what was to be included in the advent of angels took time beyond what we could measure.  Perhaps the development or plans to include senses occurred first; perhaps they were created and integrated into sentient life over time.  But think about the simple sense of smell for example.  Different material combinations of life and decay as we know it producing an odor that is invisible to the eyes, yet causes both pleasant and unpleasant reactions in our brains to the stimuli.  Indeed the loss of our ability to smell radically reduces our enjoyment of food, which in itself warrants a degree of scrutiny as a process that must at one point have been invented by God as well.  The sense of smell is not required for life to exist.  But it makes life better.  The same applies to sight, sound, touch, and taste.  While there are commonalities between life in the various species in our world, scripture teaches birds and fish predated animals, which predated man; commonality between them, but such a difference between a “living” tree, and a “living bird”, and a “living” man.  We believe the tree understands nothing, the bird understands little, and man is capable of understanding much.  But all were created from the mind of our God who understands everything.
And beyond that which we can reasonably measure are things created by God that we are only beginning to understand over time.  Concepts, like love, mercy, forgiveness – and their contrasting counterparts like selfishness, hate, pain, and death.  The knowledge of the latter was something we were not meant to know, as this knowledge could only be found in experience on our part.  Yet to define love escapes concrete terms.  There are many definitions, or forms of love.  Parental, fraternal, romantic to name a few; love is defined as more than just feeling, but in actions, deeds, and words as well.  Love seems impossible to measure fully though the living embodiment of love in the life of Christ serves as a testament to what love truly is.  Believers are aware that we do not deserve the gift our God chooses to give us.  We have done nothing to warrant eternal life or bliss of any kind, rather our deeds often cause pain to ourselves and to others.  If left to ourselves our existence would be nothing but a series of pain upon pain until death itself was the only release from the suffering we cause ourselves and others.  Life itself is not worth living absent love in all of its forms.  Yet love is not required under theories of evolution, yet ever present under beliefs in a loving God.
It appears that our ability to be “original” or to pro-create is another reflection of being created in the image of our God.  Each of us has a unique combination of skills, aptitudes, interests, and abilities that when applied can produce new variations or combinations that are unique to our expressions to the world.  This too, the desire and ability to vary and invent, seems to be something instilled within us by our truly creative God.  It appears our God does appreciate individuality and uniqueness in the life He creates.  We each have unique DNA, unique retinal scans, and unique fingerprints to name a few.  While God created mankind, He did not simply create a master model such as Adam, with many cloned duplicates.  Instead we are created male and female, and each of us with unique purpose, and unique individuality.  We all function the same, eat the same, sleep, love, etc., yet we remain distinct from each other.  Even the animal life reflects this distinction.  We love our pets, yet no two of them have ever been exact replicas of each other, in looks, personality, etc.. – each of them is unique as well. 
It is important to understand that our God is more than love, and more than omnipotent, and more than simply the being we worship.  It is important to know that our God creates.  He did not begin creating with us, as angels predate us, it is almost a certainty that other sentient life may exist prior to us as well.  Therefore it seems reasonable that when evil has ended, humanity has gone home to be with our God, and the eons of time begin to pass; the process of creation may begin anew.  But for now, in this world, in our time, in our lives – creation or perhaps better stated re-creation is something all of us require.  Knowing that God is able to create and re-create is critical to our present and our future.  For our embrace of evil has warped the designs of God at our inception.  We have perverted the perfect designs of our origin and those effects have only intensified over time.  Thus it is with evil; it always begins small, and grows slowly and insidiously until it is beyond comprehension.  It is so with us.  The disease affects more than actions, it infects our motives, and our thinking – blinding us to truth, causing us to desire our condition and reject help or relief.  Evil is a slavery unto itself, which binds the heart and mind until the hands and feet comply with regularity.
If we are to escape our condition, it will require God to re-create within us, what we have given away by choice and repetition.  We need new hearts, new minds, and new motives.  We need a restoration of even the desire to be better than we are.  Our faith itself must be planted within us as it is no longer native to our thinking or desires.  God must be the author of our faith, lest we never find even the possibility of belief to come to us naturally.  Our natural inclinations are not towards perfection or heaven, they are away from them.  We, like the tempter who first ensnared us, seek first things to please ourselves, not others.  Our pursuit of self leads us away from God, away from love, away from life, and towards pain and death.  We are powerless to turn away, or even slow the process.  We are addicted.  Only God can break this cycle.  Only a God who is able to remove and recreate what must be removed and recreated within us can restore us to the design He originally intended for us.  If our God is not a creator, then our destiny is assured destruction.  If our God did not create our world as scripture outlines in the first few chapters of Genesis, if instead He only seeded life as a process and let evolution takes its course, then our only relief will come at the grave, and our lives are completely devoid of meaning.  Those believers who would pick and choose which parts of scripture they choose to believe in or take literally, rob our God of His ability to save us from ourselves through the miracle of re-creation.  It is our only hope of deliverance from the condition in which we find ourselves.
Re-creation will reach its fulfillment one day in an instant, but it begins in the here and now.  We will not reach heaven, only then to decide we wish to change, only then to decide we accept the gift of regeneration and change God wishes to impart to us.  Those decisions to change begin here, they begin now.  Lest we accept the deluded ideas that our evil condition is preferable and we can “wait” to find the change God offers, consider for a moment the picture described in Revelation of the lost souls who at the end of all time fall to their knees acknowledging the Creator as worthy, then rise only to try to slay Him and take the city by force.  Death is their only release, as even then, they do NOT choose to change, but wish to kill instead.  No, if we are to avoid being in this crowd of the unrepentant even in the face of the end of all things, we must begin in the here and now, by accepting the gift of salvation our God offers.  It is not the lake of fire God is saving us from, it is the desire to jump in that lake.  It is not the final and full release that death alone can bring to the unrepentant soul, it is the ability to learn how to live in the here and now and avoid pain entirely that God wishes to give us.  God wishes to give us life.  It is our disease that impairs our judgment and makes us wish to avoid this gift or put it off into the future.  It is warped thinking that prefers self-mutilation to healing and recovery.  And it is only by intervention from our God, that we are even able to make a clear decision in order to be healed and re-created.
But what a difference in the life of one who will submit and accept what he is offered by our God of creation and love.  Joy begins immediately.  Peace that cannot be touched by the world, or even by disease and death, peace that cannot be understood outside of a life in the process of re-creation begins in the here and the now.  Re-creation brings a relief from pain.  The world around us may not be any different, our circumstances may not change at all, in fact they may get worse, but what is altered within us is fundamental change for the better.  Without the shackles of our slavery to evil, we are able to finally begin to understand the blessing of service to others.  We are able to begin to learn what it means to love.  We begin to understand that the expression of selfless love to another is the height of joy within ourselves.  These concepts are foreign to the enslaved mind.  Effort for others looks like work, and unpleasant tasks to the mind of one outside the process of re-creation.  We may perform our “good deeds” to satisfy the twinges of guilt our conscience brings us, but take no genuine joy in what we do.  Outside the process of re-creation, there is not a real change in “who” we are.  Our general desires and thinking remain the same, regardless of our actions.  This is why re-creation is so important.  It is beyond a modification to our behavior, it is a renovation to our thinking.
If we are to learn to walk streets of gold, but value proximity to God higher than any form of dazzling architecture and perfect environmental conditions, our change must begin here.  If it is the great pearly gates we admire, the crowns of jewels we crave, and life absent disease and pain – we are still looking through warped glasses.  The things of value in the kingdom of God are only the people there, the life there, the Creator God who is there – the stuff is of little value.  Our abilities are not enhanced in heaven in order to make us “super sinners”.  We are not there to make us better adulterers who are now an order of magnitude healthier and more attractive.  The desire to betray, the desire to acquire, the desire to indulge, will have been removed from us – or we will find ourselves outside city gates waiting a death sentence we long to embrace.  Rapes, lust, and murder lay outside of heaven not within it.  The citizens of heaven live to serve.  They live to please another.  They live to bring joy to another without a single thought of themselves in the process. They give freely, willingly, and with great joy at the ability to give.  These are not natural inclinations in us today, but they can begin to be.  Not through the power of our will, but the acceptance of His ability and desire to re-create us anew.  Rebirth is something that can begin here and see its fulfillment at His second coming.  It does not start there, it ends there.  It reaches fulfillment there, but begins right here and right now.  This is why creation, and re-creation, are so critical to our salvation, both here and for eternity.  Let us choose to embrace it immediately and with vigor.

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