ProCreation ...

The most difficult question for an evolutionist to answer is simply “why”.  The process of cell division can be clearly articulated, but the reason for it is completely absent.  We understand what takes place when cells divide and multiply.  We can even understand how life can evolve.  But why do cells divide in the first place?  “Why” does life find a way?  To answer “it just does”, seems a bit superficial to me.  But where there is a God who creates, who innovates, and who loves – growth and change – would be a logical conclusion witnessed in infinite expansion.  God, it would appear, is constantly looking for new ways to express His love for everything He creates.  It is why bringing something new into existence makes sense.  He designs creation to be the next physical expression of His love.  Our senses, our ability to think on our own, to choose, to love by choice, to experience existence – all hallmarks of a God keenly interested in sharing His own experience with what He has made in us.  We share His image by intent, by design, through the execution of deliberate planning on His part.  The evil we embraced was not His wish or His intent for us; but our ability to choose evil had to exist, in order that our ability to reject it and accept love could also exist.  We choose to love God, not because He forces us, but because He loves us.  We grow, we learn, we love – not because we invented these concepts – but because we were created to experience them.  Growth, change, and innovation are characteristics of our God reflected in our existence.  God succinctly answers the question “why” in perhaps the only way that could make sense.

Our growth then, our ability to think and learn and expand our experience as a result, is placed within us by His creative design.  We are meant to increase our knowledge, our love, and our joy.  Life grows and with it love grows.  As we introduce children into our lives for example, when our first child is born and is only minutes old, there is already a connection, a bond, a feeling.  It is the infancy of a love for our child that is destined to ever expand.  Our love for our first child does not diminish over time (normally), it grows, it expands, it deepens.  As our children develop individual personalities, likes, dislikes, habits – they become distinct, and we love them all the more for their distinctions.  As they grow still and age for many years, the nature of our relationship alters from provider to consultant and friend.  Still our love deepens as does our appreciation for the person or adult our child has become.  At each stage of life love exists, but because life grows and expands, it gives with it the opportunity for love to grow and expand as well.  This is by design.  The author of love looks to constantly expand His love to us, and in so doing He creates the processes of growth, so that we might share in what it means to see love grow.  Every healthy cell that divides and expands carries with it an incremental opportunity to see love grow as well.  This is perhaps “why” life is ever expanding.

It is only the antithesis of God that introduces decay and demise.  Where love is constantly expanding, self is constantly contracting.  Where a focus outward on the needs of others brings joy to the object of love, a focus inward on the needs of self, diminishes the joy we and those around us can experience.  This is why love is life, and self is death.  But perfection was not designed to have evil corrupt it, and one day, evil will make a full exit from our existence, purged by choice, by grace, and by fire.  After that, evil will be no more, all that will remain is love.  Therefore the process of expansion, the concept of innovation, the ability to reason, these things will ever be present, a part of who and what we are.  It would seem then, that love is the reason why we exist and why our experience and our existence are destined to forever be better every day.  There is no plateau of joy or experience we will reach and maintain; rather we are destined to forever be in a pattern of expansion and growth.  In this sense, our creation in the image of God is reflected in our creative impulses.

While we do not share our God’s ability to call things into existence by sheer will or thought, we were created with the ability to find new combinations of thoughts or elements and in the combination produce something “new”.  The concept of music for example would likely have been created by God.  However the infinite variations of musical sound are left to us to perform, compose, alter, innovate, and expand for all of eternity.  The shear variance in instrumentation can produce wide varieties of music, let alone the unique vocal tones each of us possess.  While God likely invented the idea of music, He seems perfectly happy to bless us with abilities to share in it.  There are those who write, who play, who perform, or simply who appreciate it; a wide range of experience where it comes to the concept of music.  The topic of pro-creation then is not merely about the offspring of a couple paired in sexual intimacy, it is about the pro-creation of ideas, of concepts, or constructions.  When we build a building, when we form new thoughts, when we imagine – we are in effect expressing a reflection of the creative nature of our God.  In this we are procreating.

To be called the sons and daughters of God is not only an honor we will never deserve; it may also reflect a desire on God’s part to see us join with Him in the process of creation, of innovation, of expansion.  Every minuet shred of life in our world was created to grow, to expand, and to procreate.  The methods of procreation, rates of growth and change vary widely; but every tiny particle of life shares in the process in its own way.  The process is the constant.  The expression is the variable.  Life did not have to have this characteristic.  God could have brought in to existence only a fixed number of animated creations, and not given them the ability to expand or grow.  He could have created only a fixed number of trees, or fish, or lions – exactly enough to populate our perfect world, or His perfect heaven.  Had He done so, He would have not needed the command to go and be fruitful and multiply.  Perfection after all, did not require expansion.  Expansion, or procreation, was a choice God made in His designs of all life.  Because the love of God grows, life grows with it.  Because love is not content to be stagnant, life is not designed to be stagnant.  The concepts that we have a hard time understanding are how the love of God is infinite, yet expanding.  Perhaps it is only our perceptions that are expanding as we grow.

The question a Christian should perhaps give a bit more thought to, is “how much is enough?”.  Could you ever envision yourself as having had “enough” of the company of God?  Could you ever envision being loved “enough”?  Being close to author of all Love, is not something any sentient life can imagine tiring of, particularly when our own growth reveals deeper and deeper revelations of what love is, and what it means to us, and to those we treasure.  I do not believe there is a “just right” number of close friends.  Whether you have one, two, three, or any number beyond that, you tend to treasure each one because they are unique, and bring a unique perspective to the friendship you share.  In eternity, through the eons of time, we will come to know every single person who was saved in this world.  We will think of them as our family, as our friends.  We will love them all intensely.  And will we have finally hit just the right number of objects upon which to share our love?  God didn’t.

The reason we were created with the ability to pro-create is precisely because there is no limit, no perfect number of recipients of the love of God.  Our species, and every other could have been created with only a limited ability to expand – procreate until we reach a certain population, or saturation of the earth, and then by miraculous design, lose the ability to procreate further.  Perhaps only achieving procreation to cover losses from whatever the perfect number was.  But this is not how God created us.  The ability to infinitely expand eventually puts the limits of this world to the test.  Our destiny however was not be constrained by the limits of only this world.  There is no cap on the edict of being fruitful and multiplying, as there is no cap on the number of other potential worlds which we might inhabit and enjoy.  Our galaxy alone could keep us “multiplying” for quite a while.  The point is not about population explosion, it is about the lack of population controls – love does not seek to control or limit itself and its expression to others.  As we find love for the newborn baby who enters our lives, so God finds infinite love for it as well.  It is not merely the parents, grandparents, and siblings who may be elated at the birth of someone new – it is ALL of heaven.  God too, finds His own joy, in the introduction of a new life into the universe.  This is what He intended.  This is what He designed.  This is another way in which He finds His joy – to express His infinite love to yet another life.  It is also why each life is precious, and in His view, absolutely of infinite value.

Given our current condition, it is hard for us to appreciate why any particular life is so important to God.  After all some folks are not exactly go-getters, there are many who appear so steeped in selfishness that they are offensive, obnoxious, and some even psychotic (and that may be just the one in the mirror).  Our embrace of evil does not make our existence one to envy or admire, it is more pathetic and sad.  But our God sees beyond our current disease to the existence we were destined for from creation.  He sees us after His work of re-creation is completed.  He sees our potential to forsake the evil of self, and embrace what it means to surrender and then truly love.  And there has not been a single addition to our population whose life God would not treasure and desire to redeem.  Upon entering heaven, it will not matter how many of us there are, because no matter how great a number that will be, each particular person will be of infinite value to God.  If God could have persuaded even one more person to accept His gift of redemption from self, He would be elated to accept that additional life.  There is room in heaven for more than will choose to be there.  There is room in the heart of God to love every single person who has ever lived, or who will ever live.  Every despot in history, from the wicked pharaoh, to the current folks like Joseph Kony, are not beyond the ability of God to love, or His desire to redeem.  There is no waste of a life or a waste of existence where God is concerned.  If every single person from Adam to the end of time had accepted the gift of God of freedom from self and evil, heaven would be overjoyed, and considered complete.  It mourns greatly however that many have rejected this gift, and elected to hold on to their chains of bondage to evil.

It seems only logical that if the population of our re-created perfect world expands, it would be in character with the designs of God.  If God creates our world anew as He did the first time He set it up, the trees and plants will still germinate and expand, the birds, fishes, and animals will still carry the ability to have families, and perhaps we too will still carry the designs of a family unit.  It may be that marriage and family still constitute the designs God intended before evil was embraced.  Our notions of love will certainly expand, but perhaps the designs of God of a special relationship may survive what damage evil and self have done to it in this world of sin.  Perhaps the restoration of family will be the last redemption God extends the species of man.  To me, it does not really matter.  I trust the wishes of God in this regard, and believe whatever He has in mind with respect to family and human procreation, I will be elated with His choice.  However, what I have learned of God, is that He truly never seems to have a limit to His love.  He loves each of us so thoroughly and completely.  He does not get tired.  He does not change His mind about who He loves, or how He loves.  No matter how many others He loves, He does not get tired of loving someone new, a new child in His Kingdom.  It seems only reasonable to me, that heaven will not be the starting point for putting a cap on any new additions to the family.  In fact, it seems only more reasonable and consistent with what He designed so far, that heaven may be the starting point for an explosion of love, and perhaps with it, an explosion of new life, new families, and even greater love.