God did not create 'from nothing' but by shaping and organising - by animating - pre-existent stuff; which included primordial men and women: seeds of consciousness.
Thus God's work of creation was to bring life and consciousness to reality - only that which is alive has meaning and purpose and the potential for relationship. Only that which is alive can be brought within God's reality of Love.
The work of creation continues; it is substantially a building coherence of love, and a bringing to higher consciousness - which is awareness.
The divine plan is for ever-increasing awareness of reality; and that reality is underpinned by love (love is the principle of coherence). Love can only be between alive and conscious entities (relationship) - so the universe coheres only by virtue of its being animate.
Love cannot be coerced, so God's creation is chosen: it is offered to us, and we are not compelled to accept it. We accept it because we want it. We accept developmental enhancement of our consciousness only because we want to.
And if we do not want these things, loving provision is made for us - as any loving parent would (sadly, but willingly) make provision for any child who chose not to grow up, or chose not to become more conscious, or chose to go-it-alone.
3 comments:
This is I think the key, that love is a desire for the good of another, but the concept of "good" must necessarily be that which the lover holds, not necessarily that which the beloved holds.
God's love for us is that we should have life, and have it more abundantly. And by "life", God means not mere biological continuation but the freedom and expression of the will. We are free only when we have various possible outcomes which are meaningfully different to us, the ability to choose among them by our willful actions, and the understanding of which willful actions lead to which outcomes. Thus God's idea of freedom requires consciousness, so that we can have knowledge of our choices. It also requires potency, so that we may have many potential consequences arising from our possible actions.
And yet this very freedom must include the power to choose to make ourselves less conscious, and less powerful, through our own self-willed actions. And because we have our own ideas of what is "good" in our eyes, some will place something above becoming more fully conscious, more responsible, more free. To be fully alive means having choices about whether to continue living to the fullest.
@CCL - I can't see how your comment relates to the post - although I admit the post was indeed rather gnomic! But I was mostly pointing at the living-consciousness of non-human creation.
Yes, that follows from the principle that God is motivated to create by love, thus all that He creates would be truly alive in a profound spiritual sense. Not perhaps the full consciousness and latitude of action that we have as God's children (or perhaps candidate children is a more accurate term), but still an inherent living nature that is worthy of respect and spiritual love.
for us candidate children of God, to choose to reject that potential is a tragedy, but I think that for many elements of the natural world the potential wasn't available in the first place, but this does not mean God does not love the creation and imbue it with as much life as possible to its fundamental spiritual character.
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