Monday, January 3, 2011

In the beginning

Three days into the New Year it came to mind a thought Jack (Lewis) had of all our beginnings. In his ruminations on agape love in The Four Loves Lewis imagines what God had in mind when the universe had its beginning:
God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing -- or should we say "seeing"? there are no tenses in God -- the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath's sake, hitched up. If I may dare the biological image, God is a "host" who deliberately creates His own parasites; causes us to be that we may exploit and "take advantage of" Him. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.
All the debates that go on about our beginnings -- scientific, philosophic and otherwise -- leave out this picture of what may truly have happened when God thought to form the universe. How much did God know when he formed us of the dust of the earth? It's love enough that he gave us life -- it is extraordinary love that he formed us knowing the humiliating outcome. A potential parent might think twice about having a child if he knew in advance that such child would rebel and make for him a living hell. God doesn't think twice. What better way to star the new year than with the realization God has no second thoughts concerning us. The first thought will be the last. The love at the beginning of the year will be the love at the end of the year, no matter what we've done. With all the uncertainties a new year brings, it's good to be sure of at least one thing. Even better that it's the most important thing.

No comments:

Post a Comment