Recently I was listening to an audiobook by Max Tegmark called "Life 3.0".
The book is about life in a world where humans coexist with Artificial Intelligence, but the thing that I was most taken by was his description of the beginning of the universe.
I'm not sure of the author's actual beliefs around Creation and the Person of the Creator, but his description of the way that the universe began was absolutely poetic. I was captivated by his words as he expressed the moment that it came into being, as he spoke about the energy that must have been present to provide for the birth of the first matter to exist. The power and the intensity of that energy, to me, can only be understood in terms of relationship, of love. There is something about that description of the beginning that points to ecstasy and the love between persons, in this case Divine Persons. The Love that is so powerful and so fruitful that it's expression supernaturally leads to creation. And in the beginning it was the Father loving the Son with the Holy Spirit.
I don't think there is any point in quibbling about how long all of this took, in our concept of time. God is outside of time and the material is in time, so it can be brought into existence in whatever way God desires. The important thing is, that God desired.
This is indeed a description of a Big Bang, although I think that there are any number of better terms for it. It is a Love that gave life to a whole universe so that He could bring me, and you, into relationship with Him. His whole intention was to provide a home for His beloved and to bring them to Himself. God wants us. God thought of me, before time, and made sure that I would come to exist. All that exists is for us, and it is intensely personal. One human person is worth more than all that matter and creation and all that exists. You are worth more than the oceans, the Rocky Mountains, the Grand Canyon, or the Himalayas. They are just made of the material, but YOU are made of material and the immaterial. YOU have the gift of a soul. Your ensouled humanity will exist forever, even after all that stuff disappears or is destroyed.
So, that was the first Big Bang. And we know what happened in the story. Because God created us to be His children and not pets, He gave us the ability to choose His way, or not. And because He also gave that choice to His immaterial creatures, the angels, there were bound to be some who chose not. Bad actors. And not just bad actors but jealous ones, who could not leave humanity well enough alone. So, when clueless and naive humanity met the liar, they fell for the lie and disobeyed God, and things really just kind of fell apart from there. But God isn't a half-hearted lover, and He wouldn't just give up on His beloved. He had a plan. A second Big Bang. An even more incredible expression of His love.
After millennia and centuries and decades and years. After generation after generation came and went with varying success in following His ways and obeying the Laws that He gave them. After the Covenants between He and His people were made and then broken by those people, it was time.
Into this world, in the time of the Jews under Roman occupation, and in a simple place in Galilee of Judea, He asked a young woman if she would be willing to bear His Son. And she said "Yes". And this was more momentous than the whole beginning of the Universe and the Creation of the world as we know it. God, Himself, stepped into our time and our world. He became one of us. The magnitude of this fact is incomprehensible. God, Almighty God, came to be with us, to unite our existence with His. Heaven stepped into earth, and everything changed. The moment that happened the whole world was different. It was raised to a new level. A NEW Creation, with a New Eve and a New Adam. An expression of Love that was more powerful than the first.
But that wasn't all. The Son, who came to live here with us, also came to die for us. The Word came to speak into our world another Truth. A third Big Bang. More powerful than the ones before. God was doing something unthinkable for us, but that's only because we can't think like He does. He took a body, so that He could give us His body, and then He died, he was buried, and HE ROSE from the dead! And He promises that we will also rise, if we believe and live in the New Covenant. The Mystery of His Love just gets deeper and better!!
The last Big Bang will happen when all that He has intended is finished. When the last person that the Father has thought of is conceived, and can live eternally with Him, then the fulness of time will be complete. It's all about relationship. God has married us. We, the Church, are the Bride, and Christ is the Bridegroom.
And that's not a theory. That is the Truth.
No comments:
Post a Comment