God is not merely unrefinablely perfect, He is also unlimitedly perfect. His perfection, which is peerless in purity, is also boarderless in boundary.
God knows no limit. He is infinite – not merely spatially, as the adjective infinity often calls to mind – but He knows no limit in His character as well. His character trait of perfection is infinite.
Now if we imagine a person as infinity beautiful, we would easily call to mind collapsing at their feet in awe. Indeed, the less than infinitely beautiful angels have people collapsing to their knees. It then becomes no wonder why the infinitely perfect God has people falling, afraid of death, and casting the crowns that He gave them back, because the gulf of difference is too great to bear. A humanly beautiful person can cause us to slack jaw and have our brains freeze up, imagine now the impact of infinity! A kind person can cause tears to well up, how much more infinite kindness! God, infinite in all His perfections, then fittingly strikes us with awe and wonder.
Further reading: Peter asks Jesus about the limits to forgiveness. (Matthew 18:15-35)
"God is absolutely perfect."
Perfect is an adjective we toss around often: picture perfect, the perfect moment, and (for those in love) the perfect person. Regularly we use this word to describe how something is precisely as it should. Yet rarely do we use the word “perfect” in its fullest sense – almost always there is some impurity. The picture perfect photograph may have a tree slightly too tall, or the perfect moment may be tainted by worries of work, or even the perfect person may have leave the the cupboard doors open for your head to accidentally hit.
God, however, has no such impurities. His perfection is purer than the purest gold, no dross rises up in smelting and there can be no refinement of His perfection. God is perfectly perfect, unrefinablely perfect, absolutely perfect.
Anywhere that God is, He is in the fullness of perfection. God is not like a calico cat, spotted and mottled, but rather evenly distributed in His perfection. There is not some part of God, tucked way like a moth eaten shirt in a trunk and long forgotten, that is less than the purest of perfect. No, God is like milk – whole and homogeneous – in His perfection.
Further Reading: Jesus tells the crowds about perfection (Matthew 5:43-48).
God, however, has no such impurities. His perfection is purer than the purest gold, no dross rises up in smelting and there can be no refinement of His perfection. God is perfectly perfect, unrefinablely perfect, absolutely perfect.
Anywhere that God is, He is in the fullness of perfection. God is not like a calico cat, spotted and mottled, but rather evenly distributed in His perfection. There is not some part of God, tucked way like a moth eaten shirt in a trunk and long forgotten, that is less than the purest of perfect. No, God is like milk – whole and homogeneous – in His perfection.
Further Reading: Jesus tells the crowds about perfection (Matthew 5:43-48).
“The divine attributes are really identical among themselves and with the Divine Essence.”
“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.” (Deuteronomy 6:4, Douay-Rheims translation)
God is one. Often we hear this and meditate upon the Trinity, but the concept is much more extensive than that. God's oneness extends to all parts of Him, such that there is only one part of Him. The variety of words used to describe God is the result of our human condition being insufficient to fully grasp Him. We are as the blind men describing the elephant – even though we can touch many parts, we don't have one word to describe them all. We have no word to mean both justice and mercy. No word to mean both present everywhere yet uniquely present somewhere (here I am thinking of the Host). No word to mean both loving yet permissive of suffering. Our language does not afford us the word to cover all the attributes of God, so we use many words; yet God is one. God is what He does, He is not duplicitous. The justice shown so clearly in the Old Testament is the same as the mercy shown in the New Testament – not even as two sides to the same coin, but as the same side of the coin!
We learn that God is the very definition of wholeheartedness by understanding the Law of God. God wants us to be like Him. Man failed in being like God because he tried to be like God “without God, before God, and not in accordance with God” (St. Maximus the Confessor, CCC 398). To be like God with Him, behind Him, and in accord with Him one follows His Law, which is the path to being like Him. In the Old Law, we have laws about not blending species, blending fields, or blending fabrics. These pedagogical laws where intended to teach us wholeheartedness. The highest expression of this wholeheartedness is a wholeheartedness towards God (Deuteronomy 18:13). In this unwavering wholeheartedness towards God, we become like Him. The more we ourselves become one complete and undivided person, the more we become like our undivided God.
That God's attributes are the same as His Essence lets us know that God is truly one and there is no division in Him. The unity of the three in the Trinity is not the fullness of the understanding of the oneness of God – even the attributes of God are all expressions of the same attribute, which is the same as His Essence. All the words we use to describe God are synonymous in that they are describing only one attribute!
Further Reading: Peter walks on water (Matthew 14:22-33)
God is one. Often we hear this and meditate upon the Trinity, but the concept is much more extensive than that. God's oneness extends to all parts of Him, such that there is only one part of Him. The variety of words used to describe God is the result of our human condition being insufficient to fully grasp Him. We are as the blind men describing the elephant – even though we can touch many parts, we don't have one word to describe them all. We have no word to mean both justice and mercy. No word to mean both present everywhere yet uniquely present somewhere (here I am thinking of the Host). No word to mean both loving yet permissive of suffering. Our language does not afford us the word to cover all the attributes of God, so we use many words; yet God is one. God is what He does, He is not duplicitous. The justice shown so clearly in the Old Testament is the same as the mercy shown in the New Testament – not even as two sides to the same coin, but as the same side of the coin!
We learn that God is the very definition of wholeheartedness by understanding the Law of God. God wants us to be like Him. Man failed in being like God because he tried to be like God “without God, before God, and not in accordance with God” (St. Maximus the Confessor, CCC 398). To be like God with Him, behind Him, and in accord with Him one follows His Law, which is the path to being like Him. In the Old Law, we have laws about not blending species, blending fields, or blending fabrics. These pedagogical laws where intended to teach us wholeheartedness. The highest expression of this wholeheartedness is a wholeheartedness towards God (Deuteronomy 18:13). In this unwavering wholeheartedness towards God, we become like Him. The more we ourselves become one complete and undivided person, the more we become like our undivided God.
That God's attributes are the same as His Essence lets us know that God is truly one and there is no division in Him. The unity of the three in the Trinity is not the fullness of the understanding of the oneness of God – even the attributes of God are all expressions of the same attribute, which is the same as His Essence. All the words we use to describe God are synonymous in that they are describing only one attribute!
Further Reading: Peter walks on water (Matthew 14:22-33)
"God's Essence is also incomprehensible to the blessed in Heaven."
In Heaven, we retain our human nature. It is natural for a human to be limited. Naturally, humans don't know everything. However, it is God's nature to be without limit. There is a change in quality when one goes from countable to countless, not just a change in quantity – therefore the finite cannot fully comprehend the infinite. Despite the many helps God gives us (reason, the world, etc.), we are still in some Climacusian dream where the final rung of the ladder to understanding God is missing, and indeed cannot be filled in.
Some faithful followers of this Blog will ponder, doesn't this dogma sound a lot like "God's Nature is Incomprehensible to Men"? What we have is two facets of God: what He does and who He is. Nature is in reference to the drives of God, what are His motivations? Essence goes deeper. Essence is who God is underneath the external appearances and actions. One could say it is natural for a man to want food, but that the essence of Man is his being a child of God. Earlier then, we looked at how God's actions are incomprehensible to men. Now we look at how, even in Heaven, the very core of God's being is incomprehensible to men.
Putting all this another way, God is, by nature and essence, a mystery. One of the qualities of God as mankind sees Him is mystery. God reveals this quality in His name (CCC 206) and we as Christians live out this quality by living out our Christian life. The mystery of God doesn't go away after death just as the mystery of a spouse doesn't disappear after marriage. Indeed, marriage is the start of living out the mystery of this other person, and death (in baptism) is the start of living out the mystery of our God.
Further Reading: The Wisdom of God is beyond fully comprehending (Sirach 24).
Some faithful followers of this Blog will ponder, doesn't this dogma sound a lot like "God's Nature is Incomprehensible to Men"? What we have is two facets of God: what He does and who He is. Nature is in reference to the drives of God, what are His motivations? Essence goes deeper. Essence is who God is underneath the external appearances and actions. One could say it is natural for a man to want food, but that the essence of Man is his being a child of God. Earlier then, we looked at how God's actions are incomprehensible to men. Now we look at how, even in Heaven, the very core of God's being is incomprehensible to men.
Putting all this another way, God is, by nature and essence, a mystery. One of the qualities of God as mankind sees Him is mystery. God reveals this quality in His name (CCC 206) and we as Christians live out this quality by living out our Christian life. The mystery of God doesn't go away after death just as the mystery of a spouse doesn't disappear after marriage. Indeed, marriage is the start of living out the mystery of this other person, and death (in baptism) is the start of living out the mystery of our God.
Further Reading: The Wisdom of God is beyond fully comprehending (Sirach 24).
“The soul, for the immediate vision of God, requires the light of glory.”
God has created each of us all with a special purpose. Each one us us was created with a particular task. One way to define sin is to say that we sin when we turn away from that task to which God calls us. After all, God is the potter of our clay bodies, and as a potter determines the use of a vessel so to does God determine our use. When we turn away from our use, and try to be a chamber pot instead of a wine jug, God's glory departs from us.
Put another way, when one looks away from a light, one fails to see the light. When the moon is at your back, you cannot see the moon. So too is our journey on this earth. When we turn from the path God has set for us, we abandon and lose the light of His glory. Hence, through sin (that turning away from the path God set for us) we have tripped up and fell in the mud. We soiled and marred ourselves such that we have lost God's glory in our life. Rather than looking up at the moon, our face is in the mud and roots of the earth – therefore we cannot see the moon's radiance.
God in His mercy restores that light to those who turn back to Him. If you turn around and look at the moon, you again see its light. If you are cleaned out, you can again be used for wine. The act of turning around is no small task. In this world few (e.g. Moses, Mary, and some of Jesus' Disciples) of us have been able to make that turn and see the face of God. For most of us, if we receive a vision of God will be upon our death. Regardless as to if we first see Him here in this world or in the one to come, we will certainly need our lack of glory repaired. Without the light of glory one cannot see God. Luckily for us, God Himself will provide the necessary glory to have the vision of Him (cf. Isaiah, Baruch and Revelation).
This dogma then, states the very obvious. It states that upon our death, we need the grace of God to illumine our view of God. God has all the glory, but we need Him to give us some if we are to be able to see Him. This dogma and the previous together show how a simpleton in a dark room needs both light to see a chair and a brain to understand that what a chair is. It is a practical expression of just how far God is above us.
Further Reading: The Transfiguration of Christ (Matthew 17:1-8).
Put another way, when one looks away from a light, one fails to see the light. When the moon is at your back, you cannot see the moon. So too is our journey on this earth. When we turn from the path God has set for us, we abandon and lose the light of His glory. Hence, through sin (that turning away from the path God set for us) we have tripped up and fell in the mud. We soiled and marred ourselves such that we have lost God's glory in our life. Rather than looking up at the moon, our face is in the mud and roots of the earth – therefore we cannot see the moon's radiance.
God in His mercy restores that light to those who turn back to Him. If you turn around and look at the moon, you again see its light. If you are cleaned out, you can again be used for wine. The act of turning around is no small task. In this world few (e.g. Moses, Mary, and some of Jesus' Disciples) of us have been able to make that turn and see the face of God. For most of us, if we receive a vision of God will be upon our death. Regardless as to if we first see Him here in this world or in the one to come, we will certainly need our lack of glory repaired. Without the light of glory one cannot see God. Luckily for us, God Himself will provide the necessary glory to have the vision of Him (cf. Isaiah, Baruch and Revelation).
This dogma then, states the very obvious. It states that upon our death, we need the grace of God to illumine our view of God. God has all the glory, but we need Him to give us some if we are to be able to see Him. This dogma and the previous together show how a simpleton in a dark room needs both light to see a chair and a brain to understand that what a chair is. It is a practical expression of just how far God is above us.
Further Reading: The Transfiguration of Christ (Matthew 17:1-8).
“The immediate vision of God transcends the natural power of cognition of the human soul, and is therefore supernatural.”
Often we like to bring God down to us. We like to think we can put Him in our neat little boxes, properly indexed, labeled, and shelved. Alas, God resists such cognitive acts. His “thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways [His] ways … As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are [His] ways above your ways and [His] thoughts above your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9). Man is, by nature, limited and finite. God is, buy nature, limitless and infinite. Even just to look upon God threatens death (Judges 13:22). To see God blows man's mind like fuses on an overloaded socket.
Because the vision of God is so far beyond our comprehension, we need a supernatural nitrous boost to our human cognition engine. To say we don't need this beyond natural power surge would be tantamount to saying the gulf between man and God is not infinite. Such a claim would debase God by putting the Creator on par with the creation – the pot would be equal to the potter.
Further Reading: Peter sees Jesus is the Son of God only by the Spirit, and when left to his own cognition fails to see that God came to serve (Matthew 16:13-28).
Because the vision of God is so far beyond our comprehension, we need a supernatural nitrous boost to our human cognition engine. To say we don't need this beyond natural power surge would be tantamount to saying the gulf between man and God is not infinite. Such a claim would debase God by putting the Creator on par with the creation – the pot would be equal to the potter.
Further Reading: Peter sees Jesus is the Son of God only by the Spirit, and when left to his own cognition fails to see that God came to serve (Matthew 16:13-28).
“The blessed in Heaven possess an immediate intuitive knowledge of the Divine Essence.”
I have had some scrapes in my life – one of the worst being pancreatitis.
It was such intense pain as is unutterably ugly. A pain that makes one feel their body will crumble and return to dust, because humans were ill designed to take such suffering.
However, the most painful thing I have ever experienced is to be misunderstood. This pain is unable to be relieved through pills or injections, like physical trauma, yet makes one feel as though they are about to rupture with dammed up frustration. This is the pain of knowing that no matter what one says, one's words will be twisted and misconstrued and have their meanings violated. To go about daily misunderstood is to go about wholly alone.
Who, then, was the most misunderstood person of all history? Jesus Christ, the only Son of God. Jesus became fully human while retaining his fully divine nature. The creator of every person on the earth and sustainer of all life, became flesh and blood. What then does the life that He sustains give to Him in reply? Death on a cross. He is completely and utterly misunderstood. Slaughtered by those He breathed life to, even His closest friends run away. He is left almost entirely alone, and certainly left entirely misunderstood.
I never fully misunderstand another human. There is always some touch or scrap of understanding because we are human – that bond unites us. However, because Jesus was also fully divine, he was the only human to be fully misunderstood. No one on this earth grasps the mystery of God. We toil in our daily labor and vainly use His name when we are cut off in traffic, or stub our toes. We forget in our drudgery that by that name we use to curse, our very life was given to us. Jesus is not merely some guy, He is Lord. When one calls Him merely a good teacher, the misunderstanding is greater than if you or I were to be mistaken for a stone. Pause your thoughts on the frustration He must feel to be so completely misunderstood by His children.
That pain from being misunderstood must at some point need relax. If I were in Heaven and knew I was causing my God and savior pain for all eternity, I would be frustrated beyond belief. I would rather die than cause my wife pain – how much more so for my God?
Therefore, in Heaven, the last dividing walls between God and man are crushed. If I am so blessed as to see God's face in Heaven, I will receive understanding of who God is. No longer will I go about misunderstanding God! In Heaven, His essence will be revealed so that I might love Him for who He is, rather than go about for eternity second guessing His divine plan or doubting His love for me.
In Heaven, I will know to my deepest marrow and innermost veins the Divine Essence. My knowledge of God will no longer be based upon my faulty feelings or loose logic, but based instead upon the full union I will have with Him. At last the tension of misunderstanding will relax, and the Sabbath rest will being.
Further Reading: Jesus denied by Peter (the Gospel according to John, 18).
It was such intense pain as is unutterably ugly. A pain that makes one feel their body will crumble and return to dust, because humans were ill designed to take such suffering.
However, the most painful thing I have ever experienced is to be misunderstood. This pain is unable to be relieved through pills or injections, like physical trauma, yet makes one feel as though they are about to rupture with dammed up frustration. This is the pain of knowing that no matter what one says, one's words will be twisted and misconstrued and have their meanings violated. To go about daily misunderstood is to go about wholly alone.
Who, then, was the most misunderstood person of all history? Jesus Christ, the only Son of God. Jesus became fully human while retaining his fully divine nature. The creator of every person on the earth and sustainer of all life, became flesh and blood. What then does the life that He sustains give to Him in reply? Death on a cross. He is completely and utterly misunderstood. Slaughtered by those He breathed life to, even His closest friends run away. He is left almost entirely alone, and certainly left entirely misunderstood.
I never fully misunderstand another human. There is always some touch or scrap of understanding because we are human – that bond unites us. However, because Jesus was also fully divine, he was the only human to be fully misunderstood. No one on this earth grasps the mystery of God. We toil in our daily labor and vainly use His name when we are cut off in traffic, or stub our toes. We forget in our drudgery that by that name we use to curse, our very life was given to us. Jesus is not merely some guy, He is Lord. When one calls Him merely a good teacher, the misunderstanding is greater than if you or I were to be mistaken for a stone. Pause your thoughts on the frustration He must feel to be so completely misunderstood by His children.
That pain from being misunderstood must at some point need relax. If I were in Heaven and knew I was causing my God and savior pain for all eternity, I would be frustrated beyond belief. I would rather die than cause my wife pain – how much more so for my God?
Therefore, in Heaven, the last dividing walls between God and man are crushed. If I am so blessed as to see God's face in Heaven, I will receive understanding of who God is. No longer will I go about misunderstanding God! In Heaven, His essence will be revealed so that I might love Him for who He is, rather than go about for eternity second guessing His divine plan or doubting His love for me.
In Heaven, I will know to my deepest marrow and innermost veins the Divine Essence. My knowledge of God will no longer be based upon my faulty feelings or loose logic, but based instead upon the full union I will have with Him. At last the tension of misunderstanding will relax, and the Sabbath rest will being.
Further Reading: Jesus denied by Peter (the Gospel according to John, 18).
“God's Nature is incomprehensible to men.”
What is Man?
He little more than a mote--
a short gasp of air while he lives.
Soon he grows old and withers,
his mind fails –
his body returns to dust.
Oh man, mortal and frail and weak,
who are you that God takes note of you?
That God grooms the paths you trod,
tends the earth you set foot upon.
How can you conceive of God, oh man,
when you life ends faster than a mug of tea cools –
What hubris to think the mind of man in his clay shell,
could ponder of the wonders of the everlasting God.
The work of our hands lasts but a generation,
two at best.
And if we are so lucky as to forge something that lasts longer,
all thought of us disappears, even if the craft remains.
Who can name a builder of the pyramids,
Or what child cares for the fashioner of the great wall?
In our generation we make paper instead of stone,
And clouds instead of mortar.
What have we that lasts?
Nothing but our faith.
Yet our God laid the foundations of the earth.
He set the planets on their courses.
Our God devised laws that would dictate the movements even of tiny particles,
while our own human laws are broken daily.
Oh God, have mercy upon your people,
We are as the leaves that fall,
colored red with embarrassment at our errors,
yet your way last forever.
How can we understand your perfection,
when we are so broken?
How can we understand your love,
when we are so temperamental?
How can we understand your eternality,
when we are so short lived?
Oh God, have mercy on us,
show us your face that we might ponder the mystery of your nature.
Further Reading: Psalm 90
He little more than a mote--
a short gasp of air while he lives.
Soon he grows old and withers,
his mind fails –
his body returns to dust.
Oh man, mortal and frail and weak,
who are you that God takes note of you?
That God grooms the paths you trod,
tends the earth you set foot upon.
How can you conceive of God, oh man,
when you life ends faster than a mug of tea cools –
What hubris to think the mind of man in his clay shell,
could ponder of the wonders of the everlasting God.
The work of our hands lasts but a generation,
two at best.
And if we are so lucky as to forge something that lasts longer,
all thought of us disappears, even if the craft remains.
Who can name a builder of the pyramids,
Or what child cares for the fashioner of the great wall?
In our generation we make paper instead of stone,
And clouds instead of mortar.
What have we that lasts?
Nothing but our faith.
Yet our God laid the foundations of the earth.
He set the planets on their courses.
Our God devised laws that would dictate the movements even of tiny particles,
while our own human laws are broken daily.
Oh God, have mercy upon your people,
We are as the leaves that fall,
colored red with embarrassment at our errors,
yet your way last forever.
How can we understand your perfection,
when we are so broken?
How can we understand your love,
when we are so temperamental?
How can we understand your eternality,
when we are so short lived?
Oh God, have mercy on us,
show us your face that we might ponder the mystery of your nature.
Further Reading: Psalm 90
“God's existence is not merely an object of rational knowledge, but also an object of supernatural faith.”
Throughout history, man has attempted to reason out the existence of God - to build a ladder to the belief of God's existence via the intellect - and thereby rest assured that they are doing something right. Through reasoning about planting and harvest, people learned that God would die and be resurrected, just as the plants that sustain life die and are resurrected in planting. This reasoning leads to a belief in the god Quetzalcoatl and all the other dieing and rising deities. Through reasoning about where the world gets its life (mom and dad create baby) and where the world gets its light (the sun, moon, and stars), mankind discovered that God is triune. This leads to a belief in Trimurti for the Hindus, and all the other triune deities. Through reasoning about creation's origin, and that it must have come out of nothing or been around forever, people reasoned gods would have a virgin birth. This leads to Osiris et alii having virgin births.
The closer these myths are to Christianity, the more firm our faith in Christianity can become. This paradoxical statement is true because we as Christians are reasonable people. God made the world, and He left his fingerprints upon it. By those fingerprints we can come to know God exists (see the first dogma), so these other religions are true in so far as they have discovered the fingerprints of God stamped upon the natural world. The novice potter leaves her fingerprints upon the clay by mistake, but when God touches the moist earth, He leaves His fingerprints out of love, to give even more of Himself to creation.
These earlier myths I have mentioned have one glaring flaw to all Christians – these myths aren't Christianity!
We can reason to certain knowledge that God exists, but we cannot reason out perfectly the details of God's plan. People knew for hundreds of years before Jesus that God would come to set things right in the world, and He'd do it by dying and rising just as the the crops foretold, but this was insufficient knowledge. We know it is insufficient because we slew God anyway, even knowing He would appear!
The absence of the details, the potholes in the road of knowledge, where filled in by Christ's preaching. We can always deepen our knowledge of God (such as when we reason that if Mary gave Christ to the world, and Christ provides all our grace, then Mary is the door to all our grace), but we can never pave new roads to access new knowledge of God. There is nothing left out of the homily God gives. If I say anything new in this Blog it is wrong in as much as it is new. If I offer true insight it is true insofar as it taps into that great river of Truth flowing back through the office the disciples held (namely, through our Bishops and Pope), all the way back to Jesus.
Therefore Christ is the summit of our faith since he was revealed partially in creation and revealed actually in time of King Herod and Pontius Pilate, to bring fullness of truth to us. Only with faith in what Jesus the Christ taught can we have the full story of who our Creator is. Our reason alone only brings us to the certainty of God, which is only partway there. After all, even the Adversary is certain God exists.
Further Reading: Paul's speech to the Athenians (Acts 17:22-34)
The closer these myths are to Christianity, the more firm our faith in Christianity can become. This paradoxical statement is true because we as Christians are reasonable people. God made the world, and He left his fingerprints upon it. By those fingerprints we can come to know God exists (see the first dogma), so these other religions are true in so far as they have discovered the fingerprints of God stamped upon the natural world. The novice potter leaves her fingerprints upon the clay by mistake, but when God touches the moist earth, He leaves His fingerprints out of love, to give even more of Himself to creation.
These earlier myths I have mentioned have one glaring flaw to all Christians – these myths aren't Christianity!
We can reason to certain knowledge that God exists, but we cannot reason out perfectly the details of God's plan. People knew for hundreds of years before Jesus that God would come to set things right in the world, and He'd do it by dying and rising just as the the crops foretold, but this was insufficient knowledge. We know it is insufficient because we slew God anyway, even knowing He would appear!
The absence of the details, the potholes in the road of knowledge, where filled in by Christ's preaching. We can always deepen our knowledge of God (such as when we reason that if Mary gave Christ to the world, and Christ provides all our grace, then Mary is the door to all our grace), but we can never pave new roads to access new knowledge of God. There is nothing left out of the homily God gives. If I say anything new in this Blog it is wrong in as much as it is new. If I offer true insight it is true insofar as it taps into that great river of Truth flowing back through the office the disciples held (namely, through our Bishops and Pope), all the way back to Jesus.
Therefore Christ is the summit of our faith since he was revealed partially in creation and revealed actually in time of King Herod and Pontius Pilate, to bring fullness of truth to us. Only with faith in what Jesus the Christ taught can we have the full story of who our Creator is. Our reason alone only brings us to the certainty of God, which is only partway there. After all, even the Adversary is certain God exists.
Further Reading: Paul's speech to the Athenians (Acts 17:22-34)
"God, our Creator and Lord, can be known with certainty, by the natural light of reason from created things."
As a child, and more so as an adult, I put my hand to many tasks each day. Daily I labor to make things: be it bread, or art, or knowledge. These created things are pretty neat. Adding flour, salt, oil, and water and getting a tasty loaf is amazing. Creating something pleasurable to look at takes skill that is incredible. Probing the universe for answers and then finding the Truth is also beyond belief. Why should something that comes from the ground be so tasty? Why should a few lines on a page offer enjoyment to look at? Why should the world around me offer up any secrets about how it works? The creations of Mankind are pretty mind boggling, and I am not the best example of the richness that our hands can produce. Look at the Mona Lisa, or almost any building in Dubai, or the Great Wall. What humans produce is amazing. We have stock exchanges that trade more money that is countable, we've walked on the moon, and we've seen galaxies over ten million light-years away. What we create is pretty awesome.
Yet, as amazing as all that is, we are still more amazing. All of our created things are less awesome than us. Our blood follows the courses laid out by our veins, our brains process information and allow us to think and act in ways unheard of in the rest of the animal kingdom, and what, other than an arm, grows stronger the more it is bent and forced? Once I eat food, I can forget about it, yet my body doesn't. It digests and processes the food, extracts the energy at a molecular level, and then transports that stored energy throughout the limits of my skin. All this without any conscious effort. Even if my bones break, they will naturally fuse back together. Imagine a sky scraper fusing its own girders upon an earthquake, it seems so far out there, but that's what our bodies do already. We are capable of bending and flexing our hands in ways without number, and if we stretch too far our bodies immediately let us know, so we can refrain from hurting ourselves. We are awesome. The things we make are infinity less awesome that us, its creators.
But wait, I write ahead of myself. We as people cannot create anything from nothing. This whole existence is even more awesome than us. The greatest mystery in the universe is that anything exists at all! Why should something exist rather than nothing? The greatest minds in science have told us merely that “first there was nothing, then it exploded". This non-sequitor is our scientific creation myth. A myth hugely useful in understanding the world around us today, but entirely unreplicateable, and therefore not very different in form from “Then God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). The fact that an electron and proton attract is just as far out as if apples and oranges tried to gather in bushels to form equal amount. Why do electrons and protons do this? Science can only tell us how, and the why is left alone. It is amazing if something happens with a rhyme, but no reason. A cause (be it syntactical and rhyming or physical and particular) with no reason to be caused is a cause without a cause, and thus could never be caused!
What then created our raw materials? That from which we form so much incredible stuff with so much more incredible hands? Its creator must be infinitely more awesome than it, as we are infinitely more awesome than the jumbo jets we fly in. This creator must be infinitely more awesome than us, as we too are its creation.
This creator we call God.
Further Reading: God's speech to Job (Job Chapters 38 through 41)
Yet, as amazing as all that is, we are still more amazing. All of our created things are less awesome than us. Our blood follows the courses laid out by our veins, our brains process information and allow us to think and act in ways unheard of in the rest of the animal kingdom, and what, other than an arm, grows stronger the more it is bent and forced? Once I eat food, I can forget about it, yet my body doesn't. It digests and processes the food, extracts the energy at a molecular level, and then transports that stored energy throughout the limits of my skin. All this without any conscious effort. Even if my bones break, they will naturally fuse back together. Imagine a sky scraper fusing its own girders upon an earthquake, it seems so far out there, but that's what our bodies do already. We are capable of bending and flexing our hands in ways without number, and if we stretch too far our bodies immediately let us know, so we can refrain from hurting ourselves. We are awesome. The things we make are infinity less awesome that us, its creators.
But wait, I write ahead of myself. We as people cannot create anything from nothing. This whole existence is even more awesome than us. The greatest mystery in the universe is that anything exists at all! Why should something exist rather than nothing? The greatest minds in science have told us merely that “first there was nothing, then it exploded". This non-sequitor is our scientific creation myth. A myth hugely useful in understanding the world around us today, but entirely unreplicateable, and therefore not very different in form from “Then God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). The fact that an electron and proton attract is just as far out as if apples and oranges tried to gather in bushels to form equal amount. Why do electrons and protons do this? Science can only tell us how, and the why is left alone. It is amazing if something happens with a rhyme, but no reason. A cause (be it syntactical and rhyming or physical and particular) with no reason to be caused is a cause without a cause, and thus could never be caused!
What then created our raw materials? That from which we form so much incredible stuff with so much more incredible hands? Its creator must be infinitely more awesome than it, as we are infinitely more awesome than the jumbo jets we fly in. This creator must be infinitely more awesome than us, as we too are its creation.
This creator we call God.
Further Reading: God's speech to Job (Job Chapters 38 through 41)
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