Our organist recently recorded a service as part of a degree for the Royal School of Church Music. She shared with me the final 20 minutes of our service on 18 September. It included a reflection on Genesis 2.4b-14, a part of the second creation story. It includes too a few squawks from children in the congregation: baptismal families who wanted to stay to hear a few musings from the local ministers.
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Why didn’t God create a better world?
A question posed by a member of the congregation. Tempting as it is to respond with a Gallic shrug and say, ‘Ask God’, a response (not an answer! too presumptuous!) is required.
Let’s look at the texts for the day. A description of the Fall in Genesis 3. Adam and Eve want to be like God: knowing good and evil, eternal life. They take the fruit and eat. Then, banishment from Eden and so much that follows stems from that fateful decision. Original sin often is mentioned and sin is often seen as the focus on the self, cutting oneself off from God. The middle letter in ‘sin’ is ‘I’. Me first.
Genesis emphasises, however, that the created world is good. God calls it good several times in Genesis 1 and twice (I think) calls it very good. God perhaps could have created… click here to read more
Who made God?
Thus asked a member of the congregation and I wasn’t quite sure how to take it. Was it serious? Was it a bit flippant or tongue-in-cheek?
Let’s assume in the first instance that the person was serious. In Christian theology God is unmade. God simply is. God existed before anything was and will be there when all things draw to a close. Something like Aristotle’s unmoved mover.
The question may have been an expression of perplexity. We cannot conceive of anything like this. We cannot imagine something, a being, an essence, God which exists for all time and all eternity. Something that jut is. It goes beyond one of my favourite illustrations. The Hubble telescope has sent back pictures of dust clouds light years high. That’s enormous and mind-boggling and yet the creator God is beyond even that idea. Mind numbing.
But then again, maybe the question… click here to read more