"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth..." (Genesis 1:1)

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GOD THE CREATOR

the Rev. B. David Holm

The most important truth of the New Church is that there is a God - one God - who created heaven and earth. As you may already know, some people do not believe in God. They believe that the universe created itself by the accidental joining of chemicals. But this belief does not stand up to reason or common sense. Just take a tree for instance - how many accidents would it have taken for that tree to have developed into what it is? How many accidents would there have had to be for just one leaf on that tree to grow? Think of how many different things there are in the universe - trillions of separate things. Think of the wonder of the human body. The chances of all this wonderful order happening by accident are almost impossible to figure mathematically - one chance in a "zillion".

Some people realize this and admit that there must be some "force" behind creation, but they don't think of this "force" as a Divinely Human God. They don't think of God as a person. Neither "accident" nor "force" can have a purpose or goal. For it takes a human mind to have a real goal. And it takes a Divine mind for there to be a purpose in creation. In the New Church we believe that there is a Divine purpose in creation and that we can see that purpose in nature. The mineral kingdom supports the vegetable kingdom. The vegetable kingdom supports the animal kingdom. And all three kingdoms support humankind - the highest part or "crown" of creation. So, the purpose in creation is people!

Everything in the universe, then, was created to aid and support the human race. Why? Because God is love - Love itself - and creation is a work of His love. Real love wants to love others and not oneself. And, more than anything else, the Lord wanted to create people whom He could love and who could love Him in return. The Lord loves the whole of His creation, but the lower things of creation cannot really love the Him in return. Only human beings can consciously respond to and love the Creator.

But why does the Lord want us to love Him? Certainly not for selfish reasons, for the Lord is the opposite of selfishness. The reason lies in the nature of love. Love alone can unite people. When you love some people, and they love you, in a very real sense you are one with them. The Lord wants to be united with every person of the human race - to be one with them. This can happen only if we love Him in return, for if love is to unite, it must be mutual. If you love someone but he doesn't love you, then you cannot be united with him.

Now, the Lord's love is not just for our life on earth. Real love wants to make people happy always. The Lord would never be satisfied by just loving us while we lived in this world. That is why He created the whole Spiritual world, which we enter into after death and where we can be loved and made happy by the Lord in heaven forever. This brings us to the Lord's final purpose of creation - to make a heaven from the human race. A heaven from the human race is the highest goal of our Creator. It is the purpose of the whole universe.

From all this you can see that in the New Church we earnestly believe that God created the universe for a purpose. And this is much more than just a useful thing to think about. Because when we understand the purpose of the Lord, then we have a responsibility. That responsibility is to truly try to make the Lord's purpose our own. His love wants to make a heaven from the human race; we, with love, should cooperate with the Lord by living His commandments so that He can lead us into His heaven. Only in this way can the Lord's loving purpose of creation be accomplished in our own lives.

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