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Thursday, July 9, 2009

The WHY of Creation / Part 4: What's up with the body???


In part 1, 2 and 3 of this series we concluded that

  1. God the Father is an invisible being because He is immaterial; He is Intelligence and Energy but not a corporeal being.
  2. One of the reasons for material creation was to make manifest, make visible the invisible God through his material creation. (Romans 1:20)
  3. However, the main reason for material creation was for God the Creator who is Spirit not flesh to begin to exist as a corporeal being, have bodily existence. Jesus Christ is God in corporeal form, God in a body. (Colossians 2:9)
  4. In part 3 we explored the differences between theoretical knowledge and experiential knowledge. Theoretical knowledge is head knowledge whereas experiential knowledge is knowledge gained by experience.

Part 3 of the series concluded with the following: The question still remains why God put himself in a body and suffered so much? If He is of infinite understanding could he not have done things differently? What’s so special about the body that God who is Spirit and thus immune to all the trials and tribulations that come with a body choose to house himself in a body? Remember the word EXPERIENCE that I wrote about earlier in this article, keep that word in mind as we come to the understanding the relationship of the body to the experiencing of life, not just for man but also for God.

In part 4 of the series I would like to address the role played by the BODY in the experiencing of life. The pleasures of life are comprehended mentally but the pleasures, as well as the pains of life may only be experienced corporeally. This is true for God as well as for man. In short God who is life could not have the pleasure of experiencing that life without a body which is the reason why he made himself a body. Ultimately it is through the body that God himself was able to express his love which otherwise would forever have remained in the realm of the mind, something he only had theoretical knowledge of but had never actually experienced. This may sound strange that God did not experience life until the creation of the material universe but nonetheless it is true, how could he have? Everything he knew before ‘the beginning’ was limited to the realm of the mind, as discussed in previous articles, God is immaterial intelligence, a mind without a body, therefore his knowledge, which is infinite had no avenue of becoming experiential knowledge without the bodily senses of touch, smell, taste, hearing, sight and any sensation that can only be gained through the body. In part 3, I used the example of a person learning how to skydive, before he actually jumps out of the plane he takes some classes on skydiving that gives him theoretical knowledge; he understands terms such as ‘free fall’, ‘parachute’, ‘wind speed’ etc. but this understanding is limited to the mind because it has not yet been experienced by the body. Theoretical knowledge may even induce some physical, bodily excitement but there is no possible way that the full pleasure of sky diving, of actually jumping out of the plane, of free falling, of feeling the wind on your face, of the experience of relief when the chute opens, of the feeling of tranquility as the person floats down to the earth, it is impossible that these sensations of pleasure, even of danger and excitement may be derived from mere mental comprehension of the theory of skydiving. So then is the BODY not an absolute necessity for the experiencing of life rather than just have mental knowledge of it? Now can you see why Jesus said, Hebrews 10:5 Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me.

The body of God, the house where God dwells cannot be a building made with stones, it has to be LIVING so that all the sensations of life may be experienced through this house. This house is the BODY of man, the beloved psalmist David asks this question in Psalm 8:4, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? Why would God’s mind be full of the thoughts of man? We daily hear stories of the beastly nature of man, his corruption, his greed, his insatiable appetite for evil to which all history is a witness, is this why God is always thinking of man, dwelling upon his evil? Boy, if that were really the case, God himself should have gone mental by now! No the reason why God’s mind is filled with the thoughts of man is because man is the living creature that was chosen to become the permanent dwelling place for God Almighty himself. Not all men mind you, but those from among mankind, both men and women, that God himself has chosen and predestined to become his living temples, houses in which he dwells and through whom he experiences the pleasures of life, and in this age all the pains that currently plague mankind. Now the question that arises is why this seemingly complex roundabout manner in which creation has progressed. In my Chronology of Creation radio series I discussed in some detail that there has been a rather lengthy process of creation that has been on going for ages that may well span millions and possibly billions of years. If God simply wanted a body for himself how difficult could it have been for him to make one for himself? After all he made Adam’s body out of the dust of the ground without any problems, without breaking a sweat we might say. The complexity arose not so much with the problem of making a body that God can do in the blink of an eye, the problem arose in the creation of the person that would in dwell this body. Adam’s body was formed first and then the person that inhabited that body, in the case of God’s body, the person that would inhabit that body is formed and molded first and then will come the imperishable body for that person to inhabit. So who is this person that will live in the body of God? The obvious answer is God, who else?

So all of the past ages of creation have propelled all creation towards the goal of begetting God offspring that would be identical to his person, the first such person in the Universe, the firstbegotten Son of God is Jesus Christ, identical in person and character to God which is what makes him God. The creation of Jesus Christ as the offspring of God had to follow a rather complex path involving pain and death. I emphasize that this process had to involve pain and death, why it had to be so will lead us to the understanding of why evil exists in our world, and in Universe, and why death exists. Furthermore we will understand that like the firstbegotten Son, all the other begotten sons of God too are birthed through pain and suffering much as a woman has to labor and suffer pain to give birth to a child. Once we can understand the role evil has played in this stranger than fiction yet true saga of creation, then we will understand how God gets pleasure from his creation, through his begotten sons in particular! God’s begotten offspring must needs have his character, must have HIS CONSCIENCE and it is the challenge of begetting sons with God’s own conscience that made the problem much more complex than the mere problem of creating a living organic body to dwell in.

We differentiate between BEGOTTEN SONS, starting with Jesus Christ, and LIVING SOULS, Adam and his offspring, as follows: Begotten sons are born of the seed or literally the sperm of God which is His Word, living souls are merely creatures that have life without any bearing to conscience. All living humans are living souls but all living humans are not BEGOTTEN SONS of God. If all God wanted were mere robotic living souls inhabiting his Cosmos, he could have gone to sleep at night and finished everything by morning, in his sleep! But if he wanted children, persons who think like he does, feel like he does, act like he does; in other words who are God kind not mankind or angel kind or any other kind of creature, then he had to find a way to firstly give them a conscience, and then to ensure that their conscience was a pure conscience like his own. Conscience is always defined by type; what I mean is that contrary to popular opinion, it is incorrect to state that person is GOOD merely because he or she has a conscience. No, whether the person is good or evil is determined by what type of conscience that person has, a good conscience or an evil conscience. A person with a good conscience has the knowledge of evil but his CHOICE OF ACTIONS IS GOOD; a person with an evil conscience has the knowledge of good but his CHOICE OF ACTIONS IS EVIL. All humans on this planet have, or have had an evil conscience, yup, people are not basically good; people are basically evil because their conscience is evil.

In part 5 of this series, I will explore in more detail the role of the CONSCIENCE in the begotten sons of God, and how God enjoys life, experiences love and derives pleasure through the bodies of his begotten sons. He derives little or no pleasure from his LIVING SOUL sons, Adam and his children; on the contrary they constantly grieve him at the heart. So what does Conscience have to do with The Why of Creation; why it has everything to do with it! I know this is a complex subject that needs to be studied slowly and carefully and therefore I will not rush it, I will continue this series for as many parts as it will take to give all readers a sound understanding of who they are, give them knowledge of who created them, and more importantly WHY did he create them?

Rev. 4:11 Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created. It is such a pleasure just to gain the understanding of how God gets pleasure from his children, his begotten children, that we who have been given the knowledge of this mystery should spend the rest of our lives in this body, beaming with joy, literally floating in the air with peace and contentment, infecting all around us with it, without so much as saying a word.

To be continued…

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