Hill Country News Faith Roundtable Article 2016-05-25
By Chuck Robison
All of us wrestle with the Big 5 Questions most of our lives. They are: 1. Who are we? 2. Where did we come from? 3. Why are we here? 4. Where are we going? and, 5. What time is it?
Every society, religion, and civilization has its own creation story, each designed to make sense as an answer to question 2. There is no need to seek the literal truth of our own Judeo, Muslim, Christian creation story. It is all made up. There was never a Garden of Eden, we never fell from anywhere and the entire history of mankind, going back at least a million years, has been about evolving out of the primordial muck and into the less than perfect beings we are today.
However, the creation story that we Jews and we Christians and we Muslims share has very specific powerful value, especially in today’s world. We three are religious cousins and our fights and squabbles are put into perspective when we read the first sentence of our common creation story:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
The message is very clear. We did not create this. We had nothing to do with this creation. Our Universe can be described as a Great Thought, which God had in a moment, and we are but the result. All artists can determine how their art is expressed, used and by whom. God created all of this, including each of us, and He can determine how He wants to use us.
Asking this Roundtable’s question tempts us to buy into the confounding resurgence of American Anti-Intellectualism. All of sudden, it is very common to hear Americans deny science, history, and even humanity’s great intellectual achievements to focus instead on “stories” that are supposed to make us feel better. We now casually deny science and common sense when we proudly proclaim “there is no environmental crisis. Even if there is, man did not cause it.” However, the very God, the higher Divine Mind behind all of this, will not allow us to get away with this “story” much longer.
We do well to study just the first sentence of our Creation Story until the day comes when we fully understand that we are the creatures and God is the creator. He made the rules and He decides the outcome. And this part is not a made up story, it is the law.
Recent Comments