69: The deep meaning of Creation 1/..

By « deep meaning » I frankly think of the “mystical”, “spiritual” meaning. 

You might be surprised, but Philosophy doesn’t address the act of creation itself. Why? Because it supposes a "Creator" and a knowledge about this Creator. And this requires the grace of “faith”, i.e. a superior Light.

So if we really want to understand "Creation", "Nature", all what is created, including ourselves as creatures, we need to accept to make a leap of faith.

Paradoxically, we can touch with our hands all the created things, but we can’t touch with the same hands the Creator. The Creator is certainly bigger and much more beautiful than his Creation, therefore, we need something bigger than our hands to grasp Him. By definition, He transcends his creation, He is of a different nature.

In this post I am not dealing with « proving » that a Creator exists… It is about trying to discover the meaning of Creation.

For that, we have two classical questions :

1- « why are we created ? » and 2- « what is the goal of the Creation of this world ? »

And we have two classical answers that go like that:

1- We are created by God, out His of love for us, we are created in order to know Him and Love Him (and be known and loved by Him).

2- The rest of Creation is there to help us fulfil that Goal (know Him and love Him).

The human being is created "by God" and "for God". You might object: "this is too selfish from God’s part". Well the human being is created “at the Image and at the resemblance of God”, capable of entering in a personal relationship with God. He is created free, as God is free. Free even to say “yes” or “no” to God Himself. In fact, you can only love if you are free. You can’t be forced to love. It has to come from you, not from outside of you.

How the human being is created?

Before Creation (don’t ask me right now “when did it happen?”) we were – as a thought, as a project, as a dream – in God's Mind, in His Thought. We were imagined as sharing His Life, His Love, breathing from the same very “Life” of God.

He Created us according to His Thought, according to what he foresaw and dreamt about us.

Many people think wrongly that the story of “Creation” as it is told in the Book of Genesis (Gn 1-3) is a bit out-dated. I do not share that opinion. For people who want to gather scientific information about planet earth, the Milky-way galaxy, etc., they did open the wrong book. But, for people who are trying to understand "who is God" and "who is the Human being", and "what is the purpose of life", the stories you find in the Bible, especially in first chapters of Genesis, are simply a Golden Mine.

Creation of Eve

For instance, the « days » of Creation are not “days” (we can’t have “days” before having the “sun”), but they still describe the formation of the Human being, who is the highest point on earth, the meeting point between earth and heaven. Man is at the meeting point of two triangles, one from below pointing upwards and one from above pointing downward.

Man is the achievement of the visible Creation, the point where it is aiming, he summarises in himself all Creation, he has in himself all aspects of the visible Creation: water (mineral), vegetation (vegetal), and animal. But he goes further and transcends them.

The Jewish mystical tradition always considered the first chapters of Genesis as being very deep and kept their explanation for people after 40 years old, since they enclose a deep mystical meaning. “mystical” in the sense that it discloses many aspects of the meaning of who is the human being, and who is he in relation to God, and to the intimate relationship with God.

(to be continued)