He has made everything beautiful in
its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom
what God has done from beginning to end. –Ecclesiastes 3: 11
As I was narrating the Adam and Eve creation event from the
book of Genesis, one of my friends once asked me, “Well Pastor, Why did God
create us in the first place? Isn’t it fair to think that all these problems
that we face today started as a result of one small decision of God, the
decision to create mankind?” For the time being I chose to answer the question
with a counter question, “If God did not create mankind would you or I be there
to ask this question? If not, then what is the point in asking it?” All of us
laughed the question off, considering it to be a silly one. However, at the
back of my mind, I knew that I had to answer one of the fundamental questions a
skeptic would ask about creation, “After all, why did God choose to create
mankind?” I did not want to limit my search to human creation so I decided to
dig deeper. As a result, I decided to begin my research with this question,
“What prompted God to create everything?”
As always, I reverted to the Bible to find God’s perspective
on this matter. I began by reading the first chapter of the book of Genesis,
the one that presents the creation account. After two unfruitful attempts of
reading in order to understand God’s mind about creation, a word caught my
attention. I noticed that God said it was “Good” after every act of creation.
Why did God say this each time he created anything? Perhaps, this implies that
God created everything because he thought it was good to create. In other
words, God who had a choice before him, either to create or to refrain from the
act of creation chose to create because he thought it was good to create.
However, a skeptic may ask, why did God choose to do something good? Why didn’t
he do something evil? Elsewhere, in the Bible we read that the word Good
defines God’s character. How could a good God choose to create something evil?
Certainly, He made this choice because it defined His own character.
The word Good defines God’s character according to the
Bible. In Psalm 100: 5 the psalmist says, "For the Lord is good and His love endures forever; His faithfulness continues through all generations." God created everything as good because He
himself is good. Some people think that God created everything because he
needed something or someone to acknowledge His goodness but the Genesis account
clearly states that God didn’t do it in order to please anyone else rather he
did it in order to please himself which is evident from the statement, “God saw
all that he had made, and it was very good.” Note that none except God himself
acknowledged his act of creation to be good.
Still we may ask, “God created everything good. He created
human beings as good as well. Then, why did this good God allow mankind to fall
in the trap of the evil Satan? Why did he allow Adam and Eve to rebel?” I have
answered this question effectively in the next chapter titled, “Is God a
Sadist?” However, I feel obliged to state the key points here as well.
In order to make this argument look stronger we may add the
following questions as well, “If God knew that the angel was fallen and would
become the cause of sufferings for mankind, then why didn’t He punish the evil
Satan then and there? Why is he still waiting for the end of the age? If God
knew that Lucifer would become a source of sufferings to mankind, then why did
He allow this devil to enter the garden in order to tempt mankind? And why did
He move away at the crucial time to allow the Satan a free access? Moreover,
why did He plant that dreaded tree in the center of the garden and why did He
create man with an ability to hear Satan’s voice and an ability to make his own
choice?” The answer for all these questions is, “because of Love”, the
quintessential characteristic of our God which makes him different from every
other creature.
If we examine these questions from God’s perspective we
will find that he had two options before creating mankind. He could either
create them with a free-will or without it. Which do you think is the option
that a good and loving God would choose? We all know that Love is self-less,
and it compels a person to take risks and make sacrifices. Therefore, a good
and loving God would certainly choose to create mankind with a free-will rather
than without it. And, as we all know it’s the freewill that gave man the
ability to make his own choice.
Then, why did he plant the tree, permit Satan to enter the
garden and move away from the garden at the crucial time? We all know that a
skill is pointless and ability useless if we don’t have the circumstances to
use it. For example, learning English would be meaningless if we live (and plan
to live) in a society where no one else will ever speak this language.
Similarly, a free-will would be of no use if there were no circumstances to use
it. Therefore, God planted the tree, permitted Satan to enter the garden and
moved away from the garden at the crucial time in order to create circumstances
for man to use that free-will. We all know the rest of the story. Mankind used
the free-will to rebel against God for its own destruction. God in His
righteousness was forced to curse and punish mankind whom he loved, because of
their sin. But even in this curse our good and loving God had concealed a
promise to redeem mankind from eternal sufferings and the consequences of their
sin. Certainly, this proves that God who had to make a choice either to be good
and loving before the act of creation or to try to show himself good by
preventing man from using his freewill after the act of creation, chose to show
His goodness and love towards mankind in the beginning itself and this choice
allowed man to rebel against Him.
Lately, one of my cousins asked me, “Why did God create man
in flesh? If man was a spirit being alone (that is, without a physical body) then
he may not have fallen in devil’s trap that worked through the lust of eyes,
the lust of flesh and the pride of life, all of which are essentially the
qualities of the body and not of the spirit?” I found this question interesting
at first but then we all are aware of the fact that it’s the spirit being who
took the decision to commit sin and the flesh just followed the course.
Even then, one might ask, why did God create physical
bodies for human-beings? In the creation account, the Bible says that when God
crated man He said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let
them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the
livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the
ground." I believe that every spiritual living being that was created by
God before this event should have heard this exclusive statement that would
make mankind greater than every other creation in every way.
In Psalm 8 the psalmist says, “You have made human beings a
little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made
them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their
feet: all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds
in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.”
But just before making this statement about mankind he says, “When I consider
your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have
set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that
you care for them?” The reason why he cares for us even though we are little
when compared to his great creation is that he has made us in His own image and
likeness with utmost care and attention. God did create man’s spirit in his own
image and likeness with great care and affection, but then why did he give us
physical bodies?
Quite often we wonder whether our physical bodies act as a
hindrance to the expression of our love for others but on the contrary from
God’s perspective a physical body is the best way to express one’s love for
another. God, who sought many ways to show his love towards mankind through
direct encounters, signs, wonders and miracles failed to convince them of his
affection towards them throughout the Old Testament period. However, in his
final attempt to reclaim his creation he chose to take on human nature and that
too as a helpless child of a Hebrew maid. In the words of William How, an
Anglican Minister of the 19th century who wrote over fifty hymns,
“Who is
this so weak and helpless, Child of lowly Hebrew maid,
Rudely in
a stable sheltered, coldly in a manger laid?
‘Tis the
Lord of all creation, who this wondrous path hath trod;
He is God
from everlasting, and to everlasting God.”
One might ask, what was so special about the human
experiment of the Everlasting One in a physical body? I would like to say, it
was only in this physical body that He could ever express His unconditional love for mankind. For once He
said, “There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends.”
And, only in this weak physical body could he, the Life of all that is living,
express this great love towards mankind through death. As we all know, a
spirit-being can never die except through sin; and that death too is understood
in a different sense as being a kind of separation from the Holy One. So how
could God who is a Holy, Righteous spirit-being express his love by dying for
mankind? There was only one way, “the human experiment”.
So, if a physical body could be useful for God in order to
communicate his great love for mankind by dying on a cross how much more should
it serve us as a means of effective communication. If we see things from God’s
perspective then we should conclude that a physical body was in fact a blessing
rather than a curse. If human beings had used the physical bodies wisely I am
compelled to think that they were in fact more privileged than perhaps God
himself who did not use a physical body until that time. But, human beings
being led by the devil used it to rebel against God and are now paying the
price for their wrong doings. So is it sensible to blame our physical bodies
for our rebellion? No! Our bodies are a gift from God. He created everything
and also gave human beings physical bodies because he is good and loving.
Written By: Dr. Manoj
Kumar Khatore,
Copyright © 2012 Dr.
Manoj Kumar Khatore
http://shalomchristianministry.org/
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