Tag Archives: Creator

What I Believe: Cosmology

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My form of the cosmological argument for the existence of God would be as follows.

The universe did not exist and then came into existence but not in its present form. It came as a complex amalgamation of energy, space and time governed by rules governing its development, including those for entities that did not yet exist.

The universe is teleological. It was created to become what it is and to serve as a platform for what has occurred. To do these things it neither needed to be infinite as space or eternal in time to accomplish what was intended for it.

Due  to the immense complexity and, if you will still existing mystery concerning the universe, nothing in space, time, energy, matter and the laws governing these things is sufficient in itself to explain the existence of the universe.

Therefore, the existence of the universe requires a Creator who must have an existence outside the universe, though not excluded from acting on it and in it, the ability to foresee and direct what it is to become, and when it will end, and the power to make it happen.

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What I Believe: Christian Maturity

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Immature Christians are sometimes described as being like babies who are not yet weaned and thus unable to feed on the solid food of Christ’s teaching. So what are we to about this situation? I believe we can expect our spiritual maturing to proceed as our physical maturing did. That is, it moved sometimes slowly and sometimes rapidly over a considerable time period. Nonetheless, our body had a plan for what the finished result would be.

I think I have taken the eating and physical growth metaphor as far as it will go as there is no end in this life for our need to continue maturing in Christ. There also seems to be no end to suggestions as to how Christians are to mature, many of them involving events and/or products.

To get anywhere with God in any attribute, I believe, we need to put our Creator in charge. After all, he made each of us unique and only he knows what he has in mind for each of us. There is an old joke that goes “The trouble with living sacrifices is that they keep crawling off the altar.” However, this witticism may bring us close to the problem of maturing. Most of us may prefer doing something rather than being something, such as a willing servant of our Lord. Yet we will only become more mature as we allow ourselves to be made more and more in the image of Jesus.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians that “[T]his slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17 RSV). We may find rather more than slight affliction is required as we take on the weight of eternal glory but in the end I am sure we will think it worth it.

Let Us Give Thanks

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I think we should first give thanks to the people at Automattic who give us the means to blog, and thus be in contact with many interesting people with intriguing ideas. Then we should thank the people that created and maintain the World Wide Web. Next in our thoughts should be all the inventors, designers, builders, and operators of all the electronic gear we have access to that, in general, enriches our lives.

We might have ideas but to express them we need to have had an education. So next our thanks should go to the people who gave us our education, and beyond that we should be thankful for the people who gave our teachers the resources they used. In addition to those who taught us, we should be thankful for all the people who have been good influences in our lives. Hopefully, these will include the people who raised us and took care of us when we could not do it ourselves. This brings us to think of the healthcare people, and there are a vast number of them, who have perhaps preserved our lives, or at least made them more comfortable.

Let us be thankful for weather-tight dwellings and the utilities, electricity, water, sewage, and gas that provide light (power for electronics), heating and cooling, and hot and cold water. There are thousands, if not millions, of people we have to thank for all these things. We can be thankful also for the people who have provided us with the transportation we use, additional millions.

Clothing we have available in almost overwhelming abundance. For what we have to put on our bodies, we should be thankful.

Most Americans will have food to be thankful for at a Thanksgiving meal. This food did not just appear at a supermarket or restaurant, although sometimes it seems so. Even if it did, we would have thousands of people to thank for the last link in providing our meals. Needless to say, the additional people we should thank go back all the way to the first farmers and livestock raisers.

We should be thankful for the governments that provide us the peace and safety we need to enjoy our Thanksgiving. Let us remember the people who founded this country, and those since who worked, and sometimes gave their lives, for the good of our nation.

We should also thank our Creator, who both gave us life and the means to enjoy it. May all of us be truly thankful for the immense gifts we have been given.