Human creativity is not real creation. As humans, we can change one something into another something. Whether we speak of the artist who turns paint and canvas into a masterpiece, or a builder who turns steel and glass into a skyscraper, we are talking about the manipulation of form, not the creation of new existence. Indeed, the First Law of Thermodynamics is that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed; they can only be changed into different forms.
Yet, if we believe that the universe has a beginning, we must say that God started by taking nothing and making it into something. In so doing, God did not just change the form of nothing. He overrode its very essence. The very definition of “nothing” is that it does not exist. By forcing nothing to be something, God made nothing be the very opposite of what it really is.
Now, when we form one something into another, it usually keeps the shape we put it in. A loaf of bread isn’t going to disassemble itself back into flour and water. A plastic cup isn’t going to revert to petroleum. Why? Because for flour and water to be bread, and for petroleum to be a plastic cup, is no imposition at all upon the essence of flour and water or petroleum. Their essence hasn’t changed, only their form.
When God turned nothing into something, He completely changed its essence. Every moment that nothing exists as a something is unnatural. Indeed, nothing would not even continue to be something unless it’s constantly being forced to do so, which is why we say that creation is necessarily an ongoing process.
At any rate, if you exist, then you are a something. But that’s only because God is creating you that way at this instant. Your essence is to be nothing. Or, should we say, your true and natural state is to have no existence of your own, and to exist only as He exists, within the totality and oneness of God.
If that’s the case, then it explains the mystery of why it can be painful just to exist.
When God turned nothing into something, He completely changed its essence. Every moment that nothing exists as a something is unnatural. Indeed, nothing would not even continue to be something unless it’s constantly being forced to do so, which is why we say that creation is necessarily an ongoing process.
At any rate, if you exist, then you are a something. But that’s only because God is creating you that way at this instant. Your essence is to be nothing. Or, should we say, your true and natural state is to have no existence of your own, and to exist only as He exists, within the totality and oneness of God.
If that’s the case, then it explains the mystery of why it can be painful just to exist.
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