TITAN

“…In the beginning, there was nothing but God.”

He was alone. As the story goes, God was lonely. He was all things, but He could not be someone else. He desired someone to love and to love Him. With the spark of a divine whim, God ignited an explosion from which all things were created.

The Universe out of a point smaller than the head of a pin. Such is the power of God that when He triggers an explosion, there is birth and life, not destruction and death. Stars, planets, asteroids, comets, and all things developed from God’s desire to end His loneliness. Some think that God just said, “Zap!” and over the course of six days everything was made. While He could’ve done that, He didn’t.

For God, there is no time. It took billions of years for life to develop and God rested while it did. He set life in motion and creation took its course. Life needed to grow and adapt to survive. God knew that if life was static and unchanging there would be no purpose and nothing for His creations to achieve.

When God returned, He saw that life had flourished throughout the whole of His creation and on one small blue spec, the third spec from a young star, low creatures had become something more. God saw a life form that could think. But not just think—learn and decide. This life-form was still young and about as hairy as the life it grew from, but God recognized the gift of intelligence He had granted the “man” (as He would later settle upon calling it). Man could ponder, man could question, man could reason, and, most importantly to God, man could love.

God spoke to the man and named him Adam. You know all of this. It’s in your Bible and every Sunday school teacher can recite it from memory. What’s important to know is that for a time, God was sated by the man’s love. But before long, God realized that Adam was lonely as He had been. Adam had God’s love, but God was not like him and could not be an Earthly companion.

Whether God took one of Adam’s ribs or found another being like him, only female, is unimportant. A woman, Eve, joined Adam. God brought them together so they could love one another and He bound their love in His name. Through their love of one another, they gave thanks to God and loved Him more.

Life went on like that until God realized that something was missing. There was love, sure, but it was somehow wrong. He had company who loved Him for creating them, but that love had never really been tested. They loved Him “just because.” He loved His children, but He wanted to know the depth of their love. They had been made to love Him, but that isn’t real love. Love without choice isn’t love. God bestowed free will on his human creations, so they could choose to love Him.

But here is where some think that God made a bad decision. Free will is great, but with it comes to opportunity to choose wrong. At this early moment in creation, choices were pretty limited and it boiled down to God or… what? In giving humans free will, God created something terrible that was everything He was not. God created the potential for Evil when he granted us “choice.”

This Evil wasn’t just a red devil with a plastic pitchfork, but the true darkness that lives in the shadow of every human being’s heart. A black blacker than black, a hate so strong that it could take shape and breathe life amid the darkest shadows of the night, and a void of nothingness so complete that no human could comprehend its paradoxical existence let alone survive it.

God was perfectly aware of what He was doing. The possibility of Hell and all of its misery swallowing the universe was worth it to know freely-given love if only from just one person. Love made God whole in a way that man can never understand. He may be all-powerful and all-loving, but even God cannot love Himself as someone else can. And to return His love to the humans and all of creation was marvelous. The glory of giving and receiving love is worth the sacrifice of His existence.

Adam and Eve were free to choose each other or not, though options were limited. God told them they were open to all of the gifts of paradise except for one tree, which bore a ripe, succulent fruit. There were many other such trees, just not that one. That was the price of their free will: don’t eat the forbidden fruit.

The next part of the story has been told many times in many ways. Some say a nefarious creature, maybe a snake, tricked them into making the wrong choice. Or Adam and Eve were so drawn to the one tree they couldn’t have that they were incapable of resisting. But all that’s important to know is this: Adam and Eve chose to go against God. They did something He asked them not to do. In doing so, God never stopped loving them, but their free ride was over. God told them that life would be hard from then on. God would no longer provide them with food and shelter. Eve would suffer the pain of childbirth and Adam would have to till soil and hunt to eat and fight to survive. Adam and Eve then felt shame at their nakedness and mortified by what they’d done wanted desperately to make it up to God. They were driven from paradise to live their lives in service to God.

Unfortunately, and God knew this was the price of free will, the potential for Evil became a real presence the moment Adam and Eve chose against him. Their choice unleashed pure malevolence. Evil, which had been only a possibility, a concept, was now alive and scratching at the edges of creation trying to come inside. Evil set itself up in direct opposition to God—a dark balance to His divine light. It could command the shadows beneath rocks and trees where the light could not touch and whisper temptation in the hearts of all men.

In the beginning, the shadows were few. But as humans multiplied, so did the shadows. Every man and woman casts a shadow in the light. But for all the evil in the world, God will not intervene. To do so would be to rob Himself of the love He seeks. If God acts in man’s world, then man is not free. Mankind must choose to love Him and choose to reject the dark. God risks His own destruction to give and receive love. That is the extent of God’s love for man.

No, He would not intervene personally, but God roots for good. He wants humankind to make the right choices. Over time, as Evil grew stronger, it tempted man, frightened man, and destroyed man with ever magnifying powers and frightening monstrosities so God sewed tools for resisting and fighting the darkness into the fabric of creation. Some of these tools are but simple things like religion, reason, and logic. But to face the darkest of the dark, to face evil and win, God helped man discover, create, and master special tools and powers.

But as with all things, man must choose to use them.