All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made.
If you are a Christian, then everything is created. This is much different than everything being an accident. A Mind stood at the start, created, looked, and said: “Good.”
That’s different than my looking at chaos that produced law-like regularity and finding goodness in it. The goodness I find is real, but not basic to the cosmos. If this is the way things are, then that’s as good as it can be, but it is not very good.
Chaos and chance are basic and death is the end. If this is true, then we should believe it, but nobody should wish it to be true. Of all the virtues, courage might be cultivated, but not justice, prudence, or temperance. We create meaning, Meaning does not create us. If the cosmos pushes us too hard, then our meaning collapses in a pile of self-doubt and nonsense. It is hard enough to have hope when hope is fundamental, impossible when hope is something we trick ourselves into seeing.
Shakespeare had it right in Hamlet: there is a God or we are wormfood and if wormfood, then even a moment’s reflection leads to despair. Behind every Internet atheist is either thoughtlessness or despairing nights.
Saint John does not focus on the error, but the truth. All things were made by the Baby in Bethlehem. The Creator has become a creature and the synthesis is dynamic. Logic is flesh. Mathematic rigor cries for milk. The Ideal is joined with the material.
God help us, this is glorious.
This is the Second Day of Christmas, the first chance to catch our breath in the glory, and see what is happening. The Creator is in a manger. The God who said “Let there be. . .” let Himself be made by a mother, the mother of God.
This is glorious.
Stop.
The revelation says that nothing that is does not share in His being. We are broken, twisted, wrecked, but still, at the most fundamental level, we are creations. God made us. If you are human, then you are in God’s image. Nothing can cause this to be untrue, because being, just existing, means God is in us. We are God’s children, because we are.
If we say: “But what of . . .”
God says: “If you exist then you exist only because I sustain you. You are mine.”
Nothing is unimportant. The entire cosmos is valuable which is why the traditional Christian loves nature and conserves all she can. We see what God has done and say with God: “This is good.” We do not dare use up what God has made or break what He has done.
Christmas is a reminder that creation is still God’s creation, good enough that God can be born a meat-man. Matter is not evil. Spirits are not all good. Creation is God’s and He is alive and well on planet Earth.
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A Christmas series on John 1: 1-14 (Links will not be active until the piece is published. All active by January 5, 2019).
Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.
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