The prevailing scientific consensus about the origin of the universe is the likelihood of a few somewhat-differing takes on the "Big Bang." The notion obtainable by the layperson of the very first origin of the universe is the essentially unimaginable notion of a point-source of incredible energy. I am concerned here about only one aspect of this conceptuality, and I understand that the scientific community has not failed to consider this aspect. What I want to consider is the idea that a single, otherwise-indescribable, unimaginably small entity--essentially an "infinitely small" energy source--burst forth for some reason.
If it were only the bursting-forth of the Big Bang origin that was to be considered, then the notion of creation from nothing could be entertained, as indeed was the case in the middle of the last century, when magazine articles appeared with notions such as, "Have Scientists Found God?" Unfortunately (as I gather scientists have well considered) the bursting-forth of an unimaginable point-source is not in itself consonant with the beginning of the universe. A point otherwise undescribed and thought to be attended by an expansion otherwise undescribed would only be a "larger point," of perfect spherical aspect and perfectly even expression throughout all other dimensions. The expanding universe would only be an expanding manifestation of featureless dimensions--as much, in terms of "Creation," as no "Creation" at all.
Only differences and distinctions can make a universe, even if the first distinction were between two (or among more than two) infinitesimal particles. The particles must have come from the sundering of the original substance, and there can exist no axes of sundering more likely than any others unless the original substance had either latent fissures (giving it an original, more-than-point-like architecture) or the original substance were from the start subject to external influences (giving it a merely subsidiary status in a more comprehensive "original" universe.) This is why, as I understand, scientists will wonder what happened before the Big Bang.
So much for the Big Bang, as the popular magazines once tried to synonymize it with "Let there be light." But indeed, the Genesis "Let there be light" is also not the beginning of the universe from nothing. There was the dark, wild watery abyss--a physical description, no doubt, but a distinctly nebulous one. Only then was there light, and only then might things have been seen. Of course, just as an expanding point-source includes within its simple self no distinctions, so also does light in itself fail to make anything distinct. Light blinds. A photon excites a receptor. An ancient's torch hurt an ancient's eyes. Only by striking objects and by being gathered by observers do light rays "light" anything.
And the "Let there be light" was not, in abiding truth, the creation merely of light (which the human hand can make with a flint.) "Let there be light" was the institution of the phenomenon of light. The "making" of light was a succeeding process, and it proceeds still. So also does the forming of continents, the assembling of constellations, the speciation and adaptation and generation of living things. The notion of the origination of anything is a notion that escapes us, and it recedes by necessity (for persons who are so inclined) into the provinces of God alone.
The problem with awe at considerations of God's hegemony over Creation (the problem with us, that is) arises when we pretend there is cause to be amazed that the horizons of our thoughts must tip over into realms we must call divine. The universe is big, and we say that God must be bigger still. Of course, to call God "really big" is tinged with as much presumption as deference, and to call God "really, really big" is to issue forth merely an increment less presumption and an increment more deference, and so on with all possible "reallys." A human being can crouch before an unexplored mountain and say that God must live on the other side of the mountain, and a human being can sit in a tweed suit at a conference table and prate about how God must exceed any humanly-imaginable concepts.
Inevitably, one must conclude that the very word "concept" is thrust presumptuously by us into the thoughts of the mind of God--leading, also inevitably, to the realization that we have no warrant to sully our pictures of God with "thought" or "mind" or any other thing that must be as foolishness on our tongues. Our ability to entertain thoughts must face horizons near or far, and we are congratulating ourselves--and degrading God--by making so as to bemoan our intractable frustration at not being able to conceive of him. There is a gulf between us and God (in thought as in just about everything else) but that gulf does not reside afar off, as though it were at the doorstep of the eternity and infinity over which he presides.
We are not agonized over our inability to see God on the horizon. Where the horizon ends, so to speak, there is God. Our failing to grasp distances becomes one with our failing to grasp the hand, so to speak, of God that stretches out over all distances--and we manage to flick the dirt of our presumption and our impiety at that hand. Give us something that perplexes us, and we will say, "God." Give us something that frustrates us, and we will say, "God!" Give us something that we do not understand (or something to which we have not paid proper attention) and we will plug the hole with God. As our lives trail off into ineffectuality, so easily do they trail off into our expectation of the God-presence.
The gulf between us and God does not exist at the far boundaries of our thoughts. Jesus knew this. People will go to the next world. People will shed the constraints of physicality and become "like the angels." Of course they will. People in the next world will have abodes in which to do whatever people in the next world will do. If it were not so, Jesus would have said so. We can let our thoughts fall away and let the ineffable nature of God supply every need (or we can refuse to do so) but this is merely what is both logical and wholesome, and in addition it what constitutes God's end of the transit from us to the divine.
The gulf between God and us is at our end. We know that we must make the right choices, and we know that we must strive to do the right things. We know that we must make the right decisions, and yet we are afraid to make them. Unfortunately, we want to believe that we can proceed from a solid ground of basic assumptions and find our testing by God in whether we proceed through all requisite steps--and so now looms the fantasy of a religiosity that arches unbroken across the chasm to the divine. Whether this religiosity is active in terms of works or passive in terms of faith, the result is the same--futility. The prosaic reality (deny it though we might) of our inherent facility to see God at the horizons of our thoughts is now replaced by a feverish and doomed determination to institutionalize that vision by stretching out our rickety concepts toward it. And so we invent an entirely unnecessary gulf between us and God at his end.
The gulf lies at our end. We do not have to decide that we are surrounded by innumerable horizons in innumerable dimensions that make up the residence of the divine--we swim in such murky waters, and in them we spawn all the horrors of our lives and of our societies--horrors of tribalism and bigotry and conquest that spew forth God-talk like the drunkard's vomit. We have to decide, rather, to hear the voice of God in every sound and the sight of God in every glance. We have to decide what to do in this moment and in this place. For the Jesus-conceptuality of the divine, the great question is always the piece of bread, the cup of water, the kind word. We wake and we sleep. We are roused to action and we fall into torpor. We do not "make decisions" for great causes. Rather, for the greatness of God we make decisions always.
We decide, we decide, we decide. In our waking and in our sleeping and in our actions and in our collapsings we do what we have been able to make ourselves do, what we have decided to do. This is how we are faced by the gulf near at hand. The disconnect we have from the will of God resides closer to us than our fingertips, and the leapings we make toward that will occur in the recesses of our experience. We can think all we want, and then we act out of decisions we have made in stupors. We act reflexively in the stupor of a moment, and then we decide whether our act was right or not, whether to apologize or not, whether to make amends or not, whether to determine to practice doing the right momentary things, whether to avoid such scenarios altogether in the future. That is the kind of thing we really do, and we stumble and bump into each other as though in a stupor.
We sleep, and we wake, and we sleep, and then we are roused to do things for which we have gotten the energy and the determination we know not where. Or we are roused from a stupor and are chagrined at our own stupidity. Nonetheless, we do not make decisions without stupor as well as deliberation, and we engage in self-corrosive behavior if we pretend otherwise. Jesus put up with throngs (and even with hand-picked cohorts) who stumbled as though blind, and he dealt at length (unsurprisingly, as we come to understand) with how people must deal with themselves and each other after having committed misdeeds.
That is how life really works, and that is how salvation works. We can fall asleep drunk, or nursing grudges, or fixating on pleasures, or berating ourselves for misdeeds, and each of those choices has its perils. We fall into a stupor, and we dream in a stupor, and we wake in a stupor, and we know not what will befall us. In each of those moments, however, we might have our viewpoints reset, and our energies revived, and a new day's chances before us. More importantly, just as Jesus teaches us about forgiving and being forgiven, we can train ourselves about what in life we must remain awake for--both metaphorically and practically.
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