The universe is vast, mysterious, dark, and lovely. The images of the universe that we are the first privileged humans to see boggle the mind and provoke deep emotion.
The size and beauty of the cosmos compel us to ask questions of time and existence and meaning, some of which we cannot answer. The ones we can answer inspire us to know, experience, and see more of what we have not seen.
The universe is intelligent and beautiful and is created good but it’s not personal and “the Universe” is not a good or a proper way to name God.
The “Universe” does not love you, the “Universe” will not raise you from death, the “Universe” is not patient or kind and it does not hate evil or rejoice in the good.
The “Universe” has not suffered for you, does not bear you up and give you a living hope, and — our science understands this — the “Universe” is impermanent, at least by the laws of physics absent resurrection.
So the “Universe” has not given you life or breath or family or friends or love or made a day special, nor can it grant you sunsets or rainbows or roses, or rescue you from death and meaninglessness without the personal force of Love who has a better name and who has spoken the sun that sets into existence.
The “Universe” does not forgive.
Alfonso Cuaròn showed us in “Gravity” how hostile and cold a wilderness the vast majority of the universe is to carbon-based, oxygen-necessary life, even as in its vastness the cosmos was made to sustain life under what are rare and almost impossible circumstances in tiny isolated places like Earth.
The cosmos declares the glory of God in a grand poetic sense, and creation groans in its bondage to evil. We trust this scriptural voice, that a deep-down created goodness animates and resides in the fabric of space and time— from the microscopic to the intergalactic — but the universe is not personal.
And while the universe does not hate you, the universe cannot love you.
God is love and this love is made known in a baby human born of a teenaged mother and this baby and this mother suffer — a sword piercing them both — so that the universe might be restored to the permanence the One who made it intends.
Athanasius says that God wants to give permanence of existence to all that from the beginning he creates, wants to give us a share in his kind of never-ending life.
The cosmos is great and gorgeous and you might be tempted to deify it but it’s really dark and empty and meaningless without the tri-personal God whom John called Love and whom Mary named Jesus.
Christ is all. Christ holds all things — all microcosms and constellations — together.
Christ is light and life and in his flesh and in his suffering on the cross all things are made new and all things are sustained forever.
The “Universe” is his beloved creation but when you seek to honor or praise or name its maker and keeper — the one who holds you together, gives you all things, and excites joy in the deepest places of your heart — use the name above all names: Jesus Christ.
Postscript: The “universe” cannot rescue us from our common plight as humans, this darkness we are all walking through right now.
We are reminded by the present time that death is always there though often hidden from us in our rush, as we build our little impertinent kingdoms.
The enemy of God seeks to steal, kill and destroy us but Christ can rescue us — he always and everywhere only brings healing to humans, restores us to life — and Christ will rescue us.
So repent of everything in you that is not a participation in his love and return to God.
I agree on one level, and disagree on another. If God is in and through all things, then the Universe is personal and impersonal at the same time. Depends on the intent and symbol of the experiencer. Everything in the material world is a symbol for something else, a bigger reality. So then, if the Universe is the largest, most magnificent thing we can conceive in the material world, I don't see any harm in allowing it to be a symbol of the greater reality of the Unnameable, the Great Mystery, the All Encompassing. Any word is going to fall short, but for me, I can use the word Universe with a deep reverence and symbolic meaning.
Posted by: JULIE FERWERDA | April 11, 2020 at 06:43 PM