Whatsamatta, 17th, you not happy with the Genesis account? You've asked this on the Christianity forum, so my guess is you'd like to see what kind of answers Christians provide?
Something a friend said to me in an email recently fairly well encapsulates both his understanding, and mine ...
neither of us being Christians in any conventional sense of the word, yet perhaps both of us conditionally so in an esoteric or mystical one:
so the first sentence of the Bible is generally given to us as: In the beginning, god created the heavens and earth. But, the closer rendering is more like: The head of meditating spirits separated the upper and lower heavens. There is obviously no "beginning" for something which happened in boundless time, and no god creating anything.
So part of this, and the part which I think is most important, emphasizes that
even our concept of TIME- or rather, TIME Itself - emanates from, is
created by, the being Christians call God. This makes God the source, of all matter, all time, all thought ... which from our point of view, means that God is truly the
ARCHITECT of all that we know of as "Reality."
William Blake, both in his poetry and in his artwork, tries to convey a sense of this ... especially in the painting
`Ancient of Days.' There is something
Glorius, to me, about this simple - yet stirring - painting. It is as if the colors yellow-orange, with hints of a deeper red, all speak to us on some primal, basic level (help,
chakraman, I think you could say something here about our first three chakras
).
By no mistake, or coincidence, did Blake choose the SUN for that background, against which the
Father, Creator-God extends His hands to
define, or set up, the physical Universe. Here, we might get the idea of the
dividing of the Heavens from the Earth, in a more abstract, symbolic sense ... which is surely what Genesis 1:1 is indicating (and what my friend is referring to in the email).
Yet all this is going on
in front of the Sun, and the presence of the clouds only helps unmistakably
to contrast the darkness of space, from the
creative power(s) of LIGHT ... which are at work here. We might imagine the
Ancient of Days as coming forth from behind - or within - the Sun (as the Hindu prayer,
the Gayatri suggests).
From our limited, or
Sun-illuminated world point of view, it is thus from within darkness that we originate, as well as
to darkness that we return. And science, it would seem, concurs!
God, as well as our every
conception of God, we ourselves, and the entirety of
Kosmos, can safely be said to proceed
from an unknown IS ... and just as surely, it will all
return there. Yet
space itself, the "here and there," is part of God's Creation.
The fudge factor here, is
where and how do we allow for the breakdown of human conceptuality ... and realize, or
accept, that NONE OF US really knows?
"The Bible says" is one thing, and
such-and-such a great sage once taught, is of course, just more of the same. Our most sacred, revelatory spiritual experiences, though of
immeasurable importance for us ... actually tell us *nothing* about
what ultimately lies beyond the veil.
For the sake of sanity and simplicity, we can say,
God is Love, and I think this is a
failsafe. It is a touchstone, and a transformative truth all by itself.
And while God is also Will, as well as Creative Intelligence, a
Trinity, Three in One, I don't think there is actually an answer to the question,
Who made God.
~~~~
Hmmm, now that I see Thomas has posted, you can just scratch most of the above. He has already essentially said this - much clearer, much cleaner. TIME is part of God's Creation. You cannot ask,
Who or what made God, because this avoids the most obvious answer of all:
GOD JUST IS
(Always has been, IS NOW, and Always will be)
What we can ask, in the context of Christianity, is
how did our understanding evolve and develop ... throughout the ages. Assume that God has both desired, and
gone about ensuring a relationship with His Creation (all aspects thereof) since the very
dawn of time. THEN we can address this question in some form or fashion.
Personally, I resist the
boxes (of any number of dimensions or proportions) which we try and
fit around the word, or concept,
G-D. Notice, even the Kabbalistic concept of
YHWH, the Tetragrammaton, or
"name of God," is not meant to be an outright NAME, in the sense of
Bill, or
Pete, or
Ted. Otherwise, let's all just worship the almighty _
Insert_Name_Here_ and be done with it!
Perphaps the question can be asked another way:
Why is there something rather than nothing?
~Zag
