Once upon a time, the Great Power, experiencing a profound sense of loneliness, realized that it had felt this way as long as it could remember (which was, of course, what we call eternity!) and that the reason it felt lonely was that nothing existed. The Great Power was beyond existence, all alone.
Suddenly, it thought to itself, “What’s stopping me from creating existence? How hard could it be?” It snapped its fingers. Its energy exploded. There was a very Big Bang. Energy started turning into matter and chaos abounded. The Great Power quickly created what we call gravity and order began to take form. As the Great Power looked around, it found, “Here a galaxy, there a galaxy, everywhere a galaxy”.
Still, it felt terribly alone. Matter simply whirled around, providing absolutely no companionship. Almost immediately (after what we call about 10 billion years!) the Great Power realized it had to create life. It focused its attention on one promising platform. It called this platform the universe because it was the first one it chose. It had a planet called Earth which had all the right characteristics to support life, so it created the very first life there. This was about 3.5 billion years ago.
The Great Power soon realized that to create the vast life forms it envisaged would be very onerous, one life form at a time. So, it decided to evolve myriad life forms, each from its predecessor. Things were looking up, but it felt kinship with not a single one of the life forms it created. It realized what was missing. It wanted its chosen life form to love it and become at one with it for eternity. It would have to pick one of the life forms and give it a mind to go with its heart. It called this life form human. Most importantly, if it wanted real love, it would have to give humans free will to choose to love it more than anyone else and everyone else as themselves. To teach them what it wanted, the Great Power made humans procreators so that as children, they would learn by loving their procreators more than anyone else and all their siblings as themselves.
However, in creating free will, it had opened what we call Pandora’s Box. Once again chaos reigned. Humans chose to kill each other in droves and to completely ignore the Great Power. Procreation had not taught them love. The Great Power realized it needed to teach them love directly, but silently, so its awesome omnipotence wouldn’t turn them into subservient puppets. But how?
It decided to simply put its teachings directly into humans’ minds. A few humans, who became known as prophets with names like Moses and Eljiah, suddenly discovered its teachings in their minds and started speaking its teachings to everyone they came across. Sadly, most humans never discovered the Great Power’s teachings in their own minds and so quickly discounted the prophets. The Great Power realized it had to speak to humans.
It knew that to speak to them without disclosing its awesomeness, it must come to them disguised as a man. It fathered a son (no great feat for it!) and the virgin mother, named Mary, called her son, Jesus. Jesus grew, taught and proved He was the Great Power by performing countless miracles. People were awed by the teachings and liked the miracles but refused to accept that He was the Great Power in disguise. Although a few got it, most discounted it.
It was time for drastic action. The Great Power allowed humans to kill Jesus and then resurrected Him to prove, once and for all, that Jesus was the Great Power and that His teaching – that we are to love the Great Power more than anyone and everyone else as ourselves - is the meaning of our lives.
To quote Paul Harvey, “And now for the rest of the story!”
Del H. Smith conducts research into life’s meaning and is the award-winning author of the AMAZON Best Seller, Discovering Life’s Purpose.