Why create a Physical Universe?

Why create a physical universe?

So far we have been exploring a possibility.

What if the fundamental reality isn't matter -

but Conscious Love?

If God is Love, and love requires relationship, perhaps consciousness belongs near the beginning of the story rather than appearing towards the end.

But that immediately raises a huge question:

Why create a physical universe at all?

Why matter?

Why space and time?

Why stars and planets?

Why physical bodies?

Perhaps the physical universe has a very particular purpose.

Perhaps it makes otherness possible.

Imagine that the only reality is infinite divine consciousness.

God knows everything.

God contains everything.

But if God desires genuine relationship with created beings, those beings must somehow become genuinely distinct.

There must be a you who is not simply God.

And there must be a me who is not you.

Perhaps physical existence provides the environment in which this distinction can develop.

A body gives me a location.

A brain gives me an individual perspective.

Space separates me from you.

Time gives my life a history.

Memory connects my experiences.

The physical world gives us a shared reality in which our choices can affect one another.

And those boundaries make something extraordinary possible:

relationship between genuinely distinct persons.

Perhaps, then, the physical universe isn't primarily a machine that accidentally produced consciousness.

Perhaps it is an environment in which consciousness can become individual.

And individuality makes genuine relationship possible.

But genuine relationship requires something else.

Freedom.

If I have no possibility of responding differently, my response isn't fully my own.

Love cannot simply be programmed.

It must be given.

So perhaps creation involves an extraordinary progression:

Conscious Love
↓
The desire for relationship
↓
A physical universe
↓
Created consciousness
↓
Individuality
↓
Experience
↓
Freedom
↓
The possibility of freely returned love

That would give physical existence an extraordinary significance.

The universe isn't something separating us from God.

It could be the means through which God allows us to become genuinely ourselves.

And perhaps that helps us understand Jesus' remarkable image:

“I am the vine; you are the branches.” -  John 15:5

A branch isn't the vine.

It has its own existence, its own position and its own growth.

Yet it never becomes independent of the source from which its life comes.

Perhaps we are something like that.

Genuinely distinct -

but never ultimately disconnected from the Conscious Love that gives us existence.

And there is another significant consequence.

If physical existence gives us genuine individuality and freedom, then it also creates the possibility that we will use that freedom badly.

We can love.

But we can also refuse love.

We can cooperate.

But we can also dominate.

We can nurture relationships.

But we can also destroy them.

Perhaps that begins to explain something that has troubled humanity for thousands of years:

If the foundation of reality is love, why is there so much evil?

Perhaps evil isn't something God created at all.

Perhaps it becomes possible when genuinely free beings, created for relationship, use their freedom in ways that damage relationship.

That is the question we will explore next.