But Relationship requires consciousness

But relationship requires consciousness

In the previous post the concept that God is Love led to considering relationship.

If Love is fundamental, then relationship must also be fundamental.

But that raises another question:

Can there be love without awareness?

A rock can affect another rock.

Particles can interact.

Gravity can bring galaxies together.

But is interaction the same thing as relationship?

For the kind of relationship we call love, there must surely be some capacity:

To be aware.

To know another.

To be known.

To respond.

All these are attributes of consciousness.

Perhaps, then, consciousness shouldn't appear near the end of our story of reality.

Perhaps it belongs much nearer the beginning.

Christianity already describes the ultimate reality – God - as conscious and relational.

God knows.

God loves.

God creates.

And Jesus speaks of relationship existing within God:

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.” - John 15:9

So perhaps God didn't create a completely unconscious material universe and then wait billions of years for matter eventually to produce consciousness.

Perhaps the starting point was already Conscious Love.

And perhaps creation involved something extraordinary:

Conscious Love bringing other centres of consciousness into existence with which genuine relationship could become possible.

That would turn our usual picture of reality around.

Instead of:

Matter
↓
Life
↓
Brains
↓
Consciousness
↓
Relationship
↓
Love

Perhaps we should at least consider:

Love
↓
Consciousness
↓
Relationship
↓
Creation
↓
Individual conscious existence

This isn't something science has established.

It is a philosophical and theological possibility.

But it raises a fascinating question:

What if you are conscious not because matter accidentally learned how to think,

But because consciousness was a fundamental part of creation from the beginning?

If consciousness and relationship belong near the beginning of reality rather than the end, an intriguing biblical statement takes on new significance:

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” - Jeremiah 1:5

What could it mean for God to know someone before they were physically formed?

It doesn't necessarily mean that we existed as conscious human beings somewhere before our birth.

There is another possibility.

Perhaps we existed first in the knowledge and love of god.

Before there was a physical you, there was God's knowledge of you.

Before you knew God, God knew you.

Paul expresses something similar when he says that God:

“chose us in him before the foundation of the world.” - Ephesians 1:4

Perhaps, then, our story doesn't really begin with the formation of our bodies.

It begins within the Conscious Love that is God.

Think about what that might mean.

If God is the fundamental reality,

and God is Conscious Love,

then perhaps creation involves Love bringing into existence genuinely distinct centres of consciousness - persons capable eventually of knowing, experiencing, choosing and loving.

Not fragments of God.

Not imaginary characters in God's mind.

But genuinely individual persons whose existence nevertheless comes entirely from God.

Jesus gives us a beautiful picture:

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

The branches are real.

They are distinguishable from one another.

Yet none of them is self-existent.

Every branch receives its life from the vine.

Perhaps something similar is true of us.

We become distinct conscious persons, while the ultimate source of our existence remains the Conscious Love from which we came.

And that produces an extraordinary reversal.

We usually imagine our story like this:

I came into existence
↓
I became conscious
↓
I experienced the world
↓
Perhaps I discovered God

But maybe the deeper story is:

God knew me
↓
God gave me existence
↓
I became a distinct conscious person
↓
I experience, learn and choose
↓
Eventually I become capable of knowing the one who has always known me

Paul writes:

“Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”
- 1 Corinthians 13:12

And where does that remarkable sentence appear?

In 1 Corinthians 13.  Paul's great chapter about love.

Perhaps our deepest story is therefore not the story of matter somehow discovering God.

It is the story of beings who were first known in love gradually becoming capable of knowing and returning that love.

And that leads to another question:

Why do we need a physical universe at all?

If God is conscious Love and God's purpose is relationship, why create bodies, matter, space and time?

Perhaps physical existence has a very particular purpose.

That is where we will go next.