The Creator and The Serpent – A Dialog At Creation
Creator: I am God the Father - the uncreated creator, the unmoved mover. The buck stops here. I will create the universe, and it will be true, good and beautiful, for I am love itself.
Serpent: And I am the great deceiver and divider. I will sew doubt and distort throughout what is true, good and beautiful. I will convince the world it is self-made – that they evolved from the Big Bang and some primordial ooze.
Creator: Something can’t come from nothing, right? They will recognize that the Big Bang has to have a Big Banger. I'll make the universe so large that they will be awestruck by its vastness and realize it couldn't have been an accident.
Serpent: I will tickle their pride and have them think they created the natural order rather than merely discovering it.
Creator: Then I will also make the building blocks of all creation so stubbornly small that it's almost impossible to see and/or predict where they'll be and yet they will come together in a periodic table that is as logical as it is mysterious in its order. I will make the earth and its atmospherics contingent upon so many different variables being nearly perfectly aligned that it's almost impossible to find another world that interdependent.
Serpent: Pffft. I will have them call it chance.
Creator: I will create millions of colors and will paint the skies each day with a symphony of art that changes from minute to minute. There will be various seasons and terrains with plants and animals uniquely designed for them, each playing a part in the well-being of the whole of the planet. They will know me by the staggering breadth and depth of my beauty.
Serpent: I will have them worship the creation without recognizing you as creator – like adoring the art without acknowledging the artist.
Creator: Speaking of art, my most wondrous creation will be the human being. I know each person that will ever live and will stitch them together in their mother’s womb. I will create them male and female in my image and likeness. I will give them their first breath, their last, and each one in between. I will make man and woman complementary of one another,h so that each brings unique positive qualities and attributes that combined will be greater than the sum of the parts.
Serpent: I can play them off one another and have them focus on their differences. I will have them compete rather than cooperate.
Creator: Each will in fact refine and enhance the other, and they will be unitive in ways that will even bring forth new life. They will be given dominion over the world, but will have to be good stewards. My handiwork and love for them will be embedded throughout the design of the natural order, but I will also reveal myself to certain people, to help them see the broader picture.
Serpent: They sound lovely, but flawed.
Creator: Interesting you say that. Each person will be like a raw diamond – inherently beautiful, yet in need of refinement, and each carrying a small flaw within. I will embed within in their hearts a strong inclination toward the true, the good and the beautiful, but with a tendency to defy those.
I will also send my son into the world to teach them that true love overarches and overcomes all, and that love is necessarily sacrificial, to the point where he will eventually die to forgive and redeem their shortcomings.
Serpent: I will isolate them, then paralyze them with fear and guilt about their misdeeds and convince them they are unworthy of love and forgiveness. And my crowning achievement will be to convince them that I don’t exist!
Creator: I will also send the Spirit of love into the world to strengthen, console, inspire, and guide them on the way to live. I will create and send humanity out as an act of love, to then love one another, and eventually return home to me and the heart of love forever. They will achieve enlightenment when they recognize this simple fact. I will give them a preponderance of evidence to believe in faith through reason, while also giving them the choice to accept that love or not.
Serpent: Father, Son and Spirit – that sounds confusing. Why not just you as God alone?
Creator: Love by its nature must involve two or more persons. If it were just me, I couldn’t be love, could I? I give perfect love to the son, who reciprocates with perfect love to me. And the Spirit is our perfect love sent out into the world as their advocate. We are one God in three persons so they can more fully recognize what perfect love looks like.
Serpent: These humans won’t choose evil over love on its own, so I will have to distort what is true, good and beautiful to make it appealing. Why are you even giving them a choice?
Creator: Free will is tricky, but essential, or else love wouldn’t be love. Love must be freely given and freely received, or else it is coercion. They would be robots and not human beings. A wise one among them will one day discover that if you truly love someone, you must set them free – free to choose to love you in return or choose to reject it.
Serpent: You realize that by requiring a leap of faith in accepting your love, you are going to lose some of them.
Creator: There will be some on the spectrum of humanity that will struggle with faith, but that’s where community finds its place. The majority will inherently sense me, and will help those that struggle to bridge the gap between the natural and the supernatural. And I will embed so many clues within nature that they will be able to reason their way to faith. For those with a heart open to an assent in faith, there will be plenty of evidence. To a heart closed, there will never be enough.
Serpent: I still can’t believe you’re giving these folks so much leeway. It seems like you’re giving them a lot of potential paths to their own destruction.
Creator: There will indeed be many ways to live and many paths they can take. There will be many that find threads of truth, but not the full garment of truth. But I will not stay isolated from my creation. I will send my son, Jesus Christ, into the world. He will be fully human yet fully divine. He won’t just show a way, a truth, and a life. He will show the way, the truth, and the life, in all its joy and fullness, so all may know and abide in that love.
Serpent: I see my trump card, and I can’t believe you’re giving me this. You’ll say you are love itself, but then allow evil and suffering to exist. I will even accuse you of causing it. You will seem arbitrary at best, and cruel and vindictive at worst.
Creator: Evil and suffering will be a difficult challenge for them, which is why it is essential they know that my love overarches all. It is under that umbrella that the rest will make sense. Just like they will have to exercise and stress their muscles to build physical strength, it is through the challenges of evil and suffering that they will build and galvanize spiritual strength.
If their earthly life were a needlepoint tapestry, they will see the messy back side in this world, full of strings and yarns haphazardly hanging about. But when they flip it over one day with me in Heaven, they will see the full, glorious picture, and how that all comes together in love.
Serpent: I will have them believe good and evil are at least equal forces, or better yet, that evil is overcoming good. I will get them to focus on the dark and the ugly.
Creator: I am the light of the world, and darkness will not overcome it. My Spirit will assure them that I hold them in the palm of my hand, that I am yoked side by side with them through good and bad, and that the death of my son will overcome all of their shortcomings - even death itself.
Truth and goodness will triumph over evil, and those that accept my love and forgiveness in faith will receive an eternal reward with me in Heaven. For eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and has not entered the human heart, what I have prepared for those who love me.
For in the end, true love wins.
(This discourse was inspired by C.S. Lewis’s book The Screwtape Letters)
Photo Credit - Haayiitlik-Lightning Serpent by Ray Sim Sr. More at blacktusk.ca