On the island of Patmos:
A man named John lives in exile on an island. To John, the world is large and the future unknown. He has barely any understanding of the solar system, much less the universe. Time is a finite line with an impending end. What he doesn't know, however, is that God has been wanting to show him wonders. To God, the universe is but a drop of water in the ocean of His consciousness. Our concept of the ten dimensions are the first few pages of a book in a library of libraries constructed, filled, and kept by God. Time is a massive web of infinite possibility yet nothing more than a cat's cradle in God's hands. He looks at John with the knowledge of everything to come and everything after. He knows full well that John would never be able to comprehend a fraction of what He could show him, much less communicate it to others. So what does He do? He takes John onto His lap and tells him a story. One that he can understand with a beginning and an end. One full of wonder and imagery that he can not only see but describe well enough to write down. And the story begins "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice..."
Not far from the mountains of Ararat in what will become Caanan:
An old man squints down at the young boy in front of him. The boy doesn't know it yet, but he will one day build the city of Babel and expand a civilization across Assyria. At the moment, however, he is only interested in one thing: obtaining information. Gazing up at the towering old figure before him, he says "Please, great grandpa? Just for a little while? Dad says you're the only one who remembers all of it." Maintaining his stoic pose, Noah replies "Oh he said that, did he? Maybe he should have listened to his father more, just like his father should have listened more to me!" He leans over the boy ominously. Undaunted, the boy responds "Well, I'M listening to you right now." The old man's gruff expression slowly cracks into a wry smile. "Well, I guess the third time's the charm, Nimrod. Come over here." As Noah begins to sit down, his mind fills with the wonders that he has seen. He remembers the immense amount of time, energy, and research that went into the vessel he was charged with building all those years ago. He recalls the months of planning and years of execution; all the times he felt God directing him to the right materials, to the right processes. Then he looks down at his great grandson and thinks about the story that he will tell his children someday. What is important? What needs to be said? What needs to be remembered? He takes the boy onto his lap and begins "This is the account of Noah and his family...
In the Garden of Eden:
The first man and his creator are walking in the garden at dusk. The beauty of the sunset still on his mind, Adam turns to God and asks "How did you do it? How did you make everything? How did I get here?" God smiles, knowing that the answers to these questions would surely overwhelm his new creation. Some of the mysteries that this tiny being is seeking will still be evading his descendants' grasp thousands of years in the future. Yet God has no intention of hiding anything from him; this universe is for man to explore and wonder at, giving glory back to Him because if it. And despite his creation's lack of comprehension, God still has lessons to teach them through His actions, even if they never fully understand the actions themselves. He also knows that his new innocent, curious man will someday be a corrupt, skeptical man. One who lives in the deepest cocoon of denial, wrapped in layer upon layer of rationalization. No matter how much He could tell him, man will always demand more. God knows that He will continue to convey His lessons, both simple and complex, and man will continue to fall prey to his own primitive wits, confounded by logic puzzles invented by his own limited imagination. Man will be distracted by the mystic, the skeptic, and the scoffer, all the while blinding himself to the truth that God is trying to reveal. What to tell Adam, then? What can he understand? What is important for him to know? No need to lie or make up a fairy tale. All that needs to be done is to tell him everything that he can handle and everything that is his to know and for the reasons he should know it in the ways he will understand it. So God takes Adam onto His lap and says "I will tell you a story: in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth...and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters...then God said "let the land produce vegetation...let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth...let the land produce living creatures...then the Lord formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living being...then God made woman from the rib he had taken out of man..."
Epilogue
God does not give us all that there is, nor even all that we ask for. He gives us what we need of what is ours to have. This applies to knowledge as well as resources. How will the apocalypse unfold? Perhaps we know as much as we were ever supposed to on the subject. To understand why the end is coming is the motivation that permeates every line of Revelation. How did Noah build an ark? How did he house and feed thousands of animals for over a year? Perhaps it not as much ours to know how nearly as much as why. How did God create the universe? Some would say that He didn't; that the entirety of existence as we know it is the result of blind chance and unseen, undiscovered natural forces. Others insist on treating the opening two chapters of Genesis as a scientific report; they assert that the context implies that this is not a figurative account and meant to be taken as truth and create what they consider to be scientific theories from them. If the details concerning this matter were so empirically important, why doesn't the narrative mention even simplest of details, like how big the garden was, how many animals there were, and how many years Adam lived there? If God had wanted the Bible to teach us more on these subjects, He could have been more specific. He wasn't. Does that mean we should not seek the answers out? Certainly not. I think that this kind of thinking has led to isolationist theology in which the Bible becomes all there is and there is no need to learn about anything else. Galileo once quoted a theologian who stated it perfectly; that it is the purpose of the Bible to tell how a man goes to heaven, not tell man how heaven goes. I could go on forever on that subject but that's for a different time. For now, I'll leave you with this: while perceptions about how we were created may change over the centuries, what should never change to us is why.
