Cheon Seong Gyeong: Episode 14

Cheon Seong Gyeong Book 1: God
Chapter 3: God the Creator
Section 1: God's Work of Creation, 1-16

(1) Heaven and earth did not simply originate from matter, nor did they emerge spontaneously or by chance. God, the Creator, exists. He is the first cause of the cosmos. He is absolute, eternal, unchanging and good. He made all things in the universe according to His purpose of creation, His basic design. God is the origin of heart and emotion, and His purpose is to create joy. However, one cannot feel joy alone. In order for a subject partner to feel joy, an object partner is absolutely necessary. The greatest joy comes from the exchange of love between subject and object partners.

(2) Heaven and earth originated from the Will of the One.  Because God, our Heavenly Parent, exists, the created world came into existence.  God, the Parent of heaven and earth, is the central Being.  That is why God is one with all beings of this world, and why God and I are one, not two.  God desires, on one hand, to come down to earth from above along a vertical line, in order to stand at the center.  On the other hand, He desires to connect everything on the horizontal plane with that center.

(3) In the beginning, when God created heaven and earth, He had a design for the cosmos, an ideal and a purpose for it.  Through it, He wanted His creation to correspond to His own internal standard so that He could relate to it forever.  The center of it all was God's heart of love.  The origin of the cosmos was God Himself, and it was God's heart that provided the original impulse that set in motion the phenomena of creation.  From that heart of love springs the ideal realm where all things come into oneness.

God's plan for creation

(4) Adam and Eve are God's body.  They are God's visible body and they are in the position of the visible God.  God is the originator of energy; He cannot he seen even in the spirit world.  He has no form.  Hence, in order to guide and govern the physical world, He has to assume an external, physical form.  If, instead of falling, Adam and Eve had reached perfection while living on earth then gone on to the heavenly world, they would have become the visible form of God.  The invisible God and visible Adam and Eve would have been one.  Then, since Adam and Five's laughter would have been God's laughter, it would have been the laughter of heaven and earth.  God created this world so that He, who is incorporeal, could emerge on earth in substance.  In other words, this world was created so that the incorporeal God could emerge as the substantial God.

(5) God is the womb of human beings and the nucleus of all things in the universe.  Then why did God, the nucleus of all things, have to create the heavens and the earth? It is because if a nucleus exists alone, it will perish or disintegrate.  Consider electricity.  No matter how perfect a positive charge is, without a negative charge it will disappear.  There are no exceptions to this.  If a plus wants to survive, it has lo align with the principle that sustains its life.  Therefore, through the plan of creation, there will emerge a perfect minus.  It is because existence depends upon the interaction between the two.

(6) God, who made all things of creation in heaven and on earth, established His perfect substantial object partners in the external world to reflect His feelings, the inner world of His mind.  He did this so that He could fully interact with them.  He created human beings as object partners who would take responsibility for this, endowing them with a foundation that would allow them to engage in perfect giving and receiving.  That is why, of all his creation, God loves human beings the most, and why they appreciate God the most.  They respect God.  Therefore, they go in search of God and God comes in search of them.

(7) When we say, "God is the Lord, the Creator who made heaven and earth, " we mean that He is the origin and subject partner of all things.  Hence, all things of creation are His object partners.  An artist who wants to create a masterpiece will first plan it in his or her mind.  The artist expects the work to unfold according to plan and that the result will be pleasing.  What does it mean to be pleasing? It means that the work of art should be pleasing to the eyes, the ears, the mouth and every cell in the body in a harmonious way.  Then it will be pleasing to the mind, which represents the body.  Seen in this way, the original standard is unity of the mind and body.  Our spirit selves have five spiritual senses; our physical selves have live physical senses.  These two should be in perfect harmony.  This doesn't happen simply by enjoying a meal.  Harmony between the mind and the body begins with true love.

(8) God is the subject partner who created the universe.  Even Though God is the subject partner of human beings, and we are His sons and daughters, He follows the principle: "I exist for human beings.” Because of this, we can be happy people.  There is nothing more we would want.  Originally we should have had this status, but we failed to attain it.  That is why we hunger to possess the very best thing.  The very best thing is God's love.

(9) God created for the sake of those with whom He intended to form a relationship.  He invested tremendous energy at the outset, but not for Himself, not for His own pleasure.  He invested everything to create partners with whom He could build a relationship.  In the pursuit of ideal partners, God invested Himself totally, creating everything in heaven and on earth.

(10) What comes first, existence or life? Philosophy places the question of existence first.  It does not deal with life.  Then from where does life come? Life does not come from itself; it comes from parents' love.  God governs the world of life and the world of love.  In fact, life precedes existence, but philosophy deals only with questions that come after existence.  It is life that moves all existing things.  Then what is the cause that moves life? Love moves life.  Because life comes from love, the natural way of life is to seek relationships of love and to attain the outcomes of love.  This is the heart that lies behind the creation of heaven and earth.

(11) No matter how great God is, He is lonely if He cannot feel love.  He would want to hug even a cat and say, "I did such a good job making this cat.  When I made its ears, I felt good.  I made its paws like this so it could easily catch mice.  It gives me such a good feeling.” This good feeling toward everything He made is related to God's inner heart and motivation.

(12) God is still striving to use His power of creation to build a new environment for us.  He has that power.  However, as long as we are in the fallen realm, it is not possible.  It cannot be done unless we meet certain conditions.  It is not because God lacks power that He has not done this.  When the conditions are ripe, when the arrangements are in place for God to move, then a new history and a new environment can emerge, no matter the time, no matter the age.  God has the same power and authority today that He had in the beginning when He created all things.  He has possessed that power throughout the course of history; He possesses it today and He will possess it in the future.  He is the eternal Lord of Creation.

(13) When God began the creation, He had His Will, He had an idea, and He had a master plan.  Thus, God's original Will went along with a plan to create human beings, and based on that plan He built a world correlative to us.  That is why, despite the human Fall, we who live in the realm of God's providence of salvation in this day and age have to stand at the center of His Will, that is, within the realm of His Will and plan.  The time has come.  That is why God is preparing the conditions by which we can enter the realm of His Will and plan.  Over the course of history, numerous religions have emerged with the purpose of pioneering the environment, setting the conditions so that we can enter the realm of His plan.

God's total investment in the creation

(14) When God created heaven and earth, why did He create human beings? As long as God was without a partner, He had no stimulation.  He made human beings as His partners, who would allow Him to feel love, life and hope.  God did not create human beings as the Bible seems to imply, simply by saying, "Let there be you!" In reality, God put All his life, love and hope on the line to create human beings.  We can say in short that God invested everything into the relationship between Himself and human beings.  His was an unconditional, total investment.  This reveals to us that God's intention is to realize true love.  For love, He invested in His counterparts one hundred percent.  The process of God investing Himself requires Him to deplete His energy, but because He invests everything totally, the outcome is not depletion.  When He invests one hundred percent and completes His work, the counterparts into whom He invested one hundred percent, after they perfect themselves one hundred percent, return to God and infuse their love into Him. They emerge with everything God invested in them coalesced together with their own power of love, their value, and their honor as His partners.  Possessing all of this, they stimulate God, and God can finally feel joy.

(15) Parents instinctively invest everything for their children.  God is the same.  God does not invest Himself for His own sake.  He exists not for Himself but for His counterparts.  If God were to exist only for Himself, He would not be the God of true love.  Love, life and hope are realized when parents sacrifice themselves completely for their children with the desire to be together with them.  Accordingly, the true God of true love, true life and true hope wishes to give His true love, true life and true hope to human beings.  He gives these things not to please Himself, but to please those who receive them.

(16) In creating His partners, the true God completely invested Himself to fashion them into the most valuable, ideal and perfect form.  This means that once He created Adam and live, God lived for their sake, not His own.  God moved from the time of living for His own sake to the time of living for the sake of His partners.  An ideal being does not live for his or her own sake.  An ideal being lives for the sake of others, for the sake of the object partner.  This is the core principle of the universe.