Sep 8, 2009
22 things God did not create
- love
- happiness
- sequence
- existence
- spirituality
- strength
- invisibility
- nothingness
- beauty
- goodness
- interest
- intelligence
- truth
- reality
- order
- justice
- life
- accuracy
- hope
- imagination
- the future
What else?
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What makes you say that God didn’t create imagination? interest? hope?
Because he has all those, which means they’ve always existed.
I was wondering why you would say that – but it makes sense. If God IS love, then He did not create it. It has always been. Thanks for the deep thoughts so early in the day!
Hmmm. this list gives pause for thought. I wonder about sequence, however. Sequence seems like it would only exist within time, which I think was a created concept.
Also, I am wondering about the future. Do you mean that he didn’t create it yet? Or do you mean he didn’t create the concept?
I guess all the ones that rely on time to make sense make me wonder. I am interested to see what other commenters will say.
If it’s given pause for thought, my blogging job is done. :)
Since God operates outside of space and time…past, present, and future all exist at the same time for God. Future is purely a human construct. In the Bible, when God says, “I will…”, I think He’s using language that our finite minds can comprehend.
I’m not making a point here, just noting something that makes that hard for me to believe:
If “past, present, and future all exist at the same time for God,” it seems like creation would have to have always existed. In that scenario, God never created anything—everything’s just always been.
God created time. It’s not a human construct, it’s a divine construct. GOD exists outside time, but creation does not.
Abraham is content with the fact that he has triggered thought, but I’ll do my thinking “out loud”. :)
I think we have to assume sequence exists outside of created time or things just would not make sense. Consider Revelation 13:8:
and all who dwell on earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain.
So before creation this book was written containing the names of the elect. It is the book of the Lamb who was slain, so before the book was written there was this plan for a slain lamb. Sometime after the book was written God laid the foundation of the world.
More examples could be given and this one could be more complex but perhaps this brief picture helps illustrate sequence outside of created time. How time works in eternity is, I think, another of those mysteries, but some hints are given.
what about mystery?
Power?
holiness?
Perhaps holiness, but holiness being something like “totally other” requires something to be other than. I would say his righteousness is not created, and perhaps holiness is when God’s righteous character is contrasted with the unrighteousness of man, so if holiness itself is not exactly created it requires something created for it to be demonstrated.
Mushrooms. I can’t see how a good God could have created those things. I think that they tasted like marshmallows before the fall.
LOL
if we’re going with that theory, then mosquitos. they are just fallen butterflies.
i second the mosquitoes bit.
I think mushrooms are a gift from God. Saute w/ butter and a little salt and you’ve got yourself a little taste of heaven.
My husband would be on your side though.
I like where these comments go sometimes.
I’m with CB.
I have to admit, I don’t understand #22: “”. Maybe I need more caffeine this morning?
I’ll break it down for you, since it’s early:
There’s no #22 because it’s one of the things God didn’t create.
mercy. grace. creativity.
… does God embody happiness or is it joy? i tend to think of “happiness” as something humans strive for and “joy” as eternal.
God/Himself
The Son
The Holy Spirit
amen! #22: awe
I wear mittens.
(translation: it is way too early and i’ve had way too little sleep to comprehend what looks like a very cool post. will return later.)
Love. God didn’t create love.
If there are different types of love, love between the Father and the Son, and then the love that exists between a husband and a wife….wouldn’t the love that exists between a husband and a wife be “created” and the one that exists between Father and Son not be?
God didn’t create the future. He did declare it though? He decreed the things in the future. Fine line, eh?
It seems to me like ‘create’ normally carries the semantic feature of finitude for its objects (whereas eternally begotten carries infinity). Finite versions of love, happiness, &c didn’t exist until he created them inside finite beings. (??)
COLOSSIANS 1:16 NKJ
16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.
presence
I’m unsure about hope. Is hope possible without some degree of uncertainty? If I am sure of the outcome of a particular situation have I ceased to hope in the result?
Great idea for a post.
Sin.
What else? The obvious answer is Himself.
ubiquity
Numbers? There has always been three Persons in the Trinity.
This line of thinking is making my brain ache.
My head = exploded.
YOUR HEAD ASPLOOOOODE!!
(sorry. reverting to strongbad quotes.)
(and, btw, my head asplode too ;)
How about darkness?
You get the Stephen Hawking award for today.
Monster trucks.
Labor union that won’t allow their workers to install carpet in an attic. I’m pretty sure God didn’t create those.
Could it be summed up with “ideas”?
I can buy into the premise, I’m just not sure what we’re all gonna do with John(#14)’s comment.
Is love a thing? Or sequence? Or happiness? Etc, etc.
Also, I think Col 1:16 could be phrased in the form of John 1:3, “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” – looking at the second half, everything made was made by God. If something is a “thing” (object, created thing) God is the one who made it. There is no other creator. God is the only one who has created. But there are some attributes that exist eternally with God and so are not created things per se but spring as characteristics of the eternal God and so are, like God, eternal, uncreated.
emotion ! =D
I get what you’re trying to say here, but I think about a third of these are mistakes. For example: ‘the future’. You have to frame ‘the future’ in such a narrow way as to exclude the very next moment in order to say that and avoid denying that God is the creator and sustainer of all thing.
It’s an interesting thought exercise, however.
One of the defenses for the Trinity is that for God to be Love, he had to have someone to love. That “Someone” had to be eternal as well. If there had been no Trinity, God would have had to create Love. Yes? No?
(for the record, I am Trinitarian, so don’t try and prove the Trinity to me…)
Perhaps this post should have had a “Reading This Post While Not Fully Caffeinated Could Be Hazardous to Your Brain.”
I think Deep Thoughts with Jack Handey is usually more my speed first thing in the morning.
“Warning.”
I meant to include the word “warning” in the first sentence. Perhaps this commenter shouldn’t leave comments before she is fully caffeinated for the day.
Has anyone seen my pen?
Apparently I’m slow this mornin’, too. When I pulled up this post, I was like, “HUH???”
Thought provoking, indeed.
{{more coffee, please}}