21. Why God loves all the different things in the universe and why we should too
21. WHY GOD LOVES ALL THE DIFFERENT THINGS IN THE UNIVERSE AND WHY WE SHOULD TOO
Throughout the Church’s history, her saints, like the prophets in the Bible, have warned us against violating the first and greatest commandment, the commandment against idolatry, against giving our whole heart to anything except God. This “anything” means any creatures, created things, since these are the only things that exist except God. But if God created all these things, and declared them “good” (Gen 1), doesn’t it follow that we should love them too, as God does, and appreciate them more than we usually do rather than less?—not as if they were our God, of course, but as our God-given gifts. What does St. Thomas say about God’s attitude toward the amazingly manifold universe of things that He created? Why did God make so many things different from Himself and from each other?
The distinction and multitude of things come from the intention of the first agent, Who is God. For He brought things into being in order that His goodness might be communicated to creatures and be represented by them; and because His goodness could not be adequately represented by one creature alone, He produced many and diverse creatures, so that what was wanting to one in representing the divine goodness might be supplied by another. For goodness, which in God is simple and uniform, in creatures is manifold and divided; and hence the whole universe together participates the divine goodness more perfectly, and represents it better, than any single creature whatever (I,47,2).
Like St. Thomas in thinking about God’s creation—and like God in creating—we must make distinctions. (a) In one way we love creatures too much, and we should love them less, for we are commanded, by God incarnate Himself, as “the first and greatest commandment”, to “love the Lord your God with your whole heart and soul and mind and strength” (Mk 12:30), and therefore to avoid a divided heart which gives to God only some of itself, its love and devotion, and gives the other part to creatures. We should not love creatures as God, because they are not God. We should love everything as what it really is; our love should be realistic, should conform to reality. (b) But for this very same reason, we love creatures too little, and we should love creatures more, as creatures of God, i.e., as what they are. God loved them into existence; who are we to quarrel with God’s loves?
This applies even to fallen creatures, evil people. God made the people, and loves them, but not the evil in them. We should love all persons, even monsters like Hitler, as God does, because God does; and we should hate the sins that deface them as God does, that is, precisely because we love the persons that are being defaced by sin. This applies to ourselves as well as others; for there is in each of us a potential “Hitler in Ourselves” (the shocking but accurate title of a book written after World War II by the German philosopher Max Picard) as well as a potential Mother Teresa in ourselves. (So we have no excuse for not being Mother Teresas!)
Why did God create so many different creatures? Because everything has a unique task: to represent some one of the infinitely many aspects of God, or dimensions of God, or facets in the infinite divine diamond. Men show something about God that women do not, and women show something about God that men do not, and therefore the whole “image of God” in mankind is only “male and female” together, according to the Bible itself (Gen 2:7). The same is true of dogs and cats, empty space and burning stars, proud lions and meek lambs, white people and black people, things in nature like eagles and man-made things like airplanes, which also show something about God, something that natural things do not—which is one reason why God made mankind: so that mankind could make all sorts of other things that also show some aspects of the goodness of God, indirectly.
The universe is a work of art, in fact the greatest of all works of art. The greater the work of art, the more it has both unity and diversity. The Bible, The Lord of the Rings and The Divine Comedy have both more unity and more diversity than smaller, lesser works of art. The universe is God’s other Bible.