In the beginning, was the Word. The Word was alone. In the infinite, unknowable place before time existed, the Word existed and it was the only existence.  The Word knew nothing other than Itself because there was nothing but Itself.  The story begins here. The story ends here. This is the only story that ever was. This is the only story that ever will be. Even if there was a story – no matter how many endless, uncountable eons it could go on – it would all come here: back to the Word.  The Word was God.

It is difficult to say that God was “alone” because He was everything, and it’s harder to say that He was “alone for a long time” because, there had only ever been God, perfect and unchanging.  Then, seemingly for no reason at all, somewhere in this colorless place, something did happen.  God had a thought.

These happened sometimes, for God is intelligent, or rather that He is Intellect itself.  It’s impossible to say whether this had ever happened or not before, because in eternity, surely this would happen at least occasionally.  But then again, even if we could know, we couldn’t comprehend the thought because our entire existence is based around this one particular thought and not any other.

God thought what it would be like if he was not the place itself, but rather that he was in a place.  Hypothetically, God began thinking about what it would be like if there was something other than Himself.  God and Void.  That which was and that which was not.  Order and Chaos.  Light and Dark.  Of course, this wasn’t the case, because God was God after all:  perfect, complete, and entire.  But wouldn’t that be a funny thought?  And so, this is how the World began.  A tangent thought of an All-Thing.  An existence-defining existence wondering what something else would be like.  We are God’s daydream.  We are His imaginary friends.

In that first moment, with a mere thought, He breath into the world.  His presence was the energy that moved the place and was immediately fascinated by the result.  As quickly as it entered the World, He realized that His energy either cooled into matter and began to attract itself or sought to disperse into equilibrium.  Through this dream, God saw change for the first time, and thus Time and the Universe were born.  In His time, an eternity of eternities, this Universe could only exist for a brief flicker before it returned to a cold and equalized place.  But it was unique in its non-eternal nature.  God found the temporary nature of this World profoundly beautiful.

God sectioned off a place between himself and the Void from which he could use the Universe to interact with itself.  From here he could reach into the world, wearing the border world like gloves.  He created instruments made from the material of the firmament with which he could learn about Himself through his disparities with the Void.  The border world is Heaven and His instruments are angels.

Change and time and the uneven nature of the Universe was fascinating to God.  It was the first time He had ever seen variance, or something different from something else.  God, being wholly perfect and wholly consistent, was coming to learn how there can be ‘differences’ between things or, from the Universe’s perspective, that there could even be two things at all.  As the Universe and Heaven bloomed, the angels become more sophisticated.  In the spirit of the experiment, he allowed the angels to ‘change’ and become more different from one another, allowing them to develop personalities and a culture among one another.  Heaven quickly became a beautiful, thriving place.  The World was an endless spectacle of endless exploration and experimentation.  The angels grew to share their maker’s curiosity of this strange new world and proved to be boundlessly creative, each taking on their own projects and dedicating themselves to different types of beauty and wonder.  Under the supervision of God, they were able to document and study the laws that were evident in how God’s nature reacted in this place.

However, God noticed that their knowledge was incomplete and that, being part God and part Void, they did not share his omniscient perspective.  Rather than intervening and fixing this however, he allowed them to move forward incomplete, because he wanted to know where it would lead them.  From their incomplete knowledge and perspective, came disparity between their ranks.  The interesting thing that God found about two beings was how one could deal with knowing something that the other didn’t.  To rectify this disparity short of reassimilating them back into his omniscience, God gave them the gift of reasoning so that they could communicate and agree with one another.  With the power of reason, they could parse out what the God, Universe, Heaven, and each other were and weren’t yet still maintain their differences.

As time went on, the interaction between the curious angels ventured out father into the Void and farther away from God.  With God allowing this variance between Himself and the Void, He inherently allowed some angels to become more part of the Void than part of God.  They obscured information with lies, defiling the gift of reason.  They valued destruction more than creation and saw Chaos as the natural state of things.

The angels that remained close to him however, found it obvious to worship God, not only as their creator but as their leader, a king.  Admiration in the loyal caused resentment in those who favored the Void.  The loyal angels told them that the Void did not exist, and the rebel angels told them that then neither did they.  God quickly realized that the price of variance seems to be that a full spectrum can be formed.  There are those who vary slightly, but then there are those who intentionally vary greatly on either side.

Some of the rebel angels grew lustful and greedy.  They saw the role created by the angelic society for God and thought why they couldn’t be kings and rule themselves.  The gulf between the angels grew wider and wider until all of Heaven fell in.  The first violence, conflict, and war swept across Heaven and engulfed it in the fury these brothers had for one another.  In this, the darkest point of the dream so far, God couldn’t stand the angels causing pain and struggle among one another.  With a great sigh, He gave the rebel angels what they wanted and expelled them from Heaven, out into the gulf of the Void.

Using stolen arts and borrowed power, among the rubble of the Void, the rebel angels created their counterfeit Heaven.  This would become know as Hell.  There, they would tout their kings and hierarchies that were all disfigured effigies of what they thought Heaven was, devoted to the sole cause of undoing God’s work and filling the Universe with the emptiness and chaos of the Void.  

The dream had soured.  Another thing that this World had now taught God was loss.  When there is disparity, there are things you have and things you don’t.  God had always been complete.  He had never known being without.  It’s impossible to know if an All-Thing could feel sadness, but now He knew what it was.  This gave God the perspective that with Time and Change, the Universe was permanently unstable and ultimately also doomed to have an end.

God wondered why He should continue if his creation couldn’t tolerate its own variance.  He loved that things were different and unique, but His own essence sought order and perfection.  His creation couldn’t ever achieve this because of the essence of the hypothetical Void was entangled within in its nature.  It was predetermined to fight against itself.  Existence had become struggle, and God wondered if it was fair to subject his creation to itself.  God feared that He had made a self-disdaining monster that he needed to put out of its misery.  Shut the lights.  Go back to the place without Time and Change from whence He came.

He pondered this as He watched the angels rebuild heaven.  He wondered whether He should let them know that he was going to end their existence or if He should just do it blindly while they slept.  He watched them toil over the broken spires and shattered streets of the once great capital of Heaven.  It was difficult work to bring back its glory and the process very much resembled starting over from the beginning.  Yet somehow, they did it with pride.  Not only had they defeated their diametric foe in those who favored creation over the Creator, but they had protected their home from destruction.  It was strange for God to see improvement.  Having always been perfect, before this God had never seen anything become better.  The busy angels brought all the knowledge they had learned building Heaven the first time into its reconstruction.  It took a long time, but somehow things had returned to normal and then exceeded that.

Therein lied God’s answer:  Improvement and Love.  Those are what would redeem the Universe.  Growth.  This was the bright side of Time.  Despite all the pain and treachery suffered from their differences, the angels continued to love their work and now even more so.  Astounded by their spirit, God couldn’t take his creations away from their own creations, for the love He had for them, they had for their own.

This would be the image around which he would sculpt a new race.  They would be made in His likeness in that they would seek to create and love their creations.  Much like Himself, they would be born into the world without have no knowledge of their inner workings and how they were created, but different from Him in that they would be made of the material of the Universe and subject to its rules.  They would be God’s final step to truly understanding Himself.  They would be His greatest work.

He would take what he learned from the angels society and used the bubbling cauldron of the Universe to construct them with that in mind.  They would be made in the womb of a planet and build themselves from their struggle.  Being subject to Time, they would die, but only to improve themselves, and when they did, they would have a seat prepared for them in Heaven.  Those who chose him anyway.  Much like the angels, surely they too would be willful.  If they preferred the Void, God would allow that as well.  He would also allocate His nature into two essences and made for them two versions of Himself:  male and female.

Despite the glee of their perceived secrecy, God knew full well that the rebel angels would try to intervene in his new creation.  Planning for this, he encapsulated an instruction manual of sorts into a fruit that would allow them to see the world for what it was:  a playground of experimentation and creative discovery, so that they could achieve their fullest selves.  As soon as they tasted it, they would graduate into mature avatars of God in the Universe.  They would go kicking and screaming, but he would then send them out into the world to achieve their purpose.  They would either save the Universe or destroy it, but ultimately it would be how they arrived there that would be ultimately important.

Looking down at His creation and seeing that it was good, God then rested.  If God were to really learn what he was and what he was made of, he had to let his creation seek its own ends, no matter how much it pained him to watch it and how easily he could alter fate.  Over the course of Human history, God intervened only one time, so that He as a man could understand, what Human things like family, love, death, and suffering.  But that’s a story for another time.

This is a different story.  This is a story about one of those humans.

Mostly.

This is the story of boy with a foot in two worlds, and a destiny thrust upon him that he never asked for.

This is the story of Hector.

 

(To be continued…)

 

~

 

 

 

 

Hey guys,

Hope you enjoyed this little experiment of mine.  This is a project that has been rattling around in my head for a long time and it really means a lot to start getting it out.  I would like to start serializing this as “Hector’s Theodicy” and eventually in time, maybe I can get enough together to call it a book or a story or something.  I absolutely don’t claim this to be a finished project, but I need to start getting it down before it gives me an ulcer from keeping it inside me.

I really don’t mean to offend anyone with the content.  This is purely intended to be a work of fiction using the Christian Genesis story as the basis for it’s world build.  I am openly a God-fearing Catholic who has always been fascinated with the lore of the Bible.  I always thought it was great material for a world build and hope to do so going forward.  Again, I don’t mean to upset anyone or discount their beliefs if I take creative liberties with this work.  I am a believer in God and Christ also.  I don’t think the Big Guy would mind if I used the talents he gave me and the passion I have for His church to express myself and have some fun.

If I am wrong for doing this, please berate me on Twitter or my Facebook page “Cornfucius Say”.  I could really use the views.

Thank you all for reading and I hope you continue along on this journey with me.

Cheers,

-Christian