What was first? Heaven and earth. How did God next manifest Himself? What did God create next? Light. How did He do it? He created the sun. Our sun. All the suns. All the stars. Imagine being there to see all the stars of the universe twinkle into existence like an enormous string of Christmas tree lights. We call all of those suns, stars. They come in different sizes and colors. From our medium sized, yellow sun we get light and heat. Without that light and heat, life on Earth would soon stop. How has God ever revealed Himself to any of us? As light. A burning bush. A pillar of fire. When someone becomes converted to a belief system, we honor this manifestation of God by saying, “He has seen the light.” “He was blinded by a flash of light.” In AD 312, Constantine, Emperor of the Roman Empire saw a “light in the sky”, and was converted to Christianity. Then he, being the bossy kind of guy he was, converted the rest of the Empire by fiat. Another way to say, “or else”. All of this causes one to think mightily. And to ask questions. Why do we have eyes? To see light. To see the manifestation of God. To provide us an early warning system of possible approach of danger. To facilitate our movements in our natural environments. Imagine happily playing in the treetops, running along branches, climbing, jumping from branch to branch, swinging joyfully from branch to branch, leaping from tree to tree. All made possible by light and eyes to see it and that which it illuminates. We all use that first creation to collect information about our environment, and we do it from a safe distance. God does things in Big Ways. He makes stars. He creates planets. He creates Life with a capitol “L”. This kind of bigness tends to make people think that they can’t understand Him. Let’s simplify. Do you want to stand in the light of God? You do? Good. Go outside and stand in the sunshine. You have done it. You are in the Light of God. God created that light. That light left the surface of the sun about eight minutes before it touched your skin. Sunlight is light made in the furnace of the sun. God created the sun. He used gravity, pressure, heat and lots and lots of hydrogen gas. The gravity builds the heat and eventually two atoms of Hydrogen fuse together. This makes one atom of Helium. This also releases a lot of heat and a bit of light. To repeat, God does things in a Big Way. Every second in our common, average, ordinary sun millions of tons of hydrogen are fused together. This has gone on for billions of years. It will continue for billions of more years. There it is, 93 million miles away, safely isolated from us, doing God’s Work. God’s Cook Stove. God’s Furnace. He puts in raw matter. He pushes the right buttons, and the light comes on. He cooks it. In time, the matter is cooked. What dish is God preparing? Just what is it that He is cooking? The basic building blocks of the Universe, the periodic table of the elements. That is God’s Soup. First the Hydrogen is cooked into Helium. The soup is a little thicker. Then the other elements begin to fuse. The soup gets thicker. God is persistent. God is patient. He keeps the stove going for 18 to 20 billion years. The soup gets very thick. The longer it cooks, the thicker it gets. Heavy elements all the way out to Uranium, and beyond, are formed. This soup pot is one that God does not have to watch all the time. He does not have to stir the pot from time to time. He just lets it burn. He set the rules. It works just fine without attention. Maybe the ancient Egyptians were not so dumb in their worship of the sun? The sun is certainly a visible manifestation of God. It is in a very safe place for an atomic reactor to be when it is your principal source of heat and light. This is exactly what I mean when I say that God does things in a Big Way. Go to the library. Look up the size of the planet Jupiter. Compare it to Earth. Jupiter is basically a large ball of cold Hydrogen gas and other complex elements. Jupiter is a giant propane bottle of fuel waiting for action. Jupiter did not get big enough to turn on. It is a baby sun. It didn’t get big enough to turn on. Jupiter is an incomplete sun. It is big, but not big enough. It does produce heat, but it does not produce light. Jupiter will just have to wait its turn. In God’s next round of star creation, the gasses and elements of Jupiter will get their chance. A chance to be a part of a star somewhere. In the meantime, Jupiter is part of God’s reserve fuel supply. Jupiter is just a kind of spare gas tank, waiting to be used. Why is it that human beings have a natural affinity for sunshine, sunlight, and the warmth of sunlight? Start with our minimal covering of fur. We don’t have a thick natural pelt to hold in heat. Why not? Other creatures do. Because we didn’t need it where our species evolved in the warmth of the tropics, and more importantly fur, hair, uses a lot of protein in its manufacture. That protein is better spent in manufacture of brain cells. As a survival characteristic, which is more important, naked skinned, brainy and smart, or hairy and dumb? Other factors likely are involved. Less hair, fewer places for parasites to hide. Easier to catch the buggers and eat them for their protein. Less hair, better cooling during and after violent exercise, like escaping the clutches and claws of a leopard by leaping madly from branch to branch. Less hair, a more rapid shedding of rain water and its chilling effect. Why retain the hair we do have? There are two answers that make sense. Protection and sexual attraction of mates. For a creature that increasingly walked upright, a thick thatch of hair on top of the head, and which also might shadow the neck and shoulders from the intense sun of the grasslands into which we were moving makes sense. It helps cool the brain. As for armpits and crotch, hair in these locations might do several things. Retain a bit of moisture in selected shaded spots to aid cooling a bit. Retain and collect odor delivery chemicals related to sexual attraction of mates. Act as a cushion and lubricant to reduce rubbing where limbs connect to torso. Just because TV ads tell us that soap and perfume make us more attractive to the other sex, it isn’t necessarily so. God and evolution know a good deal more about sexual attraction and what the opposite sex’s nose wants to sense. Correct sensory inputs equate to “Bingo! That’s the one.” Noses are much more important for mate selection than eyes. Why? Come on. Think. When was most mating done before we invented cities? During the day when everyone had to be up and about, scattered across the countryside, hustling and rustling up sufficient food for the day? Is that any time to be distracted by the needs of sex when at any moment, one might be required to flee from a hungry predator? Or at night when we clustered together in the treetops, and later caves, for warmth, and companionship? Clustered for a comforting touch, mutual protection of numbers, sharing of gathered food, and for sex? Which sense works best in the dark? Vision, or smell? Why is it that human beings have a natural affinity for sunshine, sunlight, and the warmth of sunlight? Simple. We feel safer in the light. We now know that too much darkness causes psychological depression in people. We actually use light therapy with lots of folks where winters are long and days are short. Observe people from northern climates that travel quickly to warm, sunny places on vacation. What is a common response? As few clothes as possible and maximum skin exposure to warm sunlight. Many new tourists are easy to spot in Hawaii. They stand out like albino squirrels in trees. Some, quite naturally, overdo a good thing. Actually this ought to have been easy to figure out. Common sense and observation taught us how to use sunlight and heat as our first method of preserving many kinds of foods. Meat, fruits and vegetables are all dried for later use. Ever take the time to look at a prune, or a raisin? What happened to its skin? Wrinkles formed and it has become leathery. What caused it? A lot of sun. Carried to an extreme, sunlight and warmth can mummify. Sunlight on our skin actually produces vitamin D in our skin, making us more healthy. Skinny dipping in sunshine is good for our health. That is not exactly the same thing as sunbathing. Sun bathing, also known as baking in the sun, is excessive, and there is a penalty to pay for any excess. Skin cancers result from excessive sunlight. Skinny dipping in sunlight is like dipping chocolates for a thin overall covering. Sun baking is like twice as much time as necessary in the microwave oven. You, too, are “crispy crittered”, or “nuked”. Sunlight on our skin also acts as a natural antiseptic, killing germs and other nasties. It is good for you to stand bare in the light of God. Bare skin naturally and quickly sheds water in wet places. Bare skin naturally is more quickly cooled in warm places when breezes help evaporate our sweat. So what kinds of places do we call Paradise? Warm, sunny places where we need the fewest clothes. Add in gentle breezes, a long, or year round growing season for fruits, nuts and vegetables. That is our definition for Paradise. How is all food created? By sunlight. By photosynthesis. Plant cells use the energy of sunlight to link carbon and hydrogen and oxygen atoms from carbon dioxide and water to make sugar. The sugars can be converted to starches and other hydrocarbons like wood. So, how does God feed us? He makes us sweets.
(c) Copyright 2006: George Wallace recently published a book on religion which lashes out at nearly all of the comfortable ideas about God, the trappings of organized religion, and the priesthood. His pithy comments and suggestions for a return to a God-centered personal religion will interest everyone. This article may be freely reprinted so long as all copyright attributions, and the full content of this resource box are included. www.OhGodIsThatYou.com
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