God rolled the dice when He created man. And yet, He knew what He was doing. Backing His bet – the wager on the table – was the life of His own Son, Jesus.
On the other side of the bet was man’s free will and soul – threatened by the instigation of the Envious One.
Outside of and before creation itself existed, God lives eternally as a perfect, harmonious unity of divine persons: a Divine Community. The fullness of self-generative beauty, love, light.
This Divine Community – the Holy Trinity – is a constant self-less, out-flowing, and reciprocal giving of love. Generosity, expansiveness and inclusiveness are at the core of God’s nature.
Because of His infinite goodness, God wanted to share this divine celebration beyond Himself.
Love is the original motive, emanating from the Will of God, the prime mover and active ingredient of all created things. For without it, there could have been nothing. From the depths of his Eternal Will, God loves and brings forth life..
Out of an excess of love, God created man. He created man for his own sake, to share with him the bliss of love and light. He gave man a free will, intelligence and memory to enable the highest possible meaning for his life. But before doing that, as a gift, he created a cosmic playground for man with his own little paradise to live in.
Unfortunately, the first couple on the planet traded their freedom for what they thought would be special knowledge. They exercised their free wills to go against the Creator’s prescriptions for joy, meaning and, ultimately, true deification. In their disobedience, distrust and greed, they tried to grasp it all apart from God’s guidance and perfect designs.
Their separation from God set off a whole chain reaction of disease, destruction and death – bringing us to our current devolved state and world crisis.
But that was not how it was meant to be.
What God’s enemy promised the first couple – eternal life – was already theirs. They didn’t know what they had until they lost it.