WHO CREATED GOD?

The other say I called our youngest daughter to see if she could help me with a problem I was having with my computer. Since she works on a computer as part of her job, I figured she would know how to solve my problem. She was on her way taking Carter, her four-year-old, to pre-school. She solved my problem in about ten seconds. That was the easy part for me.

Then came Carter. He had two questions for me (Pap). He wanted to know if Pap could fix one of his light-up shoes because it wasn’t working any more. I couldn’t. They don’t make it so that you can. They make it so that you will buy another pair of shoes even though the ones Carter was wearing are still perfectly good as shoes but not in the light-up category. I told him we would buy him another pair when we saw him again. I mean, what are grandparents for anyway?

Then came question Number Two: “If God created everything, who created God?” THE question of the ages from a four-year-old. Why me? I’d rather try to repair his shoes than try to answer that question. His mother allowed me to think about the answer as they were just arriving to school, thank God, the God who would have to help me answer that question so that Crater would understand.

The problem is that I can’t answer it. No one can. It is the mystery of mysteries. Every once in a while I do go down that road. I start to imagine the time when there was nothing, nothing but God and I ask myself “How did God get there?” Within seconds I always walk away. I just do not want to go there and not because I think I will lose my faith. It is simply because it is a waste of time.

Thomas Aquinas thought he had an answer when he stated that God was the Uncaused First Cause. Well, of course! But I have to say, Old Tom, that does not make the question any clearer any more that my saying “I haven’t a clue.” The truth is, neither did Thomas Aquinas. He only tried to answer the question because he felt he had to, being the great phosphor-theologian that everyone said he was – and he was.

But smarts doesn’t answer that particular question for a believer. Unbelievers don’t have that problem because they see no need to ask the question in the first place. But they still have to deal with the results of what the First Cause caused: creation. Trying to explain creation out of nothing is just as difficult as trying to explain how God came to be. The Big Bang Theory explains nothing. How do you create something out of nothing?

I was lucky this morning. My hope is that Carter forgets to ask me that question the next time we talk. If he doesn’t, I’ll just tell him that it’s a mystery and that he is really too young to understand the answer anyway, but he will be able to when he gets older. I know that’s a lie. You have any better answer? I thought as much.