The problem with going ice skating is that we enjoy it so much that we want to skate more and more! “Let’s go ice skating today, tomorrow, and the next day, for weeks!” The possibilities could almost be without limit for us to explore our curiosity about skating. Think of figure skating, speed skating, playing hockey, and many other options. Think of the skills you could develop if you skated every day.

Well, God had the same problem. God had the experience of creation, but once the universe was created, there was no other means yet to experience Itself. It had just created the infinite, material universe of time and space and had gotten to know that part of Itself. But God knew that even if It created more and more universes, It would just be repeating that same experience. I think God wanted more than that. I think God wanted the universe to provide a means for experiencing Itself as a continuing process, just like we do for ourselves.

“Hmmmm,” God must have mused to Itself. Then pondering Its situation in the eternal universe, It must have come to the conclusion that It needed to duplicate Itself in a way that allowed It to experience the ongoing process of living. Now, that may sound a bit silly to you, but think of God this way; God is perfect, eternal, and complete by Itself, BUT! It lacked an ongoing process for gaining experience, until It created people.

NOTE TO THE ADULT READER: The following paragraph may be a bit “deep” for a child, but I have included it to help you understand something really odd about God’s situation.

God exists, is eternal, and is perfect, but God is not alive as we are alive. And, not being alive, God is also not dead. God just IS. Remember, an idea is very much like God. It is neither alive nor dead, it just is. And, an idea is nothing more than just an idea until we put some experience behind it, so the idea is made into something that we can experience. I think God was in pretty much the same place after It had created the universe. It must have asked, “Now what?!”