From our first statement of belief, God exists, and from our observation of the universe around us, we draw the belief-conclusion that God created the universe. That is, we believe in God. We believe the universe exists. We believe God created all of it, including all the spiritual beings on all spiritual planes; all physical and material aspects known and unknown to us; and all other aspects of the four dimensions and all other dimensions known and unknown to us.
The universe is an expression of God, an expression of God's will. Looking out upon the universe, what we see is an impressive, grand, and generous experience. Looking upon the universe in this world, whether we see clouds, flowers, or personalities, is also a generous experience. Looking within, again viewing what little we can, and understanding even less, at DNA molecules, we are overwhelmed by the care and thoughtfulness of these creations and developments of the original creation. These narrow views are but small fragments of the magnificent and thoughtful expressions of the nature of God. If we could view all dimensions of time and all the facets of physical and spiritual creation at once, how would we feel? Surely, we would be filled with awe and great humility to be a part of this creation.
We are extensions of God's power when we will to create. Here, at this juncture of our existence, we come face to face with the spiritual responsibilities of our will to create: To treat, care, and nurture God's manifold creation, including our planet, Earth, as well as we care and nurture the products of our own creation whether a wall painting, a garden, a child, a house design and blue prints, or a poem. Doing so, we create sacred relationships with all else around us, whether with our planet Earth or with other people. Our attitude is the same for both. We are in awe of what is created; we feel immensely humble in comparison to what God has created; and we are immensely humble for being able to create, and for what we have created.
Our will to create is an exact image of God's will to create with the same proportional capability for being a creator. The implications of this statement are truly profound as they apply to our sacred relationship to this planet and each individual on it. That potential capability exists within each of us. We can more fully unlock that potential when our values and beliefs about God are in full alignment with God's true nature. Then we can see God's true nature in us —our true nature!
In the moments just prior to creating something, what existed before we willed to create? Nothing. By examining the non-event before creation we can gain a better idea of what God's situation was like before God willed the universe into existence.
How can anyone explain how the universe came into existence? Probably the best we can do is to draw a parallel between God willing the creation of the universe into existence and us willing one of our thoughts into existence. There exist no equivalents to measure the energy that was necessary to bring the universe into existence, or the energy to will the creation of one of our thoughts. To think is the easiest and most effortless act of creativity, and I suspect that God created the universe as easily as having a thought. This parallel provides us with a fairly accurate estimate of the relative difference of magnitude between our power and authority, and God's. As we explore the idea of an unlimited, all-powerful, eternal, all-knowing being, The Creator and sustainer of the Grand Universe, the more interesting and complete our concepts and understanding of God will become. Remember, God was and is in sacred relationship with Itself, and extends that relationship to the universe and all its inhabitants.
God created time. When God created the universe, the four dimensions were created. This is the starting point of chronology, sequences of events, developmental initiations, and the infinite perspective. We say "in the beginning" and this is when time began.
Since God created the temporal dimension of time, God existed before time. Having created time, God can function within, or outside, the dimension of time and the universe. The Creator's usual habitat is outside the dimension of time, since time is limiting and linear. Since God exists in eternity, a “place” with no time, with no past or future, God's presence exists in the Eternal NOW.
God is present everywhere. That is, God can be in one location, or two, or the extent of all creation at once. God is everywhere God wills to be. God, being in the Eternal NOW, can be anywhere or everywhere at once. Because God lives in the Eternal NOW outside of time, God can be present anywhere. If it doesn't take any time to go anywhere, The Creator can be everywhere at once!
God is all-knowing. God encompasses the sum of all existent knowledge. Being in the Eternal NOW of the past, present, and future, and able to be everywhere at once, God is aware of all. God knows everything. Being outside the continuum of time, God knows everything whether in time or out of time, in space or out of space, temporal or spiritual. God created the universe and understands and knows the universe, its existence, and its operation. God knows all there is to know of the existent universe.
God is all-powerful. From God The Creator, all was created. All energy before creation was contained in The Creator's being, and God's power was not diminished one erg by bringing creation into existence. (An erg is far less energy than is required to snap your finger and thumb together.) Just as one thought, or an effort to will a thought, does not diminish our power and energy, God's power and energy was not diminished by the act of Creation or any later acts of will.
Though the physical universe is the most immediate and immense manifestation of energy visibly evident to us, physical objects are only a small portion of the total sum of energy that exists in the universe. There exist many forms of non-visible energy that we have no way of measuring. Astrophysicists tell us there are vast cubic light years of tenuous clouds of nearly invisible hydrogen; and immense amounts of “dark matter.” How many subatomic particles are there in the universe? And how many galaxies would they make? Very possibly, there are whole galaxies of invisible forms of energy. It is apparent that energy is everywhere and fills all of what we call "empty" space.
And God created it all! That was and is the most powerful act ever. It follows, then, that God is all-powerful, and can do anything God wills to do that is consistent with Its nature. We do not know of any limit to God's capability, except as God wills to limit Itself. We can say, therefore, that God is all-powerful and without limit to what God can do.
Just as an architect and contractor can conceive of and build a home or subdivision, those acts of construction do not diminish their creative potential. Architects can still conceive of many more homes and subdivisions. As humans, the only limitation to what we can bring into being is whether we have the resources and time to build what we conceive. If we had the unlimited resources and unlimited time, as God has, and an infinite expanse of three-dimensional space, we too could build houses until we died. But God, who exists outside the dimension of time, has no such limitation. God's only limitation is that which God places upon Its will. God is therefore unlimited in power.
God is whole. The universe is a form of God's expression, yet God is complete without the universe. Creating the universe did not take anything from God. Just as thinking does not take anything from us, will and creation do not take anything from God. God was whole before creation and remains whole. God is intact and undivided. God is not in need of anything to be or to become whole.
God is complete. That is, God is not in need of anything, anyone, or any state of being to sustain Its existence. There is no symbiotic relationship between God and that which God created for God to be complete. Further, God is not flawed and has no need to prey upon that which God brought into existence. God is self-sustaining in sole existence.
The Divine Fragment of God within each of us provides God with the experiential process of living. When we join with God in this experience, we are provided with the possibility of eventually experiencing perfection of being, as God does. This is not a symbiotic relationship that enables the achievement of completeness, but a relationship that allows each partner to experience the process of living and the achievement of perfection in new ways.
God is perfect. We know this is so from several perspectives. God exists in eternity. If God were not perfect, God would be imperfect, flawed, and susceptible to degeneration and eventual death. God would not exist. The universe would not exist.
Implicit in the statement, "God is eternal," is that God is perfect. Though the three statements, "God is whole," "God is complete," and "God is perfect," are closely related, the first two were presented first to lead our logic to the point where we understand that God is perfect, too. All have their proofs within our original three statements of belief.
Further, we logically know that since God exists in eternity, outside time, God would be aware of the beginning of the universe and any possible "endings" of it. Knowing this, God would have been aware of any flaws before they began and would have eliminated any flawed processes. Time-bound creatures do not have this eternal advantage to know and feel with assurance that there are no flaws in the function of the universe.
Human observations of the universe are very limited and our recorded history of it is very, very brief. However, because the universe is so huge and so old, if there were any mechanical or physical flaws inherent in its design, they would have developed over the eons and be in evidence around us.
Rather than chaos, we see order in the universe. And it is lasting and self-perpetuating in its unfolding. What we see is benevolent, humane, and even magnanimous when we appreciate the abundance around us. It is divine! There is beauty in the appearance of a confusion of evidence. Picture a colorful butterfly in the warm sun — iridescent segments on the wings of a creature that appears to float effortlessly in the air and on the tides of breezes — spectacular, incredibly beautiful, and good.
The terms "good" and "beauty" are our interpretations and conclusions of what we see in the universe. That is, we see the universe and how it operates, and perceive it as a "good" place to live, with "beautiful" experiences around us. If the universe were not this way, we would as easily say that the universe is cruel and ugly. We interpret processes that are self-sustaining, self-perpetuating, and benevolent as "good." Processes such as these, which continue into infinity or which originate in eternity must, then, be perfect. If God were not perfect, the universe would exhibit that imperfection and pervade all creation.
The universe is the canvas of God's artwork. We know the ability and depth of an artist by what he or she produces, yet we do not know what unfathomed and unproduced works yet lays within that artist's creativity. So, too, with God, as far as we can see of the universe. It is beautiful. It works. It is without evidence of inherent self-defeating flaws. This is the outward evidence of God. It is the outward evidence of what God is capable. Yet, the universe does not express all the capability of God's potential.
With God's unlimited power, existence outside the confines of time, and an unlimited creative potential, The Creator appears to have only begun to express Itself!
God has only one nature. When people believe in a god with two natures, they lead themselves into deception as to the true nature of God. God cannot be both loving and spiteful, loving and resentful, loving and jealous, loving and vengeful, constant and inconstant, consistent and inconsistent. God is not divided in nature or at odds with Itself.
Looking at it another way, God is not capricious, impulsive, whimsical, fickle, inconsistent, inconstant, or imperfect. God cannot be perfect and imperfect, impulsive and thoughtful, fickle and true because such inconsistencies are contrary to the oneness of an eternal, creative nature, contrary to becoming, to unfoldment, to the eternal expression of all-potential. Creation would have collapsed if God's nature were conflicting or changeable. It is a reasonable conclusion to know that God has only one nature.
God has only one nature, perfect and loving, because all the other paths of logic and reason lead us to places that end. The path of one-nature, wholeness, leads us unendingly toward a greater and more complete revelation of what God is. The opposite of love, which is hate, leads to limitation, finite and diminishing growth, and contraction of self. God is not just a little bit evil, sinful, or bad. Any inconsistency in the nature of God would have become magnified over the eons of time since the beginning of creation and inherent in the act of creation. Any blemish of imperfection would have become as evident as the development of rot from one small bit of imperfection in one apple in a barrel of apples, to the point where the whole barrel, over time, becomes rotten and maggot infested.
If we could view the universe, this world, without the errant behavior of self-willed individuals, we would see a universe that is ultimately and absolutely good. So, where does the negative and evil that we see come from? From God? No, it is from self-willed, errant people. What errant people will to do is not a reflection of The Creator's will. We can say then that God's nature is not dualistic, nor is the universe. The conclusion that "forces of light" and "forces of evil" exist is simply a conclusion made from observations of human behavior. God and the universe are only good, only benevolent, and universally generous. When we align our will with the loving energy of God, we begin to see and feel the rightness of reality.
God is good. If we disregard the ill-behaved manners of self-willed people, some of whom seem to muck up this universal pattern of beauty, the universe as a whole is one of order, inherent logic, and an ultimate expression of greater reason and wisdom. It is good — another value judgment — and is a reflection of its creator. All that God created is good — therefore God is good.
God is love. We see that, except for the behavior of self-willed creatures, the universe is good — infinitely good and perfect in its operation — a reflection of its creator. Since God is The Creator of all that is good, God is the ultimate pattern of creation, the ultimate good, which we would term ultimate goodness, or ''loving." God, who created the entire universe, did so with Its will. Creation, then, is an act of positive action, a positive expression of will. When God expresses Its will, God does so with ultimate goodness, an expression of love. Love is the expression of God's will. Love is God's will, expressed. Therefore, God's nature is loving.
Succinctly, God is love. God created, and creates everything as a loving impulse. That which is love in the universe stems from God. That which is not-loving in the universe stems from the free will accorded to man.
Martin Luther King, Jr. had much to say about the power of love and the ends that love can bring, in his sermon, "Loving Your Enemy." "Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. We never get rid of an enemy by meeting hate with hate; we get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity. By its very nature hate destroys and tears down; by its very nature, love creates and builds up...." ("Strength To Love,” 1963: 521.)
Taking Dr. King's advice, when we focus our intent and decisions for living upon love, we move out of the simplistic, circular logic of dualistic thinking. Doing so we can move forward into a new development in our relationship with God: As partner and co-creator — an alliance with God that more fully supports our responsibilities to aid the healing of our planet and ourselves — to learn to love more completely.
We will have no confusion about our relationship to others when we understand clearly that our relationship to God has only one nature. When we feel safe in God's universe and we feel safe in our relationship with God, then we can trust God and ourselves to act and make decisions that move us into loving, sacred relationships.