FORGIVENESS

“To forgive somebody is to say one way or another, ‘You have done something unspeakable, and by all rights I should call it quits between us. Both my pride and my principles demand no less. However, although I make no guarantees that I will be able to forget what you’ve done, and though we may both carry the scars for life, I refuse to let it stand between us. I still want you for my friend.’ To accept forgiveness means to admit that you’ve done something unspeakable that needs to be forgiven, and thus both parties must swallow the same thing: their pride. Fredrick Buechner

The early chapters of Genesis assume a great deal about how the world came into existence. Stories like this-about the beginning of the world and the uni-verse—are not unique to the Bible. Every ancient culture existing around Israel believed (as did Israel) in some kind of creation story about the world's origins. These are called "cosmologies." Ancient cultures based their sense of national identity on these stories they told themselves about how everything came to be. These kinds of cosmologies and origin stories were common among Babylon-ians, Egyptians, Sumerians, and Mesopo-tamians.19 One distinguishing mark of many of these cosmologies was some colossal clash wherein the gods went to battle in a cosmological war. To the winner went the spoils—in our case, the realm of earth below. In stark contrast, the ancient reader would have immediately noticed that Genesis doesn't begin with a cosmic war. It begins with, "And God said, 'Let there be light' (Gen. 1:3). We see no bloody battle, intergalactic skirmish, or divine power grab. God simply spoke. And everything became. Consider this from an ancient point of view. In a diverse religious world of gods seeking to win power through war, imagine how stirring it would have been to hear that this God of Israel created only to divest and give power to the humans he'd made-to name, rule, and fill the earth. The God of the Bible doesn't war for power. He already has it. And he begins sharing his power with his human creations by the end of the second chapter. Most conversations about creation in Christian circles obsess over the "how" of creation: How old is the earth? How many years ago did God make the universe? How could God create in a literal seven-day period? These are important, fascin-ating, and pressing conversations. But I think more pertinent for a conversation about desire is the "why" of creation. Although scientific inquiry can help us see what exists, it can’t, with much explanatory power, explain why it exists. Science, able to explain the properties of stars’ existence, can’t explain their reason for being. The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War for Our Wants by A.J. Swoboda

God did not create the cosmos because he had to out of compulsivity or necessity. Nor did he create the world out of bore-dom, sadness, a need for companionship, or some existential crisis. God, in love, created out of desire. Everything exists because God desired it to exist. As the ancient author of 1 Clement would reflect, "[God's] breath is in us, and when he so desires, he will take it away." We exist by divine desire. That’s our cosmology. We were and are wanted. This remains the whole purpose of creation. “Desire is the good and beautiful momentum behind the artistry of Genesis 1,” Jen Pollock Michel reflects. “No compelling obligation stands behind these words [of “let there be light”], no shrugging sense of duty, only the heartbeat of heaven and the desire of God for humanity.”24 For this very reason, Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg appropriately titled her commentary on the creation story The Beginning of Desire.25 This desire is what the whole story is about. In fact, Paul Hooker has beautifully paraphrased the opening chapter of John’s gospel: In the beginning was Desire, and Desire was with The Infinite, and Desire was The Infinite. Desire was the crown The Infinite wore, and Desire made The Infinite Beautiful. The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War for Our Wants by A.J. Swoboda

In Orthodoxy, Chesterton argued that the world spins, the sun rises, and the oceans wave simply because God desires them to: It might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. They want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore. The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War for Our Wants by A.J. Swoboda

This desire pulsates, animating every fleck of creation—a desire that led Abraham Kuyper famously to declare, "There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: 'Mine!'34 God wants creation. So much so that sixteenth-century Pietist theologian Jacob Boehm would call creation a "concentration of desire." The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War for Our Wants by A.J. Swoboda

Human wants are birthed from lack. Divine wants are birthed from love. God didn't create Eden because he needed more carrots or lettuce or fig trees. He didn't fill it because he frantically needed to be loved or affirmed by creation. God isn't egotistical, narcissistic, or in need of an emotional pick-me-up. Rather, God desired friendship, relationship, and intimacy with his creation—a desire arising from an uncreated and eternal perfection. The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War for Our Wants by A.J. Swoboda