Guest Series: The Heart of the Universe

Recently, a good friend from my old uni sent me an honest and insightful e-mail about how unsatisfying he was finding he was finding his constantly changing social scene. He was meeting so many interesting people, learning about so many lives, living so many memories - why, he asked, did these leave ‘some sort of melancholy about not having someone by my side but only "people", tangential moments, experiences’, why was he left with only a sense of ‘depression?...[G]ranted these will surely shape my future to come...but what about now?’ His powerful words made me really think about what friendships are, why we need them, and what sort of friendships we need. What that led me to, which I’ve fitted into 3 posts here, is that they are part of who we are, they’re part of why we’re made, and they’re at the core of the universe. You can judge if I’m overstating my case. So far, I looked at relationship as at the heart of who we are and how we were made. Now let’s look at relationship as the heart of the universe...

Last time, we went through how God puts relationship (with Him and each other) at the core of our nature. But this time I want to go a little further. It’s not just that we are ‘relational things’ - it’s that the God at the heart of the universe is a relational being, at the very core.

So, the second post looked at something hugely significant - how and what we were created for. You could hardly look at two more significant areas of enquiry for humanity. But when it comes to the nature of God, you can’t really underestimate the significance of it. Can’t. If God is the creator of everything - then the nature of God is of unique, powerful, and pervading significance for understanding and experiencing everything. But before I hurt my brain by thinking about how everything aspect of physical and abstract experience originates with God-- let’s move back to point:

We have seen that God has made us for relationship with each other, and with Him. Now, it’s perhaps nature to think that God makes humanity because he needs (or feels a need for) a relationship. God was lonely. God needed someone with which to share his love, creativity, excitement, time, nachos. But while it’s nice to be needed, the Bible tells us something much more reassuring, and much more profound.

You see, some people say that God is just 'one' - he is a solitary figure. But how can a solitary figure, who has existed eternally, know love and sacrifice and friendship? It can't, until it creates something else, and then it is learning just as fast as the creation is learning. Others say that there are many, many Gods - and that they are in a kind of holy war: they fight, they trick, they try to get humanity onto their side rather than the other Gods' sides. And so we as humans, they say, must appease these different Gods. These Gods must each be pacified, or we are in danger of being caught in the crossfire.

But the Bible tells us something so wonderful we can hardly get our minds around it. It tells us the mystery of the Trinity. It tells us that God is not a solitary individual. It tells us that there are not many God fighting it out for dominance and triumph. It tells us, beautifully, that God exists in a perfect relationship. The Bible reveals to us, in a small but glorious way, that God is a perfect, loving, sacrificial, eternal relationship of three persons: the Father, the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit. Eternally, God - in these three ‘persons’ (if you like) - has loved and been loved; sacrificed for others and had others sacrifice for him; told stories and heard stories; sung lullabies and drunk up songs; made jokes and laughed at them. It is a relationship we see small pictures of in the eyewitness accounts of Jesus' life (such as his baptism, and just before his death; when he is praying in the garden of Gethsemene; and in the pain of him crying out that the Father had forsaken him). So friendship and relationship is not just an add-on to God (and to us, as we are made ‘in his image’) - it is the very nature of God! Just as love, justice, truth, joy are all part of God’s character - so this relational-three-person-ness is. In fact, it is how how and where he has been loving, and just, and truthful, and joyful! That’s the heart of life, the universe, and everything! A beautiful, eternal, perfect relationship! That’s such a mind-blowing idea that I could meditate on it a year without scratching the surface.

And so what’s our take-home from this? What’s the cheque we cash? Well, many things. But one thing that it shouldn’t lead to is to make us think that we will find satisfaction by ploughing into the relationships around us. Please do that - invest in them, sacrifice for them, learn and laugh through them. But we won’t find satisfaction there. We were made for that. That’s the heart of the universe. But something’s gone wrong. The sin - the rejection of God - that all of us have chosen means that we are ‘fallen’. We’re wrong, broken, bad. Relationships will still bring us much joy - but also much pain. They will bring us much comfort - but not satisfaction.

But there is one person who never sinned - not during his life, or eternity. Who never rejected God, even when it cost his life and more. Jesus Christ is not only the perfect friend and Lord. He is also the perfect saviour - who opens up to us that chance to be reconciled to Him. And that reconciliation - that rebuilding on the relationship between us and God (and, eventually, in some respect, one another) - that reconciliated relationship is the only place to find satisfaction, now and for eternity.