God becoming

But because I, ADONAI, do not change, you sons of Ya’akov will not be destroyed.

Malachi 3:6

The word used to express the idea of not changing is sanah, which can mean to change, but often is used to say especially to change one’s attitude or character.

We can argue both ways about which connotation is used in the verse in Malachi. The decision might have bigger implications than we would see on first thought. Especially, if we translate the verse as „because I, the Lord, do not change in attitude or character“, we allow God to change in other attributes.

What if God is becoming as we evolve?

Let’s for a moment suggest that God is not omniscient and omnipotent, but all-knowing relationally. What do I mean by that?

In German, there are the two words that are translated to English as to know, which are wissen und kennen. The first means to know facts, while the second means to know people or things relationally or experientially. Kennen is relational. Ich kenne das means I know that as in I have experienced that myself. All usages of the word kennen imply that I have some sort of relationship with the object, without having to know all the facts about it.

What if God is not omniscient, that is allwissend, but allkennend.

Of course, one would immediately interject that Jesus said: depart from me because I never knew you. And I would have to think about that for sure, but at first glance, that might just not be talking about relational knowing but factual knowledge.

But we are doing a thought experiment here anyway, so come with me for a moment.

I have written in several places that I see the journey of mankind as the evolution of consciousness. It starts with Adam in the garden as a non-conscious being, with proto-consciousness at best. They have a waking moment and learned about themselves, dualistic good and evil, and their future in toil, pain and death. Since then, mankind has progressed and become aware of many more things.

What if God did the same?

What if God started as ein sof, prior to any self-manifestation, and since has created his own potentiality in creation and in us?

Zohar explains it like this:

Before He gave any shape to the world, before He produced any form, He was alone, without form and without resemblance to anything else. Who then can comprehend how He was before the Creation? Hence it is forbidden to lend Him any form or similitude, or even to call Him by His sacred name, or to indicate Him by a single letter or a single point… But after He created the form of the Heavenly Man, He used him as a chariot wherein to descend, and He wishes to be called after His form, which is the sacred name “YHWH”.

Zohar

That would imply that the moment Adam was made in God’s image, God was realized in Adam’s image. The Heavenly Man denotes Adam before the exemption from paradise, that is in the conceptual worlds before being clothed with flesh by God.

Ein sof means the nameless being or the non-existing existence. It is mere potentiality, later realized in creation.

So God before creation was formless and from this formless potential formed creation, giving himself form. Thus, as every moment is realizing and manifesting new potential based on and springing from all past manifestation, as God keeps on creating, he also keeps on creating himself.

Wisdom declares that before anything was, she was with God. Wisdom is potentiality. It is the stream of ongoing creation from potentiality that since forms time and becoming.

Thus God is becoming, as much as we are becoming, and those two processes actually are in step, or even better, are one and the same.
God could only express love having multiple counterparts to love. Usually, that thought is used to declare the necessity of the trinity. God needing one other person to show love, and a third person to show that his love is not partial.

But then, Jesus said that it is not very hard to love your friends, and I would say that the three that make up one God are friends. Jesus says that anybody can do that. It is only when you love your enemies that you truly show love.

With this in mind, I would say that God became love once there were some beings that did not love him back and he still showed them love. There needed to be a creation for God to manifest his potential of being love.

Therefore, God evolved into love when we evolved into consciousness.

Suddenly, Jesus’ word that we and God are one as he and the father are one make much more sense. We are interdependent. We are intertwined, and one would not evolve apart from the other.

This way to look at everything opens new doors and changes everything. It puts infinite value on humanity. In the meantime, it also explains the connection between our scientific findings of a 13.8 billion year evolution and the biblical narrative. But then, it also puts us on a journey of redefining everything we believe about our future.

Why would such a God that co-evolves with us as co-creators punish anybody eternally? Why would he care about morals so much? Maybe our part is much bigger in all this than we thought?

I told you that this is a thought experiment, but certainly one worth taking into consideration.

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