Plantinga Chap 2: Creation

The in the second chapter of his book "engaging God's world," Platinga explored the created world in the bible context. In the first part of the chapter, platinga looked into the beauty of the Trinity. As described, God's Tri-union is shown as one in which every person in the trinity if pouring all of itself into the other persons in the trinity. As observed in the gospels, Christ sought to teach this to his disciples by washing their feet the night of passover. Through out his teaching, Christ constantly show his disciple (as well as all who would call themselves believer) that to "be the highest, you must first be the lowest," and further showed them that a true leader is one who seeks to serve rather than be served.

It would seem in our world today, those who call themselves believers no longer recognize the beauty in being a servant. Christians in our society are caring far to much about their personal well being and not enough about the outside world. Perhaps, the really sad part about it is the ways in which people justify their actions or non-actions when it comes to doing the things of Christ.

In the next section of chapter 2, Plantinga brought to light (with the help of scriptures) the beauty of creation and the beauty that God himself pronounced upon his creation. Firstly, he clearly made it know that the reason for creation isn't because God got bored or lonely. It is true, as plantinga says, that God cannot be God without relationship, but God doesn't need to create other things apart from himself to get that relationship because within himself is a Tri-union of person which constantly pours into the other for all eternity. Plantinga also felt it necessary to mention that God neither created the world out of a whim or accident (since some say the world came to be by random chance). If God created not out of need or accident, then the conclusion would be that God created because he wanted to, which as Plantinga mention, is to say that creating is fitting for God.

From this, Plantinga focused his gaze on man. It is becoming more and more in todays world for people to give mankind more importance then they really warrant. This, of cause, it not to say we are not important, but I believe it is clear that man is not at the center of the world, after all the sun does not revolve around the earth but the earth around the sun. As I see it, a proper understanding of creation would bring to light the proper focus man should have and the over-consuming importance God should have, which in todays world is not the case, rather we see people (some Christians included) give themselves much more glory than the Creator. There are also those who give creation more glory than the deserving creator. This is the case with people who seem to care more about tree and even worship the tree than they do God.

In tainted vision of the creation other as also led to people who put highest importance were it does not belong in the world. When I see people talk about saving the planet and in the say breath say abortion is ok because "the woman as the right to chose," I have to ask "what the hell is going on in the world." Not to be out done however, there are lot of believers who think just because God says to subdue the earth mean we can do with it as we so please. Though both cases are bad, I do believe killing unborn babies under the justification of freedom of choice (which is really saying "I want to be convenient rather than face up to responsibility") is far worse then anything else.

As believers, though, we are called to be in the world but not of the world, which to me means to seek to do the right thing even if no one else is. Which is to say that in our world today, we should stand out like a sore thump for the glory of God, which is seeming like the opposite of what Christians want to do today.