Thoughts On A Birthday

Readers know that I normally write blogs to good friends honoring them on their birthdays.

What do I do on mine today?

Which went well, my roommate did excellent surprising me with a cake and some books and my folks gift to me today of Smallville Season 7 was quite pleasing. I was hoping to get it on my birthday. Last night though, I was pondering what this meant to be thinking about another year of existence.

The first idea is on my belief of God’s knowledge. In my mind, I and everyone else did exist as an idea in the mind of God before I actually acquired existence in the space-time universe. God was not surprised by me. He saw me from all eternity and in fact, it would be better to say that he sees me from all eternity. It is difficult for us to often talk about God as our thinking is so time-laden that we seem to drag God into that unawares.

That always brings in to mind the uniqueness of existence. I have always been on God’s mind and he brought me into existence at a certain time. I believe that he knows what he is doing and does all things well. Please understand this readers. I say this about me as it is my birthday that I am thinking about, but what I am saying is not unique to me. It applies to everyone in the universe.

Existence itself is a gift. What it is entirely, I will have to think more on. One of our textbooks this year will be “An Interpretation of Existence.” I have been thinking about existence more and more since I heard it. What does it mean to exist? We all think the question is so simple, but could it be something so simple that we don’t really know what it is because it’s right in front of us?

I’d like to bring in another idea though that I’ve had seeing as I plan on writing a paper on the Trinity. I recently read Rushdoony’s “The One and the Many.” This is talking about the ancient question in philosophy of which has primacy. The one or the many? In Christian thought, it’s both as God is one in nature and three in person. Thus, God is one and many.

Notice what that means. There is universal and particular both in God. There is the nature of God and there are the particular persons that share the nature of God. Universals would be such things as redness. There are objects that are red and partake of the quality of red. Particular would be a stop sign. That one stop sign is red.

Have you ever considered that this explains so much of the creation as there is a universal and particular there also. All that we see participates in a nature beyond itself somehow, but yet, each thing is a particular object. The tree outside our apartment bears the nature of being a tree, but it is a particular tree. It is not all trees.

What about you and I?

We each bear the quality of being human. Some of us partake of extra qualities, such as I partake of being male, being caucasian, etc. However, there is a particular to me as well. I am the only one of my kind that bears the attributes that eventually get down to me being me. There are things about me that are not true of anyone else.

Which means not only am I an idea in the mind of God at first then, but I am a unique one, and again, the same applies to you. There is no one else like you. God could not have another idea of you because if those two ideas are the same, then they are really one. You are unique in your own way. There never has been anyone like you and there never will be anyone else like you. If you don’t believe God makes mistakes or that things don’t happen accidentally, then you exist for a reason.

This means also that that person that you meet on the street exists for a reason. They are unique in the mind of God and it would be tragic for us to treat them as common. Each one is unique and it could be that each of us is meant to show something different about the nature of God in eternity. None of us alone can fathom who he is, so the more of us that are there, the more we all know about his nature and how awesome he is.

In closing though, what do I see? A birthday is a unique event to celebrate God bringing something into actual existence that is unlike anyone else that has ever been or will be. That applies to my birthday and it applies to yours as well. Your existence is here for a reason. Will you not use it for something greater than your existence?