Why Creation Matters

All things bright and beautiful

All creatures great and small,

All things wise and wonderful,

The Lord God made them all.

-Cecil Frances Alexander

The creation of our world, of our universe, lies hidden in the mists of time. The easy, simple belief was to believe that the world was, is and always would be. That there was no creation event, that there was no Prime Mover of time and space. That is the faith of those that would deny God.

However, since the advent of the Big Bang theory, which understands that ours is not a static universe, there is scientific support for the idea of some sort of beginning in time and space. This would seem to lend credence to the concept of a Creation ex nihilo (out of nothing) by a Creator independent of space and time. Nonetheless, scientists go to great lengths to seek some primordial cause to the Big Bang that would remove God from the equation. They have yet to make any convincing cases.

Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch (see here for biography), on his very first comments to the Book of Genesis, explains that belief in anything else than God as the be all and end all of the entirety of creation is the basis of all idol worship until this very day. That is the reason why the Torah starts with the story of creation, that God in effect brought existence into being. That is the foundation of correct belief. If we don’t believe that God is behind it all, responsible for all, we will be lacking in our faith and consequently in our actions and in our life.

God is the Creator. The Creator of Everything. That’s important.

Shabbat Shalom,

Ben-Tzion

Dedication

To our sons Yehoshua Simcha and Yehuda Ohr on the occasion of their Bar-Mitzvah.