God Didn’t Have To

Trapper Peak, Bitterroot Range, Montana

It seems (to me) that “in the beginning” God desired a created being with which to share Himself. Why that might be is something we don’t know. Apparently it is something God does not care to reveal. What we do know is that God is a spiritual being and presumably not deeply connected to the physical qualities of His created world in a personal way, and definitely not subject to them.

Certainly, in order to achieve His purpose, it was not necessary to endow the creation with such magnificence, intrigue and beauty to name a few of many qualities that could be mentioned. Why did God create in such an awesome fashion? He certainly didn’t have to.

What follows would be better presented visually, but that is not possible That will necessitate you involving your imagination and memory of the things that will be mentioned. I hope your imagination and memory are up to the task. Good luck.

God didn’t have to create sound. He could have communicated to us through thought processes or in other ways of His choosing. But He created sound. Having created sound, He didn’t have to provide us with any pleasant sounds. Which is not to say all sounds would then be unpleasant. He could have made all sound to be drab , uninteresting, maybe even all the same. From our standpoint now, having experienced sound, that would be boring and droll. But if that were the only concept of sound we knew, we wouldn’t know there were any other possibilities.

God didn’t have to make elk bugle, geese honk, roosters crow, donkey’s bray, horses neigh, elephants trumpet, owls hoot, or the call of a loon or eagle, whippoowhill or mockingbird, or a cat purr, and so many more animal sounds that are fascinating to hear. He didn’t have to make a world in which thunder echoes in a mountain valley or waves crash on a beach, or provide us with the roar of water as it cascades in “white water” down a series of steps, or thunders over a waterfall.

Our world could have been one in which musical instruments didn’t exist because there was nothing for them to produce. There would be no mandolins, banjos, or fiddles for bluegrass music. Imagine, no violins, other strings, oboes, etc. for orchestral music. There would be no Strauss waltzes, no Andre Rieu. No big bands, no little bands, no folk bands, no rock bands, no half-time marching bands - no music. None. He didn’t have to create sound, but He did.

God didn’t have to make odors. There didn’t have to be honeysuckle, or roses, or scent given off by any flower. Freshly mowed lawns could have been odorless, freshly cut cedar would not have made me swoon from the goodness of the smell. We could be waking to the absence of the odor of coffee or bacon. There would be no enticing scent coming from the nearby barbeque restaurant. Raindrops on hot asphalt would have no affect on our olfactory system. We might not even have an olfactory system, because why? God didn’t have to create odor, but He did.

Closely related to our sense of smell, is our sense of taste. But God didn’t have to make things taste, or us have the ability to sense taste. This takes us back to bacon - no taste. A strawberry milkshake would be a matter of great indifference. It would have the same appeal as a rutabaga or a turnip. Your favorite food (to each their own list this time) would not be your favorite food. Everything would have no taste. Taking nutrition would be as exciting as squeezing a tube of paste into your mouth. God didn’t have to make taste, but He did.

God could have devised a way for us to function without sight. He could have given us sight and a bland world to see. God didn’t have to give us Glacier NP, Yosemite, Acadia in Maine, Utah, the Smokies, Crater Lake, California or Florida seashores, Lake Superior, Minnesota’s North Shore, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, the Tetons, the expanse of the Great Plains leading up to Colorado’s Front Range. He didn’t have to create the Aurora Borealis or the Horsehead Nebula. Somebody stop me. I could go on forever. God didn’t have to give us beauty, but He did.

God didn’t have to give us horses, or black bears with cubs, or moose and their young wading in lakes. He didn’t have to give us puppies and dogs, or kittens and cats, In short, God could have created a totally bland world with just us and Him. The world could have been entirely flat. Everything could have been gray. Food could have been tasteless and nothing would have an odor. There could have been nothing to hear. God could have created our world that way, but He didn’t. Why not? Why did He place all these items of interest and fascination all around us?

Well, He didn’t tell us, so it becomes a matter of speculation. How does it make you feel that God has given us all these things that He absolutely did not have to provide and which we would not have missed because we would have never known or imagined that it could be any different?

I gave this presentation (visually) to a teenage class and posed the same question to them. “How does this make you feel?” I had no idea what kind of response I would get. One girl immediately said, “It makes me feel loved.” The rest of the class agreed with her answer. I posed it to some adults on a different occasion and one man answered that it was like a young man bringing a bouquet of flowers to a girl he was picking up for dinner.

I think those are interesting and appropriate answers. How does it make you feel? I invite and encourage you to answer in the comments below.

• I know that some smells stink, some sounds are grating, some tastes are nauseating, and some sights are ugly, It’s kind of a baby and bathwater type of thing if you look at it that way. But that is a negative way to look at it. I encourage you to find a more optimistic outlook.