Atypically Creating the Universe and Parenting
Just making the world and babies and stuff.
In Christian theology, God created the universe from nothing. It’s called ‘creation ex nihilo’: God makes the universe ‘from scratch’ - literally from “no thing”. This is one of the ultimate God abilities: that he can do this, and no one else can.
Below, you can see a great visual representation of this. Here we have, for your visual contemplation: nothing, rendered as a black circle, and God pokes in there and makes the universe out it.
Most people intuitively think of God creating stuff in this way. Somewhat like a wizard, just freely zapping things into reality. It just makes sense: what would the alternative be?
One alternative model is creation “ex deo” - “from God”: God making the universe out of himself. You find this in some esoterica stuff - for this I often imagine something like God as a huge ball with a face pulling things out of himself - or a kind of pantheistic model where God is the universe, and everything is made of… Him. We will not be exploring that here.
In Mormonism, there’s a third option presented, which I have generally not seen fleshed out anywhere else - creation ex materia: God makes the universe from stuff that is already there - stuff that is just lying in wait for someone to do something with it.
There’s all this stuff (excuse my use of the technical term): materials, intelligence, and so on, and God organizes it into the universe. If we put aside the historical, theological, philosophical “is that even plausible” domain of thoughts for a second, there’s an interesting analogy here to parenting, and raising kids
This fits right into the parenting experience because in one articulation of this model, God is basically in the position of a literal parent, just like the parents you know. There’s these intelligences around, we might casually say tiny undeveloped souls or something, and a big chaotic mess of stuff.
(This gets at the common Christian critique of Mormonism that their God is kind of just like, a really big powerful guy - almost literally a man in the sky, not the philosophical “beyond physical” “creation from nothing” omnipotent omnipresent God - just an interesting side note.)
Anyway, the situation God finds himself in here is what it’s like being an actual terrestrial parent. It’s a literally a direct cosmic analogy. God looks around at all the stuff and undeveloped intelligences and asks, “what can I do with all this?”.
That’s basically what it’s like having a baby: suddenly there’s just this kid here - a literal nascent intelligence, and I’m stewarding a chaotic situation so he can develop.
I’m creating a situation where he can develop to become more like me, in a grand sense - not taking on my personality, of course, but taking on some of the higher attributes I already have.
So, I make a little room for him. I decide what to put into it based on this process. The floor should be soft - but not too soft. He has to learn to walk, while also not hurting himself. I look at the toys and items I should give him, and decide what to put in based on how it will affect and develop him. I’m doing my best with this chaotic mass of varying materials, to set him up in a way that will allow him to develop - because that’s the only way he can develop. In some ways, I can do anything - especially if we compare my mind to his. In other ways, I’m limited but the things already present before me.
This is kind of like one Mormon view of God and his creation of the universe. I have often imagined him looking at a kind of poorly fluttering baby “spirit with wings” or something, and thinking, “Okay, how can I help this guy along his path of development? Well, you’re going to need…” and creating various aspects of the universe in that way - just as a parent creates a home and educational program for their child.
We’re both working with stuff that’s already here and with our child’s innate conditions and attributes to allow them to develop and hopefully become what they are fully meant to be (in a way, you can fit this part back into normal Christian theology).
Regardless of whether all this is real, imagined, or perpendicular to reality, one thing I’ve taken from considering this back into my day to day life is the distinction between free will and agency, which I would say is explicit in Mormonism and highlighted: placed front and center. This cuts parenting up in a nice way.
Free will is one thing: a dog, in a way, has “total freedom” if he’s loose in a field: he can do whatever he wants - but “agency” is different. A dog doesn’t really have agency. He’s extremely limited by what’s right in front of him and his immediate desires and stimuli.
There’s a dimension of parenting that is developing the child’s agency. In the above conception, that’s what God is trying to do with us (among other things). Interestingly, as so much of parenting is about passing along correct models and information, it feels easy to totally 100% miss this.
You need to tell your kid “what is correct”. You can’t avoid that. That’s related to - but is actually separate from - empowering them to figure out what is correct. It’s kind of crazy to really flesh out and separate these things while parenting: they’re actually two completely different things - but you can completely miss the second one, a separate skill.
On my own short journey, I’ve often broke up parenting materials and people’s views on parenting along these lines. Telling a kid “this is wrong” is related to, but separate from: “here’s how you figure out what is wrong, in the future, on your own”. The second one is developing agency.
I intuit that this is kind of a scary dimension to open for parents. It seems easy to just not do it. In a way, you’re giving your child the ability to break with you and to draw conclusions different from you - but that’s how our relationship with God is anyway, in real life. God kind of makes people do things sometimes, I guess, but most of the time he’s really just presenting information and options, and the decisions are all up to you. From where I’m sitting at this exact second, this is kind of what it’s like having a three year old.
Cool.
Academic footnote (1):
The above comic is the first comic in my most recent book, ‘Wagnition’. I deal directly with the intersection of classical and atypical theology and having a baby in one of my other books, ‘Babyology’.
On a theological note, I find it interesting that when talking to Mormon missionaries, which I love doing, they can’t say where this materia came from. I say ‘you can’t say?’ In the beginning of the Gospel of John does it not say that all things were created by the Word? They are always dumbfounded when I point this out, looking to each other for an answer. Nice analogy to parenting though thanks.