Though as new-born
infants we humans have little awareness, it begins early and quickly
grows. The degree of our awareness so far surpasses
animals that we can consider it a distinguishing characteristic of
humankind. Awareness of everything is one of God's
distinguishing attributes. He is omniscient --
all-knowing. This ominiscient God made us in His
image. We're not all-knowing of course, but God did make us
to be aware of ourselves, our surroundings, others, the past, the
present, the possibilities for the future and, as much as possible, the
spiritual realm with God at the center throughout time. One
description of us is that we are "life self-aware". God
created us to see, to hear, to taste, to smell, to feel, and most
importantly, to think and to emote.
So what are the implications of being this self-aware life
created by God? Why did God make us so? First of
all consider that God is Eternal, ever-living. He has always
been aware, is aware, and always will be aware. And God being
the loving Creator that He is certainly wants life to be a pleasant
experience, something to be desired. As any loving father,
His desire for us is that we have the fullest, richest, most meaningful
life possible, and He's even gone beyond giving us just this 70 or 80
years of physical life. With Him life is such a wonderful
thing that He's offered us Eternal life, and an Eternal life free of
those things that frequently make this physical life a difficult
struggle.
We have been given our five senses, the ability to
think, and our emotions so we can relate with reality, with God, each
other, and our surroundings. God's primary concern is that we
be in relationship with Him so that we're in a position to be further
blessed -- so that our life is as full and rich as possible.
He wants us to know Him, to be aware of His reality as the Creator of
all that exists, to be aware of His reality as our savior and to be
aware of His reality as the source for everything we need both
physically and spiritually. He wants us to dwell in the realm
of reality -- of truth. To fail to do so is
craziness.
God wants us to know our own reality,
too. That's where the life self-aware comes in. The
Scottish poet, Robert Burns said something like, "If we culd see
irselves as ither people see us...." Well, we can,
because God made us to be aware. We can be objective about
ourselves -- observe our own thoughts, actions and feelings.
We can observe our emotions for the signals they give us about what we
truly believe and value in the center of our beings. It's
important for us to know where we fall short of Godly love in our
dealings with each other. The self-awareness God built into
us allows us to do that -- allows us to compare ourselves with the
perfect love and goodness that are God's hallmarks. The tools
for awareness God built in to us help us better understand and relate
with others and our surroundings. This is why education is so
important. With awareness -- with knowledge -- we can do
that. The greater our awareness the richer our life
experience. And God would have it so -- even to Eternity. |
