By Deacon Mike Seibert
Connecting Creed and Life
Editor’s note: For 2025, the weekly Connecting Faith and Life column will be renamed Connecting Creed and Life. To celebrate the 2025 Jubilee Year and the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, the columns will consist of reflections on the Nicene Creed, corresponding with related paragraphs in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC).
“I believe in one God … maker …” (cf. CCC 290-324).
It was nothing. …
We’ve all been there. We do something good and when someone compliments us, we say, “It was nothing.” We say it to humbly minimize the good we’ve done. We don’t want to get all gushy or something.
God created … well … everything — including you. And when he did, he called it Good. We should be grateful — but God could truthfully reply, “It was nothing,” because when God created, he really did start with nothing. In Latin, “ex nihilo.”
“In the beginning, God created …” are five words that should blow our minds. What does “in the beginning” mean? Isn’t time infinite? No, time itself had a beginning. Rather than being infinite, time was created by God at the inception of the universe. God exists outside of time because he is eternal, but time itself did not exist until God created it. Is your mind blown yet?
We might be tempted to ask, “Yeah, but what did God do RIGHT BEFORE he created the universe?” That’s an invalid question. Before implies a sequence in time, but since time didn’t exist yet, God didn’t do anything “right before” he created time itself.
“God created.” This simple statement is no longer believed by everyone. Instead, they think scientific theories like the expanding universe, the big bang and evolution negate the need for God. To them, these theories prove that the whole universe either always existed in one form or another, or it came into being purely through forces of gravity and dark matter and such. They no longer see the need for God to create things, because somehow things just created themselves. But even scientists believe that the universe had a beginning 13.8 billion years ago. That’s a long time, but that’s not infinite. That means there WAS a beginning! If the universe had always existed, then time itself would always exist — but this is contrary to what God has revealed to us: “In the beginning, God created …”
It bears repeating that these scientific theories are not anti-religion. These theories simply explain how God created and continues to create. The whole universe was not set in place as a completed project — but it was set in motion … and science confirms that … it’s expanding. It’s changing. Evolution simply gives an idea of how God continues to recreate. All of creation has a beginning, but it also has an end — a destination — a trajectory. A simple example is that you started as a zygote in your mother’s womb and that was when you began your life “in time.” You had a beginning, and your growth and transformation day by day is leading somewhere. Where? To death … when you exit time. But that’s not the end because we join God outside of time!
God created you and me and set us on a trajectory back to him. During our pilgrimage here on earth (in time), we participate in God’s creation. When we choose to bring children into the world, God allows us to play an explicit role in creation. While to the scientific observer, this may appear to be random, it’s all part of God’s plan for creation as he calls us all back to himself. Our participation in time is a training ground to learn to love as God loves. Every time we exercise our free will to love another, we image God; we bring God’s presence into his creation, because “God is Love.”
But God is not a divine clock-maker who wound the clock and stepped away. No, God is present in his creation and sustains all of creation at every moment. For evidence of his presence, we need only look at the glory revealed in the natural world: a sunset, a newborn child, a beautiful blanket of snow, the fruitfulness of a garden, deer grazing in the woods, the excitement and beauty of a young couple in love … all of these have the potential to touch our hearts as we get a glimpse that “there is something more than what we see.” We get a glimpse into the eternal as the eternal God reveals his glory to us.
And when our hearts expand, we exclaim to God how wonderful his creation is. His response? “It was nothing.”
Deacon Mike Seibert serves in the discipleship/evangelization ministry, assisting the north Dubois County parishes.