Psalm 104. And there is that Leviathan, which you have made for the sport of it.
Asteroids, storms, centipedes, nettles, flounders, black holes, persimmons, people. Why does God make these things? Some say God creates because it is the nature of God to create. But that's like saying the sky is blue because it is the nature of the sky to be blue. Others say God creates in order to have someone to love. But that would seem to suggest that God is incomplete or unfulfilled without us to relate to.
I don't know why God creates. But I like the idea of this psalmist, who looks at one of nature's more implausible creatures, the whale (leviathan is Hebrew for whale), and suggests that God made it simply for the fun of it.
I like to envision God sitting wherever God sits and dreaming up things that will amuse him: "I think I'll make a funny little wingless bird and plop it down in Antarctica. Then tomorrow, I'll make the Amazon. The day after that, icebergs. Then I'll put together the Crab Nebula, and then grapevines. And then I'll make ocean waves, snowflakes, sunbeams, blueberries, and quarks. Then, for the sport of it, I'll make a huge sea creature that blows air out the top of its head. All this I shall do, just for fun! Then I'll make human beings and let them wonder why I did it at all."
Originally posted in 2001.
