Why I'm Loving God this Christmas
I am going to answer this question in the abstract. I love God because not only is he the cause of my existence, but He actively sustains my being every moment I'm alive.
Him being the cause of existence isn't exactly something that people gloss over, but the popular imagination has Him operating like a snooker player who, once he's made his shot, leaves the white ball to collide with the other balls and produce the desired result. This kind of thinking has him as the cause of the Big Bang; and perhaps due to his omniscience, He set-up the initial conditions of our universe perfectly for it to self-generate His desired outcome. While my personal view of God as first cause sort of includes this (I don't think I'd disagree with this idea), I'd want to be careful that this extra, main bit is added.)
Ed Feser writes:
A linear or per accidens causal series characteristically extends over time and is made up of members each of which has independent or built-in causal power. One of the examples Aquinas gives is that of a father who begets a son who in turn begets another. If the first member dies, the series can still carry on, because the son retains power to beget a son of his own whether or not his own father is still in the picture.
Firstly, it is important to stress that God actively created man. Both Genesis 1 and 2 oblige me to believe this, but I think I'd believe it without them too. Owing to various differences in kind rather than simply differences in degree, inorganic to organic matter, dead matter to living matter, purely reactive life to sentient life, and ultimately unconscious to conscious life, I fail to see any kind of plausible natural (or for that matter disinterested supernatural) explanation for this. In other worldviews this fact is either denied (these aforementioned differences are illusory, 'put on' by the human mind, not corresponding to real differences in reality) and so need no explanation, or are glossed over and not given much weight, just little lemmas that haven't yet been explained.
But the second sense is the sense that excites me most, and the one which, when contemplated, greatly aids me spiritually, drawing me closer to my creator. Where before we had a snooker player striking the ball, now imagine a fire producing a flame. No doubt the snooker player has caused the non-white balls to move by hitting them with the white ball, and the fire has caused the flame by giving off its energy. In both cases, without the cause, no effect. But in the case of the flame, it is ongoing creation, moment to moment creation, the flame relies on the fire to constantly sustain it's existence. If even for a moment the fire dies, then so too the flame. The snooker player could well drop dead the moment he strikes the white ball but that won't stop the white ball from moving, hitting the others, and it most certainly won't put the white ball back where it was before he hit it. But in the case of the flame, when the fire goes out it returns to it's state of non-existence as it was before the fire started. Such a way gets at the idea of God not just as prime mover in a sequential causal series, but as the first cause in a chain of hierarchical life giving. Things actively rely on other things to exist, and when B, relying on A existing, has existence because A exists, then B can give C existence. But, remove A, and B goes instantly. The glass is on the table because the floor is holding the table up and the table is holding the glass up. Without the floor, the glass cannot exist in as a being held by the table. In this way, and I do believe it is possible to sense this happening, every single moment we are alive we are actively, right then, caused to exist by God. He is the underlying substrate in which things can be. He is the ground of being, and must constantly actively give existence to everything that exists, in the same way the ground must constantly support those things resting upon it. He gives being to all beings, and without him nothing would be. It's not just that the white ball wouldn't have had anybody to strike it, but that nothing would have any being to begin with.
Ed Feser continues:
...hierarchical series of causes, the members are typically acting simultaneously rather than over time, and that is because the members other than the first have only derivative or borrowed causal power rather than built-in causal power. Aquinas’s example in the passage from the Summa just cited is that of a stone which is moved by a stick which is moved by a hand. The causes and effects in this series are simultaneous. The stone is being moved by the stick at the same moment that the stick is in turn moved by the hand. More to the point, the stick moves the stone only insofar as it is itself being moved by the hand, for the stick has no independent or built-in causal power. It has causal power only qua instrument of the hand.
It is a miracle that we persist in existence. I can understand no reason for it other than that we have a loving God. I have made many mistakes in my life, and lots of people have died as a direct result of doing similar things. I rejoice that I am forgiven, and (if not with my whole being) will continue to rejoice every moment I am here.
Leaving it to Chesterton to drive home my point (I can think of no ally I'd rather have through my philosophical ambles), hear him talk of the care and attention with which our Lord actively shapes and sustains all His beings.
But the repetition in Nature seemed sometimes to be an excited repetition, like that of an angry schoolmaster saying the same thing over and over again. The grass seemed signalling to me with all its fingers at once; the crowded stars seemed bent upon being understood. The sun would make me see him if he rose a thousand times. The recurrences of the universe rose to the maddening rhythm of an incantation, and I began to see an idea.
The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction.
A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.