“The Heart stands opposite the Spring, and is filled with a mighty yearning to come to the Spring, crying out constantly, that it should be able to come to the Spring. And the Spring, similarly, is constantly yearning for the Heart. So if it is yearning so much to come to the Spring, why does it not just get up and go to it? The reason is, that when it comes close to the mountain, it can no longer see the summit, and therefore it can not see the Spring. And were it to stop looking at the Spring, it would die, because its whole existence comes from the Spring…This is the reason that it cannot go to the Spring. All it can do is to stand opposite it, and yearn and cry out for it.” – Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, “The Seven Beggars”

In the beginning, God alone existed. Because even time and space had not yet been created, He occupied a single point, without extension or duration. All the attributes he would eventually unfold were concentrated in this infinitely dense point–not only physical ones like mass and energy, but also all the attributes of consciousness that arise from matter in ways we can’t adequately explain.

Among these were love, chesed, and judgment, din, which pulled God in opposite directions. Because love yearns for reciprocation, to give itself to another and receive itself from the other, it wanted God to expand and multiply. Judgment, on the other hand, demands perfection, and it knows that only what is singular can be perfect. When One exists, no negatives can be predicated of it, because there is nothing that it is not. As soon as it becomes two, then each part is defined by privation, by not being the other, and can no longer satisfy judgment’s strict demand.

As long as love and judgment were in equilibrium, they annihilated one another completely, like matter and antimatter, so no change in God was possible. Yet the existence of the universe shows that somehow the force of love prevailed over the force of judgment, impelling God to create time and space. This is the moment that the Torah calls the beginning: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” 

This does not mean, however, that God’s love continued to preponderate over his judgment. A fraction of a fraction of an instant was sufficient to bring the universe into being, and God’s infinitude means that once time and space existed, they had to become infinite in order to contain him. In the first moment of their existence, they underwent an inconceivable inflation, turning a point into endless space and an instant into endless time.

Then the forces of love and judgment came back into balance, and God returned to stasis. That is why the Torah begins with the words, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” to teach us that he was a creator only at the beginning, at the beginning of the beginning. The universe, however, is unaware of this, because it cannot conceive that the love which created it was merely a momentary fluctuation. Even today we can observe the galaxies racing apart, in the belief that they are making room for God.

*

In the beginning, God existed alone. Because there was no other being, he filled all of space and time, so everywhere he looked he saw himself reflected back. And because he was perfect, the sight filled him with infinite contentment.

But one day God was troubled by the thought that his very perfection entailed an imperfection. In contemplating himself he felt wonder, satisfaction, and joy, but there was nothing to inspire the feelings that a higher being can only have towards a lower one, such as contempt and pity. Just as mathematics teaches that there are degrees of infinity, so that one infinite set can be larger than another, so God realized that there are degrees of perfection, and that a perfect perfection is less comprehensive than one that encompasses imperfection.

God resolved to create beings inferior to himself, so that in contemplating their limitations he could experience his own superiority. He brought the elementary particles into being, and watched them assemble into protons and neutrons and electrons, which begat atoms and molecules, stars and planets, plants and animals. In God’s eyes, of course, all this happened instantaneously, but to the beings themselves the process of creation was inconceivably slow and laborious.

For the first time, God understood what it meant to be superior. But he realized that his experience of superiority needed one more thing to be complete. God was conscious that he was infinitely wiser and more powerful than everything he had created, but the created things were not conscious of their inferiority, because none of them, from quarks to galaxies, was able to conceive of God as an infinite being. To enjoy the last refinement of superiority, he would need to create a being that was conscious of its own inferiority–who could measure the distance between itself and God as accurately as God did himself, but from the other direction. Only such a creature would be able to praise God or curse him, and until God knew what it was like to be loved and hated, he would remain incomplete.

So he took a breath and scooped up a handful of earth.

*

In the beginning, God was everything and everything was God. His attributes were perfectly satisfied with this state of affairs: his Wisdom was fully occupied in understanding his Mystery, just as his Power was fully occupied in celebrating his Glory. Only one faculty had a complaint to bring before God’s throne: his Love.

“Of course, God is infinitely lovable,” Love explained. “But the fact that you deserve infinite love means that there is no risk or sacrifice involved in loving you. To show what love is really capable of, I need to love a being that is not myself, and continue to love it no matter what it does. The more unworthy and unpredictable the object of my love, the more I will love it. I will not only love it more than it loves me; I will love it more than it loves itself. Only then can I show that God loves not because the object deserves it, but simply because it is his nature to love.”

When Judgment heard Love’s request, it rose in rebuttal. “The only reason love is able to make such a demand,” it said, “is that an attribute of God cannot imagine what it would be like to exist outside of God. A being that is not part of God would be outside God’s goodness, so it would be able to do evil. It would live in time, so it would get sick, grow old, and die. Could anything be more selfish than for God to create a being doomed to such an existence, simply in order to show how much he is able to love it? You call this love, but could hatred be any worse?”

But by the time Judgment finished speaking, it was too late: God was already a father.

*

God knew us before he created us, as the Psalm says: “Your eyes saw my unformed limbs;/they were all recorded in Your book.” If he could read in his book everything that human beings would do, all that we were capable of, why did he still choose to create us? It can be explained only by the urgency of his love, which would not be satisfied until we had passed from potentiality to actuality.

Now the situation is reversed. God does not exist, yet we know all there is to know about him; everything he is capable of, for good and evil, is recorded in our books. To bring him into being would require that we love God into existence, the way he once did for us. But even if we love him with all our heart, all our soul and all our might, we are not gods, and it may not be enough.

*

A supremely perfect being cannot be deficient in any way. He must possess every conceivable attribute, since if he lacks any, it would be possible to conceive of a being that does possess it, and that would be the actual supreme being. In this way, the ontological argument for the existence of God claims to show that since we can conceive of a supreme being, such a being must exist.

But the argument rests on a concealed assumption: that existence is more perfect than non-existence, and therefore necessary to a being that would claim perfection. A good case can be made that the opposite is true. It is what exists that must occupy definite limits, being one thing and not another; the non-existent can be as boundless as imagination. Only what exists can pass away; what never came into being can never abandon us. Perhaps the most perfect being would be the one that possesses every quality traditionally attributed to God–all his love, all his judgment–except the quality of existence. Perhaps we would even be surprised by how adequate this non-existent God is for all our purposes. Couldn’t we talk to him, think about him, measure ourselves against him, even though he doesn’t exist? Isn’t that what we do already?

*

One night during a long journey, Jacob fell asleep and saw something he had somehow failed to notice while awake. Right next to him on the side of the road was a ladder extending up into the skies, with angels ascending it rung by rung. “Where does this ladder lead to?” he asked an angel, since the top was lost in the clouds. “To God, of course,” the angel replied. “Can a human being also climb it?” Jacob asked. “I’ve never seen one try,” the angel mused, “but I’ve never heard that it’s prohibited.”

So Jacob started to climb. When he looked down he could see his camp and his team of mules getting smaller and smaller, but when he looked up there was nothing to see except the next rung of the ladder and the sandals of the angel climbing it, so he soon lost track of his progress. After days, or it might have been weeks, Jacob found himself amid the clouds, and his heart rejoiced at the thought that he would soon reach the top of the ladder. But when he emerged from the thick mist, he saw that the ladder extended up to the stars, the far rungs disappearing in darkness.

By now the earth seemed no closer than the stars, so Jacob continued to climb. Years passed, then centuries, then geological eras, and as he got higher and higher he saw amazing sights: planets of every size and color, the birth and death of stars, pillars of dust a million light-years long. Yet no matter how far he traveled, he never seemed to be any closer to God, and the same angel always occupied the rung above his head–at least, he could never notice any difference in the sandals.

Finally, after what might have been a trillion years, Jacob’s heart grew heavy. “I have traveled further and seen more than any man who has ever lived,” he reflected. “But I am no closer to God than when I fell asleep on the road from Beersheva to Haran. So why does the ladder exist? And how will I ever manage to get off?”

At this, the angel above him paused and looked down for the first time. “You can stop climbing at any time,” the angel told Jacob. “As soon as you do, you will wake up where you started, and everything you’ve seen on your climb will be forgotten. But the ladder will be gone also, and you will never be able to find it again. That’s the rule.”

Jacob pondered, bringing the whole column of angels to a halt. Finally he said, “I accept the bargain. It’s better to stay home than to spend eternity looking for something that can never be found.” Instantly he woke up by the side of the road in the morning light. There was no ladder, not even a mark on the ground where it had rested, and Jacob remembered nothing about his journey. 

But there was one thing the angel hadn’t foreseen. After so much climbing–or maybe from lying out all night in the cold–Jacob woke up with a terrible stiffness in the sinew of his thigh, and after that night he never walked perfectly straight again. His people grew used to the sight of the old man limping along, and the sound of his groaning when he stood up. Sometimes Benjamin, his youngest grandchild, would ask, “Grandfather, what happened to your leg?” And even after many years had passed, somewhere in Jacob’s brain a synapse would fire, and he would answer that the pain had something to do with climbing and something to do with God.