Three bears in the bed, and the little one said
“I’m crowded, roll over”
So they all rolled over and one fell out

Two bears in the bed, and the little one said
“I’m crowded, roll over”
So they all rolled over and one fell out

One bear in the bed, and the little one said
“I’m lonely”
- (from Sesame Street)

I’ve been kicking around an idea for a while about God and the idea of expansion and contraction. It’s not quite gnostic, but it’s certainly not mainstream Christianity either. First really struck on it in a post called The Father and Son at the Beginning and End of Time which was an attempt to graft a theological interpretation onto Big Bang/Big Crunch theory. Essentially, my idea was that God the Father sits at the beginning of time, the Big Bang, and from there, everything is flung outwards in a giant explosion. At the end of time, the universe contracts back onto itself, and this reunion is typified as a force by Jesus, who taught a message of God’s divine love.

Thinking about that more got me into fooling around with a related concept, which then turned into a fun little religious diagram.

There are a couple different ways you could look at this. The first one relates to this idea that God the Father sits at the center of the Big Bang. During this phase, God was typified by throwing things out from himself. The two best examples are of course Adam and Eve from the Garden, and Lucifer who he flung out of Heaven. Both were thrown out in anger. At some point though, either his explosive/expansive energy started to wane, or else God just started realizing that he wouldn’t have any friends if he kept throwing everybody away from him. So he made this special deal with the Jews, where they became his chosen people, and they’d worship him in turn. It was sort of a stormy relationship though, and God’s old habits were dying hard. Consequently, he put the Jews through great struggles where he would push them away one day, and pull them in the next.

Then we get to Jesus, who represents God finally getting over the asshole-tendencies of his youth. He realized that whatever their foibles, he loved everybody, no matter what they did. So Jesus becomes this method whereby everybody is allowed to come back to God finally. Jesus is God’s coming to terms and reconciling his differences with everybody and welcoming them all back home.

There is another angle you could look at this diagram from as well. I was wondering if there were any historical theological precedents wherein Jesus and Lucifer were two stages of the same entity. That is, Lucifer transforms into Jesus through a process of purification. Lucifer is thrown out of Heaven, descends like a meteor and burns, burns, burns, until one day he just cools off. At this point, he is transfigured, and rises into Heaven once again, like a rocket shot into space.

The pivotal point in this transformation is the Crucifixion - especially since traditional Christians always say that the Death of Jesus is the really important part (rather than his teachings). Jesus is said to have “harrowed Hell” and thrown open the gates, and released the sinners there. Did he also free Satan? Or rather, was the “descent into Hell” really just the final stages of the transformation from Lucifer into Christ.

One other thing I was wondering. The parable of the Prodigal Son from Luke 15:11-32. In it, Jesus tells the tale of a Son who squanders the inheritance of his father on the wild life. He comes back to his father, who welcomes him warmly. Upon seeing this, the older more responsible son who stayed and worked his father’s farm is furious. But his father rejoices and throws a party for the younger irresponsible son, because he was lost and now is found. For whatever reason, I’ve never heard anybody apply this story to the “greatest sinner of all time,” Lucifer. In my twisted little world, it would only make sense that this is exactly how God would treat Satan at the end of time, when he comes back to his Father’s house.

There are probably a variety of other directions this could be taken as well, which I think is part of the beauty of doing bizarre little religious diagrams like this. They make you look at relationships in new ways and study the real implications of the symbol.