Paths to Contemplation - 5

Chapter 2 - Why Are We Here?

The purpose of life

We may approach the question of coming to know God using a question that most people ask themselves at some point in their lives: What is the purpose of life?  Why am I here?  An atheist might say that the is no purpose for life other than perpetuating life.  We live in order to perpetutate our gene pool.  That’s all there is to it.   This, of course, is not an emotionally satisfying answer, nor is it the answer that a Christian.

I suspect that asking a group of 30 devout church-goers for the purpose of life would bring forth 30 different responses.  But most of those responses would boil down to a small number of basic ideas:

- To go to heaven,
- To serve and glorify God,
- To do good and avoid sin,
- To love God with all our hearts and souls,

to mention a few possibilities.  But most Christians will not answer that their goal is the knowledge of God, to know God as God knows us, to see God face to face.

There is certainly nothing wrong with wanting to go to heaven, or to serve and glorify God, or to do good and avoid sin, or to love God.  We have been commanded to love God with all our hearts and souls and minds and strength.   But these responses are incomplete.  They take us part of the way toward our goal, but they do not say what the ultimate goal is.

For many, going to heaven is not going to hell.  Heaven is place of happiness and hell is a place of pain.  And anyone is his or her right mind would choose happiness over pain.  But why is heaven a place of happiness and hell a place of pain?  It could not be just because heaven is full of earthly riches and pleasures.   Heaven is for eternity and, as noted in Chapter 1, we would soon tire of streets of gold and grand palaces and chats with the great figures of the Bible if that were all there is to heaven.

The only thing that can fill us with happiness and joy for all eternity is the intimate knowledge of God, to experience God directly, to be able to look into God’s face, as it were, and see God as clearly as God sees us.  This knowledge of God is the only thing that makes heaven heaven.  Without the knowledge of God, every earthly pleasure would ultimately grow stale, and we would realize we were in hell, not heaven.  For it is the absence of God, the inability to know God, that constitutes the ultimate horror of hell.

Likewise to serve God, or to do good and avoid sin, are not ends in themselves.  They are means by which we cooperate with God, by God’s grace, to remove obstacles to our union with God, for it is through growing into the life of God that we come to know God.