What's The Purpose?
You may remember Mr. Michka Grant from a previous post of mine. He's a dear friend. We often have conversations regarding religion, faith, and inspiration. He has inspired me yet again.
This time it was in the form of a question. He was a little down and confused, stressing on the things he goes through in his daily life, and wondering how he's supposed to apply faith into his daily stresses and continue his journey to find God. His question was "Why are we here?" This question ranks right up there in the universal top human questions along with "Why does God let bad things happen?" So why?
This got me to thinking. I already felt I knew part of the answer, but it seemed rather trite. No matter what you go through, the more severe the event, the more trite any answer is going to seem. So I thought about it some more.
There are many people who truly and absolutely believe that God is the author of what we go through. They attempt to justify this even in their choice of words by calling it trials and tribulations. Sometimes they refer to these events and traumas and even crimes as tests or lessons. They believe that God is trying to teach us something or at the very least that he's trying to find out the nature of our character. I have no doubt that God wants us to learn. I also have no doubt that he wants to know the depth of our character. But is that really the reason for causing such pain, anguish and anxiety? I wonder is he really the cause of it?
People, of any era, day and age, have trouble with the concept of randomness. Sure, we'd all like a little cheat sheet, something we can look at and see if the next choice we make is right or wrong. Do we make a right turn or a left turn? Do we choose to date this person or that person? What standard do we hold ourselves to in dealing with other people? Which religious denomination is the right one? Which political figure would God have us vote into office? These things are often the reason people hold steadfastly to biblical idioms regardless of how much or how little sense they make. It's why rules are made and held to vigorously. It's why religious governments require everyone in their country to be of their chosen religion. It's why fundamentalists opt to believe only in the physical application of biblical stories instead of applying spiritual theory. It's also why there is such an increasing belief in astrology, numerology and any other ology where the future is believed to be foretold and the types of people we contact in daily life are believed to be personally predestined. We are all afraid of what we don't know, can't know, can't predict, can't control and can't shield ourselves. We look for any possible way to not fear, to know, to control, to predict and to shield. We look for cheat sheets.
But the truth is, life is random. There are no cheat sheets, not even in the bible. It cannot be done, try as we may. That's a hard pill to swallow. And it's scary.
So, we come back to "Why?"
Why are we here? Why did God put us here on earth?
What I will say now did not originate from me. I did not think this up. I heard this from a church I used to attend. I don't even know if they thought it up. I don't believe most of what they taught but I believe this is a good one, one of the few things I can still hold upon. Imagine God without ever having created the world or anything in it. I don't know if God is one being or two, or three. The fact still remains, that's so few. Must have been very lonely. Imagine yourself living your life with no other person on earth or even just one or two other beings. Just the two or three of you, for all eternity. That's like, OMG! solitary confinement, for all eternity! I can see why he made us exist. By extension, we have to exist somewhere!
The next question would be what are we supposed to accomplish while we are here?
Theoretically, God could have just created us from the beginning as spirit beings. There was no absolute necessity for us being made physical. I had to think about that some more. It came to me. When we have children, it starts with being in a womb. Sure, God could have made us clone ourselves, and not go through the horrors of nine months of morning sickness, everything smelling bad, even the fresh air, hemorrhoids, anemia, gestational diabetes, weight gain, back aches, breast aches, varicose veins, hormonal mood swings, childbirth pain, labor pain lasting up to several days, vaginal tearing and the list goes on and on. But one has to ask, how emotionally involved would parents be, and how devoted would parents be if reproduction came as easily as just cloning themselves or by just splitting in half like single cell organisms do? No. Parents have a tremendous investment in raising their children. And it all starts with a fetus using mom's internal organs as a punching bag. Then they are born and it continues with the little one finding emotional ways to continue to use mom and dad as emotional, and financial punching bags!
What do you want to accomplish with your children? We send them to school. We teach them how to behave with other children. We hope they learn enough to make a good living. We hope they learn sufficiently how to deal with other children because someday they will need to know how to deal with other adults. We want our children to be strong, healthy, active, productive, courageous, smart, intelligent, thoughtful, helpful, generous but not to the the extent of being self-destructive, but most of all we want them to be happy. As an aside to that, we want them to still consider us as their closest friend and confidante when they are adults.
So what does God want to accomplish with us? He has sent us to school. He is letting us learn how to behave with other physical people. He hopes we will learn enough to help make life good for ourselves and each other. He hopes we learn sufficiently how to deal with other physical people because someday we will need to know how to deal with other spirits. He wants us to be strong, healthy, active, productive, courageous, smart, intelligent, thoughtful, helpful, generous but not to the extent of being self-destructive, but most of all he wants us to be happy. As an aside to that, he wants us to consider him as our closest friend and confidante not just after we become spirit, but now.
One can ask why God doesn't take a more visible role. Why doesn't he just tell us what he wants? He doesn't whisper it into our ears. He doesn't send angels plainly telling us plainly what to do. It's confusing, and a little more than massively aggravating!
One of the things my daughter used to complain about constantly was that I was stifling her, that I was holding her back and treating her as if she was much younger than she was and not letting her grow up. I remember having that same complaint with my parents. I'm sure they had that same complaint with their parents. I would bet money on my grandson having this same complaint with my daughter and son-in-law when he gets older. It happens to all parents! It's the nature of parenting, humanwise.
But God is not human. He knows who we are, our ages, both mentally and physically, and he knows our capabilities. He does not stifle our capacities to do for ourselves, choose for ourselves or think for ourselves by doing, choosing and thinking for us. There is a joy in accomplishment. The harder something is, the more we have to work for it, the more effort we employ, the more joy we have when we succeed. I would go so far as to say it's like being high. I realize it sounds trite, but life would be very boring if things were made that easy for us. All the anguish we spend on lamenting how difficult life is would otherwise be spent lamenting on how useless we feel. We can choose to take these opportunities to be miserable, or we can choose to take these opportunities to find joy and accomplishment. It's our choice. God does not deny us the opportunity to make that choice. He has never denied us the opportunity to make choices, not even in the face of destroying other people with our choices.
We take a great deal of pleasure in our children. We love living with them, laughing with them, playing with them, talking with them, helping them, advising them, and teaching them. God takes a great deal of pleasure in us. I'm sure he would love to do all the same things with us that we love to do with our children. But just as he does not deny us choices, even choices including evil actions, he does not deny us greater accomplishment with our children and everyone else around us. Instead of dealing directly with every person every moment of the day and night, he allows us to shine his light through us via our example and our interactions with and to our children and those who come into contact with us. He takes that loneliness upon himself, denying himself all that personal interaction, so that we may interact more and have that joy to ourselves. He does not force himself on us, making us listen, or making us obey. He allows us to come to him, when we are ready, when it's most convenient for us. I can't help but consider how difficult that must be, and how lonely, considering how few actually take the time to actually talk to him from their hearts, and not from some memorized incantation, or not at all.
Then I wondered why do bad things happen to us? Why doesn't God take a more active role in protecting us? What is it he's trying to find out?
But does that mean that God deliberately sets obstacles in our way...to teach us lessons and give us tests? I personally believe that God lets life be random. I don't believe he puts obstacles in our way. There's no need to do that. There are enough there anyway, without him trying to block us, and make us stumble. Sure, he could put obstacles in the way. But do obstacles have to be on purpose for God to see what we are made of mentally or spiritually? Or could there be another reason why bad things happen to us? Is God really giving us tests?
Is there a purpose to us having the obstacles we face? We surely face enough of them. What if they are just random, and not put there on purpose, to make us stumble and do the wrong thing? Could it not just be that we can take what we can? Can we take inspiration where we choose to find inspiration? Can we take purpose where we choose to find purpose? Can we take growth where we choose to glean it? Can we transform those things into what we choose to make of it?
I think it's entirely possible that God doesn't know what we'll do given whatever circumstances. Maybe he doesn't assume we'll make the wrong choices, or the right choices. Sometimes, perhaps there is no right or wrong choice, just our preference. Why do we ask him for "just the right person to come along?" Maybe there is no "exactly right person!" Perhaps he doesn't know who you would love. He just lets you find someone yourself because only you would know who you can fall in love with! Perhaps he just wants to watch to see and find out who we are, our strengths, passions, abilities, emotions, preferences. Maybe he likes how we surprise him with the facets of our personalities and the ways it manifests itself. Maybe he doesn't know it all in advance! Maybe he likes that randomness in us! Maybe sometimes it isn't a matter of making a right choice as opposed to a wrong choice, but rather, what will this person do with the circumstances he or she is in? What will they make of it? How will they work it to their advantage? And can they work it to more of an advantage to more people than just themselves? How will they choose to grow, or not grow? Who will we choose to become? What will we make of the random talents and gifts that he has given us?
I choose to see the randomness of life as a great gift. God gave us randomness, not as a thing to fear but rather as a means to express our emotions, passions, capabilities, capacities to love and share and achieve, preferences and individualities and to mature. He does not stifle us with the expectations of conformity, of making always exactly the right choice, but rather gives us the freedom to choose our own path. He does not stifle our maturity by giving us that cheat sheet and making all of the decisions of what is right and wrong for us. That's not to say he has no expectations. He only has these: that we express our love, that we share, that we grow, that we make our own choices, that we mature and hopefully one day, that we will include him in our lives.
Now I know that maturity is a slippery subject. We are not all capable of the same level of maturity. Also, different people have different concepts of what full maturity means. But that's OK. God knows where you've been. He knows what you have experienced. He knows what level of maturity you are capable of having. And he knows what definition of maturity you are using. All he wants is your best, whatever that is. That is all he has ever wanted, but his desire for your best is a want, a desire, not a demand whose definition is written in stone. After all, he's famous for his love, mercy and compassion. That's his trademark, his logo, his slogan, his mainstay.
November 6, 2010
11:14 p.m. CST
