This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #216, on the subject of Why Are You Here?.
Why are you here?
I don’t mean why are you reading this page, or sitting or standing wherever you happen to be at this moment. The question I’m asking is deeper than that, more, if you like, philosophical. I am asking, Why do you exist at all?
You probably have been told by someone at some time that God has a purpose for your life, which is true, and I hope that you have accepted this. We think of that as a specific purpose, which is also true–but perhaps not in the way we think of it.
Our notion of a specific purpose is that God specifically wants me to be a housewife and mother, or office worker, or teacher, pastor, engineer. It’s true that God created us to be that, but that’s not really why He created you. That is, there is perhaps a difference between the purpose of your existence and the purpose of your design. God designed you to serve specific functions within the world, but He created you with a purpose that is entirely separate from the design. If you consider the matter, you should realize that that’s rather a narrow view, that God created you because He needed someone to do that job, fill that position in the world. When it comes to it, if God had never created anyone else, that purpose, that position in the world, that job, would be meaningless.
God certainly created us all to fit together, to do different things, but that’s that’s not ultimately your purpose. It’s only your function, your position, the way you fit in the world.
The deeper question is, Why did He create you? Why, indeed, did He create anyone at all? Your existence is not so much dependent on the fact that you fulfill certain job descriptions in the world. It must be that the answer to why God created you applies beyond you to explain why God created everyone else. Why did He create people, and thus why did He create you?
When you see the answer to this question, you’ll realize it’s also the answer to a lot of other questions: why is this happening to me, why do I have these gifts, why do I have these faults, flaws, weaknesses? In short, Why am I who I am?
I asked the question; I offer an answer.
Before time, before anything had been created, God existed as Trinity, three persons sharing love.
Love was good.
God wanted to create more love. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit loved each other, shared love between each other, and loved each other as much as it was possible to love. How could there be more love, than the immeasurable love that existed between these three?
To create more love, God had to create more people, persons who could love and be loved as He within His Selves loves and is loved.
We were created to be those people, to love Him and each other, to learn to love as He loves.
Our entire world is created to teach us to love and to be loved.
That’s why the world is hard. If the world were easy, love would be neither necessary nor valuable. It is the fact that we learn to love amidst our trouble, and the fact that the trouble enables us to reach out to each other in love, that makes the world a good place to learn to love.
It is also why we have the flaws and the gifts we have, using our gifts to meet each other’s flaws, having our flaws addressed by the gifts of others, to learn to love and to be loved, and to understand that purpose, to love the way God loves and to be loved by God and each other.
That is why you are here.