Reaching God: means and ends problem

  • Thread starter Thread starter fakename
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
F

fakename

Guest
So here’s a problem I’m trying to solve to help me in my daily life.

Now the goal of life seems to be reaching God, and this goal is more important than all the other goals of life put together. If that’s true, and people should only choose the most important goal, then why would we choose the means to get to God? For the means are less important than the end, and yet God is supremely important so the means to get to him (the sum of which is not even equal to God in importance) must be very unimportant and so, not worth being gained. So no one would reach God, which is absurd. This problem also applies to every other choice in life: the end is always more important than the means (they can’t be equally important or else there would be no basis for preferring either, and certainly the means are not more important than the end) so how does anything get done if people would only choose the more important?
 
fakename said:
So here’s a problem I’m trying to solve to help me in my daily life.

Now the goal of life seems to be reaching God, and this goal is more important than all the other goals of life put together. If that’s true, and people should only choose the most important goal, then why would we choose the means to get to God? For the means are less important than the end, and yet God is supremely important so the means to get to him (the sum of which is not even equal to God in importance) must be very unimportant and so, not worth being gained. So no one would reach God, which is absurd. This problem also applies to every other choice in life: the end is always more important than the means (they can’t be equally important or else there would be no basis for preferring either, and certainly the means are not more important than the end) so how does anything get done if people would only choose the more important?
Click to expand...
It is a question of language.
“More important”, “the most important” dont mean anything. What is that?
If I go to the beach, the beach is MORE important than the car I use to get into it?
I use to say: comparisons are the devil…
For a cause…
 
Who says the end is always more important than the means? That is not Christianity. It leads to several problems:

Firstly, in attempting to reach God, you have made it a self-seeking act, instead of a God-seeking act, which immediately undermines any attempt you make, so you may as well knock that on the head straight away! If you were to help a poor man as a means to further your attempts to reach God, all virtue in your charity is lost because your charity is, in fact, not charity but self-seeking, and therefore of no use in your attempts to reach God! Quite the opposite, since it will repel you from God!

Secondly, you say the goal of life is to reach God. The Church would say that He has already reached us. Our job is to allow ourselves to be carried along by Him. We are very much the junior partners in this relationship!

Thirdly, the only means to God is through Jesus - He is the Way. We cannot, therefore, dismiss the means as less important than the end, when they are co-equal.

Applying what you say to marriage & children - is the mother less (name removed by moderator)ortant than the child, since the purpose of marriage, in most expectations, is to bring new life into the world? This would be a sinful reduction of one human - the mother - to the level of a hatchery!

My best advice is to abandone this line of thinking altogether. Indeed, abandone thinking for a while, and pray for actual abandonement more often thus:

" Grant that I may love You always, then* do with me as you will*"
 
fakename said:
So here’s a problem I’m trying to solve to help me in my daily life.

Now the goal of life seems to be reaching God, and this goal is more important than all the other goals of life put together. If that’s true, and people should only choose the most important goal, then why would we choose the means to get to God? For the means are less important than the end, and yet God is supremely important so the means to get to him (the sum of which is not even equal to God in importance) must be very unimportant and so, not worth being gained. So no one would reach God, which is absurd. This problem also applies to every other choice in life: the end is always more important than the means (they can’t be equally important or else there would be no basis for preferring either, and certainly the means are not more important than the end) so how does anything get done if people would only choose the more important?
Click to expand...
because the means aren’t “gained”-they’re just the means. In Zen Buddhism there’s a famous picture of a master pointing to the moon. The message is that the student must not mistake the finger for the moon, which is the goal.
 
The original post is very confused.

Keep things simple. God does. 🙂

Consider this easy to remember four sentence version of the 23rd Psalm:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie in green pastures; he leadeth me to still waters.

Though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil for Thou art with me.

Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Print it out. Tape a copy to the refrigerator. Keep a copy in your wallet.
It says everything you need to know to reach God.
 
Please give me an argument against me; no simple assertions can convince anyone who is not already convinced.
 
fakename said:
So here’s a problem I’m trying to solve to help me in my daily life.

Now the goal of life seems to be reaching God, and this goal is more important than all the other goals of life put together. If that’s true, and people should only choose the most important goal, then why would we choose the means to get to God? For the means are less important than the end, and yet God is supremely important so the means to get to him (the sum of which is not even equal to God in importance) must be very unimportant and so, not worth being gained. So no one would reach God, which is absurd. This problem also applies to every other choice in life: the end is always more important than the means (they can’t be equally important or else there would be no basis for preferring either, and certainly the means are not more important than the end) so how does anything get done if people would only choose the more important?
Click to expand...
The error you are making is in assuming you (by your will) know the path that is “most important” (See Prov 3:5-6). The challenge we all have is to “deny our self”, as Jesus said, surrendering completely to God’s will and his means in us for accomplishing it.
 
“The error you are making is in assuming you (by your will) know the path that is “most important” (See Prov 3:5-6). The challenge we all have is to “deny our self”, as Jesus said, surrendering completely to God’s will and his means in us for accomplishing it.”

What does that mean though :confused:

Clearly you seem to be asking me to follow a certain path that you consider to be the most important “the path of self-denial”. So it seems that, quite the contrary, there is a path to follow in life since the attempt to escape from it is a path itself.

So back to the question: how is it possible to choose some means to gain some end when one considers the end to be more important and the most important thing is always chosen over the less important thing?

Also it seems that granted that reaching God is not the goal of life, then something is so how is it even possible in principle, to get to it?
 
fakename said:
So back to the question: how is it possible to choose some means to gain some end when one considers the end to be more important and the most important thing is always chosen over the less important thing?

Also it seems that granted that reaching God is not the goal of life, then something is so how is it even possible in principle, to get to it?
Click to expand...
As I said, See Prov 3:5-6. Don’t choose…let God direct your path.
 
:confused: That is a choice.

Anyways, it doesn’t matter what I do, technically God already directs my path with the unerring hand of (to put it too loosely) fate -even w/o supernatural grace.
 
fakename said:
So here’s a problem I’m trying to solve to help me in my daily life.

Now the goal of life seems to be reaching God, and this goal is more important than all the other goals of life put together. If that’s true, and people should only choose the most important goal, then why would we choose the means to get to God? For the means are less important than the end, and yet God is supremely important so the means to get to him (the sum of which is not even equal to God in importance) must be very unimportant and so, not worth being gained. So no one would reach God, which is absurd. This problem also applies to every other choice in life: the end is always more important than the means (they can’t be equally important or else there would be no basis for preferring either, and certainly the means are not more important than the end) so how does anything get done if people would only choose the more important?
Click to expand...
Man cannot reach God by his own power, so the means is that we accept the path God chooses for us and allow ourselves to be moved by God. This makes the end and the means united since grace is a free gift and our end is the perfection of our nature, as St. Thomas Aquinas says “grace perfects nature”. It is love that gives grace and it is love that draws us closer to the source of grace.

In this temporal world we are moving (changed by God’s Grace) in that either we are choosing to cooperate with His Grace or not to cooperate and thus accept lesser goods that are not part of God’s plan of perfection. It is in this grace that we can accept the means and to reach the end, heaven, which is the total union with God called heaven, which is a state of being. This being is what we were made for and all lesser goods other than the ultimate Good of God is contrary to our nature that desires to be perfected.
 
"Man cannot reach God by his own power, so the means is that we accept the path God chooses for us and allow ourselves to be moved by God. This makes the end and the means united since grace is a free gift and our end is the perfection of our nature, as St. Thomas Aquinas says “grace perfects nature”. It is love that gives grace and it is love that draws us closer to the source of grace.

In this temporal world we are moving (changed by God’s Grace) in that either we are choosing to cooperate with His Grace or not to cooperate and thus accept lesser goods that are not part of God’s plan of perfection. It is in this grace that we can accept the means and to reach the end, heaven, which is the total union with God called heaven, which is a state of being. This being is what we were made for and all lesser goods other than the ultimate Good of God is contrary to our nature that desires to be perfected."

That was actually, a touchingly profound answer. I think you mean that the most important thing in life is always being chosen through grace?

But yet it doesn’t escape the logical contradiction implied by my original post -unless you would argue that all ends touch us by a sort of grace.

I’ve asked around and I’ve come to a kind of answer: before a person is walking towards a goal, he has the choice of walking there or not. He evaluates their relative importance accordingly. But when he is actually walking to a place his choices are not between all the ends needed to get to the goal, but only between the one means and the other so that he is in a way, stumbling towards the end since he never acts per end but per the means-for-it. The only problem now is, there are so many ends to keep track of. Perhaps these may be trimmed off by means of supposition -while I’m typing I don’t actually suppose I have a practical choice to choose some other ends or means. Indeed, it’s a contradiction to say that I’ve reached an end and at the same time say I’m evaluating a means to an end. As long as people act internally or externally, there must be a finite and practical number of ends and means to choose.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top