Why did God create man?

[tonyrey]

I’m not saying, by any means, that the Holocaust seems worth the pain to me.

Would it be better if God had not given anyone free will so that no one is capable of love?
Yes - if this is the only life we have. But if this life is only a prelude it would be absurd to deprive everyone of free will. The horrors of the Holocaust cannot outweigh the happiness in heaven where we share the joy of the Resurrection. Why did Jesus let himself be crucified? Surely to show us that suffering and death do not destroy love.

I do think that God has some definite explaining to do, but I’m not going to set myself up as His judge, and *certainly *not before all the evidence is in.

I believe we already have all the evidence we need…

 

[Prodigal_Son]

The horrors of the Holocaust cannot outweigh the happiness in heaven where we share the joy of the Resurrection.

Of course not! But it’s hard not to be a bit myopic here on Earth. When we feel these things as pressing questions within us, it is best not to deny the questions. I am a firm believer in questioning – even yelling at – God, as long as such questioning is done from a place of humility.

I believe we already have all the evidence we need…

And yet not enough that it isn’t still an act of faith. One day, we will know fully, even as we are fully known.

 

[gavanhe]

God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, with these attributes He does not need us, yet… He created us. This surely must be the most magnificent act He could have performed, to create us to know and to love Him.
I sometimes wonder at our misunderstandings when He created as He did out of pure love. God made us and all of creation with a pure intent and will. This world of ours with all of its magnificence and (to us) faults is exactly what He intended.
It is for us to discern to the best of our abilities His intentions for each one of us. For some of us this discerning will take us beyond our individual abilities - generally to our benefit - into other realms as we discuss and debate the many issues surrounding our faith.
Gerry

 

[Fran65]

Children who starve to death before they are old enough to talk, little girls sold into the sex trade so that by the time they hit puberty their minds and bodies are destroyed…one has to conclude that He really stacked the deck against some of us for His own inscrutable reasons.

God gave us free will and a great deal of suffering is inflicted by those who do not know Him in any meaningful way.

As for stacking the deck, yes, suffering happens, but He also provides ways to transcend suffering and the promise of an afterlife.

 

[HelenaMT]

I’ve been reading Tolstoy lately, and his description of Russian peasants – who are, after all, at the point of starvation – is very impressive. These peasants are not suffering half as much as their urban counterparts (on average), because their lives are filled with all the richest emotions: joy and sorrow, hope and celebration. I feel that I cannot sit in a comfortable room in America and presume to know what life in a third-world country is like. Let’s stick with our own empirical knowledge.

As far as the definition of “innocent”, a “person who is just trying to live without causing anyone else undue pain or even inconvenience” is not necessarily innocent. Selfishness, envy, lust, gossiping, lying – if a person has guilty of any of these, then there is probably some deeply rooted wrongdoing going on. Catholics teach about the condition of concupiscence – that human beings naturally want things that are bad for them. Consider teenage drug use, for example: we have a natural curiosity for a substance that enables us to avoid the very real problems of our lives.

Suffering creates meaning. What good would the world be if there was nothing but happiness? It would be as shallow as a drug trip.

I’m not saying, by any means, that the Holocaust seems worth the pain to me. I do think that God has some definite explaining to do, but I’m not going to set myself up as His judge, and *certainly *not before all the evidence is in.

First off, I’m not judging God. I couldn’t do that because I don’t know His motivations.

Suffering doesn’t create meaning-we find meaning in suffering, if we know how to look for it. We can, just as God supposedly can, *make *good come out of bad. But not everyone does or can.

I can’t know whether a 3 year old in a third world nation is really innocent in her heart, maybe she’s selfish and greedy or covetous(well, what 3 year olds aren’t?) but I do know that her brain is not nearly done developing enough for her to be able to make the sorts of choices that a 15 year old crackhead might could. And that 15 year old crackhead has less capacity to make a free moral choice than a 25 year old who isn’t high. That they would all be judged or treated in the same way makes no sense to me at all. Those with limited free will due to age or disease just don’t share the same level of culpability to be seen to “deserve” the suffering they get.

I’m sure there are many happy people in third world nations, I’m not so condescending that I presume one can’t be happy without material wealth. But fearing for your children’s very lives, or worrying about being killed because you’ve been raped and it dishonors your family, or watching loved ones tortured in front of you, these are not things that can be balanced out by some happy family moments later on.

If we accept that God has planned this all out, then we have to accept that every evil, not matter how heinous, was expected and allowed by God. Then we have to accept that He makes up for it in Heaven somehow, which perhaps He does. But that still leaves us with those who were born to commit evil acts and wind up in Hell. These that God knew about and allowed to be born anyway. That means we were not all created to love God or to know Him. And that troubles me.

 

[HelenaMT]

God’s nature does not change but He is dynamic not static. Otherwise He could not create anything. His omnipotence implies the power to impose limits on His omnipotence. Otherwise He would not be omnipotent. Self-imposed limits are not necessary limitations but freely chosen. How could we have free will if He remains in total control of everything? How could there be moral evil if He remains in total control of everything? I suppose you could sum it up by saying that God is not an autocrat. That would be inconsistent with His love. Could that be an argument for democracy, I wonder…"

I do agree with you on this, I think. I do believe we have free will and that God does not fix the game. But that would mean He either didn’t know what would come of it, or did know and allowed it to run the course anyway, including the Holocaust, numerous genocides, etc. I prefer the former, unless someone can convince me otherwise.

There is also the problem with the concept of self imposed limitations. If you impose them on yourself, you can change them at will, especially if you are omnipotent. If God could change His self imposed limitations at will , you run into the same problem of evil as before. That He could, as He saw things going off track, have changed His limitations but chose not to. That means He is fine with the way things are.

To know is not to predestine or to influence a person’s decision. We can often predict quite accurately what people are going to do but their decisions remain theirs. So even if we could predict everything they do it wouldn’t make any difference to their ability to decide for themselves.

Yes, but if you know your child is going to die from a heroin overdose at 15 and you don’t try anything you can to prevent it, you are a pretty worthless parent. God either knew the Holocaust (or insert any other heinous tragedy here) was coming and decided it served His purposes fine, or He tried to stop it using means we don’t know and failed. Either of those is problematic for me in light of what the catechism says His purpose for creating us was.

I don’t want to drag the thread off track to the problem of evil: we were supposed to be wondering why God created man.

My main question is if He didn’t create us* all* to love Him and to know Him (since some are know to be heading downstairs from conception, even if you accept that He doesn’t influence the outcome personally), then what were the purposes for these others?

 

[grannymh]

To know is not to predestine or to influence a person’s decision. We can often predict quite accurately what people are going to do but their decisions remain theirs. So even if we could predict everything they do it wouldn’t make any difference to their ability to decide for themselves.

God’s plan is to let us choose for ourselves because otherwise we would not be capable of love.

These are good points. I wonder if the focus of the thread should really be on man. After all, human beings have both an intellect and a will.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Suffering doesn’t create meaning-we find meaning in suffering, if we know how to look for it. We can, just as God supposedly can, *make *good come out of bad. But not everyone does or can.

That’s a key question, isn’t it. If there are some people who *cannot *participate in making good out of bad, because of their upbringing or history, then there is a clear injustice. But if everyone can, but not everyone *chooses *to, then our ideas about justice are assuaged.

Scripture teaches that every can make good out of bad. It says that God wills the salvation of all. Everyone can know and serve God in this world, whether or not they have heard the name of Jesus, whether or not they even know how to speak. We know this through the light of natural reason, and we know it through the revelation of the Bible. Salvation is available, because our nature was formed by God and has the capacity to respond directly to Him. It is no coincidence that so many world religions are remarkably similar: we have a “God instinct” in us.

Now, there are plenty of Christians - even Catholics - who will deny what I’m saying. But if God revealed the meaning of justice in our hearts, we know that He would not violate that definition of justice. The reasons to believe in God are written on our souls, and we must interpret the world in the light of natural reason.

I can’t know whether a 3 year old in a third world nation is really innocent in her heart, maybe she’s selfish and greedy or covetous(well, what 3 year olds aren’t?) but I do know that her brain is not nearly done developing enough for her to be able to make the sorts of choices that a 15 year old crackhead might could. And that 15 year old crackhead has less capacity to make a free moral choice than a 25 year old who isn’t high. That they would all be judged or treated in the same way makes no sense to me at all. Those with limited free will due to age or disease just don’t share the same level of culpability to be seen to “deserve” the suffering they get.

It’s not a matter of an individual being judged (consider Job in the Bible, who was essentially sinless); it’s the consequence of human sinfulness as such. The human race sold itself into sin, like the Israelites sold themselves into Egypt. Misery, disease, drug addiction – these are the things that happen in Egypt.

But still, we can see tons of situations where God’s mercy is active. I have several friends who recovered from drugs and alcohol addiction to live wonderful Christian lives – one of them was once a heroin dealer and a murderer. This is why I wanted us to emphasize the suffering *that we see *in our lives. I live in Detroit, the most embattled city in the country, and let me tell you that tons of Detroit homeless are tremendously thankful for God’s mercy on them. If God is unjust, why do the greatest sufferers rarely question His existence?

But fearing for your children’s very lives, or worrying about being killed because you’ve been raped and it dishonors your family, or watching loved ones tortured in front of you, these are not things that can be balanced out by some happy family moments later on.

I am convinced that these are the actions of *real evil powers *in the world. If you like, I could go into an explanation of why God would give power to demons, but I haven’t the time at the moment. Not a pleasant subject.

But that still leaves us with those who were born to commit evil acts and wind up in Hell. These that God knew about and allowed to be born anyway. That means we were not all created to love God or to know Him. And that troubles me.

You don’t go to hell for committing evil acts. You go to hell because that’s where you want to be, because you’re too stubborn to humble yourself before the living God. One very clear teaching in the gospels (read them looking for this) is that sinners go to heaven, provided they repent. The good news is not that *righteous *people go to heaven, but that *sinners *do!

At times, I’ve felt a lot of sympathy for universalism – the idea that all people are saved (after a period a purgatory-like purification). And God may save everyone; it’s His prerogative. But there is no advantage in us knowing that God will save everyone. It’s like a high school classroom where everyone knows the substitute is a pushover – you will not develop to your potential, because the stakes are so very low.

In the end, all of this is an act of faith. But I don’t think that our actual knowledge stands in the way of faith. The more you question, the more you need to look at the person of Jesus. He is the center of the faith, and what better judge could you ask for?

 

[tonyrey]

I do agree with you on this, I think. I do believe we have free will and that God does not fix the game. But that would mean He either didn’t know what would come of it, or did know and allowed it to run the course anyway, including the Holocaust, numerous genocides, etc. I prefer the former, unless someone can convince me otherwise.

I don’t claim to understand the nature of God but if God restricts his omnipotence there is reason to believe He also restricts His omniscience. Knowledge and power are clearly related. Of course He would know what decision a person makes as soon as it is made but a genuinely free decision is unknowable, whether or not it occurs in time and space, because it stems from supernatural power.

There is also the problem with the concept of self imposed limitations. If you impose them on yourself, you can change them at will, especially if you are omnipotent.

That is true but then there is the problem of consistency. What is the point of giving us free will if He keeps taking it away every time we make an evil decision? He may avert tragedies by sometimes preventing people from making evil decisions but certainly not most of the time because that would defeat the purpose of sharing His power.

If God could change His self imposed limitations at will , you run into the same problem of evil as before. That He could, as He saw things going off track, have changed His limitations but chose not to. That means He is fine with the way things are.

It means that He accepts evil as the price that has to be paid for the greatest gift anyone can have - the capacity for love and self-determination. God is not fine with the way things are. “If you do it to the least of these you do it to me”. If the Son of God wept over the fate of Jerusalem there must be sorrow as well as joy in heaven…

Yes, but if you know your child is going to die from a heroin overdose at 15 and you don’t try anything you can to prevent it, you are a pretty worthless parent.

We don’t know to what extent God does intervene and prevents tragedies. But we do know that if He intervened too often it would be clear evidence that a benevolent power exists and we would no longer be free to choose what to believe. If we knew the Father is watching us all the time it would ruin our lives even though it seems to be for our benefit. We tend to underestimate the immense value of having control of our own destiny.

Nor do we know God either knew the Holocaust (or insert any other heinous tragedy here) was coming and decided it served His purposes fine, or He tried to stop it using means we don’t know and failed. Either of those is problematic for me in light of what the catechism says His purpose for creating us was.

It is probably impossible to discuss the Holocaust objectively because it stirs our emotions so deeply. What horrifies us is the sheer scale of the suffering and the number of murders that were committed. Yet in reality the murder of just one person poses the same problem. The reality of evil is the only fact that concerns us. The Catechism implies that we are not compelled to know, love and serve God. We can choose to ignore, hate and reject Him - and others as well. We always come back to the fact that we have this incredible power which can be either divine or diabolical. We shrink from its full implications because we prefer to live in a cosy world where nothing ever goes wrong. In fact for the most part we are cushioned from reality in our comfortable man-made environment and from what we tend to regard as the horrors of nature. Life is harsh even though it is created by a loving Father yet at the same time it is glorious and beautiful. We are not capable of grasping these extremes. If we were we would be unable to survive. All the suffering in the world even without the Holocaust is too great for us to bear but so is all the ecstasy of love. The only thing that really matters is what happens when we die. If there is consolation, justice and joy in heaven the tragedies on earth will not erase the value of being alive, no matter how much we are tempted to believe they are irreparable. We are trying to weigh the known against the unknown: what happens in this world with what happens in the next. And that is absurd… We need to see everything in the perspective of eternity before we can decide, like Schopenhauer, that it would have been better if life had never existed on this planet. Temporal suffering and injustice versus eternal love and joy…

I don’t want to drag the thread off track to the problem of evil: we were supposed to be wondering why God created man.

It is closely related.

My main question is if He didn’t create us* all* to love Him and to know Him (since some are know to be heading downstairs from conception, even if you accept that He doesn’t influence the outcome personally), then what were the purposes for these others?

He did create all of us to love Him but some choose to love themselves more than Him and others. Even Hell has its compensations. Otherwise it wouldn’t exist! Absolute freedom within one’s own kingdom… forever and ever! Our views are too simplistic. There is sorrow in heaven and satisfaction in hell…

 

[greylorn]

. THE LIFE OF MAN - TO KNOW AND LOVE GOD
1 God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Savior. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life.

Thank you for the reiteration of some of the stuff I learned in Catholic schools.

I deliberately post only within the CAF philosophy forum, not on any of the forums dedicated to Catholic dogma, not on forums which are about other religious dogmas. If I was interested in dogma, I’d read another catechism or applicable elucidation of faith.

I posted on this thread in hopes of getting new ideas, not a reiteration of old blather.

With all due respect for your beliefs, would you kindly post on a thread which is about beliefs? This one is about ideas. Thank you.

 

[greylorn]

God gave us free will and a great deal of suffering is inflicted by those who do not know Him in any meaningful way.

As for stacking the deck, yes, suffering happens, but He also provides ways to transcend suffering and the promise of an afterlife.

Seems like you’ve not heard of the Inquisition, or if you have, perhaps you are unaware of the exact organization which founded it, or the education history of the Inquisitors… Or, have you chosen to pretend that it did not exist?

 

[grannymh]

I posted on this thread in hopes of getting new ideas, not a reiteration of old blather.

With all due respect for your beliefs, would you kindly post on a thread which is about beliefs? This one is about ideas. Thank you.

Speaking about old blather.

Humans have been asking the question “why me?” ever since they noticed that they were walking upright, unlike their chimp cousins, which of course made it easier for humans to talk on their cell phones.

“Why me?” Why reinvent the wheel when it comes to basic answers? New ideas are in the eye of the beholder or the first “yes” in one’s soul.

Blessings,
granny

All human life is sacred.

 

[grannymh]

Seems like you’ve not heard of the Inquisition, or if you have, perhaps you are unaware of the exact organization which founded it, or the education history of the Inquisitors… Or, have you chosen to pretend that it did not exist?

Speaking of old blather…

By the way, the Roman judicial system predates Christianity.

How about this new idea for the creation of women? To soften the hearts of men?

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Seems like you’ve not heard of the Inquisition, or if you have, perhaps you are unaware of the exact organization which founded it, or the education history of the Inquisitors… Or, have you chosen to pretend that it did not exist?

A tired and pointless argument. It is perfectly obvious to anyone with a brain that every human organization has done wrong. This is the nature of human organizations.

 

[grannymh]

A tired and pointless argument. It is perfectly obvious to anyone with a brain that every human organization has done wrong. This is the nature of human organizations.

May I tweak the above? Humans have the ability to choose the wrong means for accomplishing a goal. The Catholic Church, made up of human members, is not human in nature because it is the Mystical Body of Christ. It is always holy because of the presence of Jesus Christ within it.

God created men and women with a spiritual soul so that they could freely join with Him in eternal happiness. Even within the Church, humans still can choose freely. The presence of God is constant.

Blessings,
granny

All human beings are worthy of profound respect.

 

[jkiernan56]

If God is omniscient and therefore knowing all things including the future, He knew in advance how disappointed He would be in mankind. He knew the time would come when He needed to destroy all but 8 in a great flood.

Why, then, did He create us?

I put all facts in the context of knowing that God need NOT have created at all. God could have contnued in BEING for all eternity without creating anything whatsoever. So for God to have created at all, He did so knowing ALL things in His Infinite Wisdom.

The PAINTING is not the PAINTER.
Is it logical for the Painting to ask why did the Painter make me this way?
Ask this question in the context of knowing the Painter need not have Painted at all.

 

[buffalo]

Thank you for the reiteration of some of the stuff I learned in Catholic schools.

I deliberately post only within the CAF philosophy forum, not on any of the forums dedicated to Catholic dogma, not on forums which are about other religious dogmas. If I was interested in dogma, I’d read another catechism or applicable elucidation of faith.

I posted on this thread in hopes of getting new ideas, not a reiteration of old blather.

With all due respect for your beliefs, would you kindly post on a thread which is about beliefs? This one is about ideas. Thank you.

This was a response to your claim that the CCC does not address this which is clearly wrong as I have shown. Now you call it blather - geesh.

 

[fhansen]

If God is omniscient and therefore knowing all things including the future, He knew in advance how disappointed He would be in mankind. He knew the time would come when He needed to destroy all but 8 in a great flood.

Why, then, did He create us?

He knew how great it’d be in the end.

 

[greylorn]

A tired and pointless argument. It is perfectly obvious to anyone with a brain that every human organization has done wrong. This is the nature of human organizations.

I wasn’t making an argument, but you evidently were not reading, so did not notice. I was merely referencing something which invalidated a particular poster’s assertion.

 

[greylorn]

He knew how great it’d be in the end.

Thank you for the non-sequitur. Are you the guy who writes the Budweiser commercials?