Why did God make us in the first place?

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Why did God make us in the first place? What’s in it for Him? He doesn’t need us. He’s not lonely. If the answer is that we need God, then we would not have needed God had we never existed. We could not have just sprung out His overflowing abundance of love/life because the Bible tells us that God willed us into being.
 
I’ll be sure to ask him that when I get to heaven. Maybe its like asking why do we have babies?
 
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rosarywarrior:
I’ll be sure to ask him that when I get to heaven. Maybe its like asking why do we have babies?
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But we have babies because God told us to. “Be fruitful and multiply.”

My 7-year old daughter asked me this question and I didn’t have a good answer.
 
The Old Baltimore Catechism response. God made us to know, love and serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next.
 
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Peg:
The Old Baltimore Catechism response. God made us to know, love and serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next.
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That response tells me what God want us to do not why He made us. See my problem? Is this simply one of those unanswerable questions?
 
God also gave us a free will to choose to multiply or not. So we aren’t forced to have babies. We all know the evils in the world along with the good and yet we still have babies. I think the underlying reason is LOVE, and God IS Love. Now go tell your 7yr. old daughter to go out and play.
 
I actually vote for “all of the above.” He created us to know, love, and serve Him, indeed - and that an answer to why. And the baby answer was an excellent analogy. I didn’t have children b/c of the “be fruitful and multiply” command in the Bible. I had children because my marriage is full of love and we wanted to express and share that love more fully – children aren’t necessary, at least not in indiviual family cases, and they don’t make good antidotes to loneliness. But they are a joyful expression of love that spills over and cannot be contained. It’s a good analogy for why God made us. It might not have increased the amount of love, but it certainly changed the way(s) it was expressed.
 
The Holy Trinity being infinite love did what is natural to love. They shared it. They created us because they loved us.
 
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rosarywarrior:
Now go tell your 7yr. old daughter to go out and play.
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Whether the original poster follows this advice, I encourage her to also encourage this child to keep thinking – it’s an excellent question! I applaud this child and the parent who bothered to go hunting for answers.
 
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cteslak:
Why did God make us in the first place? What’s in it for Him? He doesn’t need us. He’s not lonely. If the answer is that we need God, then we would not have needed God had we never existed. We could not have just sprung out His overflowing abundance of love/life because the Bible tells us that God willed us into being.
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An excellent question.

It can be answered by looking to Jesus Christ’s death on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins.

Yours is another form of the most extreme question, why do I have to exist without my consent? Let us assume your question is a mystery. Let us also assume that a greater mystery is God’s love for us.

Now since God’s love for us is infinitely greater than us, becuase God’s love is infinitely eternal, the greatest suffering on earth cannot compare (did you see the movie Passion of the Christ?), and if our mystery of why do we exist causes us to suffer, then it is nullified by God’s love for us! This is becuase all suffering is due to seperation from God.

Would anyone be complaining about existing in the first place if there was only good and no evil in the world? Probably not. We would all be too busy rejoicing in God. The only reason we are facing ultimate questions like why do we exist, and why is there so much suffering, is becuase we were not created to be apart from God. He designed us to be in Him. Without this perspective, I would speculate that nothing would ever make sense.

So the answer is: the reason why we exist would be evident if we were not seperated from God. It is the seperation from Him that is causing all the confusion.
 
I believe the answer to this quetion is very simple. Love.
God has a perfect love for us, and what does God want from us, but to love Him back. Since He doesn’t force His love on us, He gave us free will. All we have to do is look at what He did for us, and then He lets us decide for ourselves whether we should love Him back.
What is true love?
Think.
 
I like the answer in the old catechism that says “Humanity was created to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”
 
I think it’s because at heart, God is a high stakes gambler… but he must have liked the odds, he sent his only son to call us, and raise us to life… 👍
 
God created us because he was in love with us.
“Before I created you in the womb, I knew you.”

Josh
 
Hi all

I lent out my copy of Theology for Beginners so I cant give the exact quote, but Frank Sheed has a great response to that question.
God made us because he knew that we would enjoy it
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so enjoy life and love God :dancing:

Scott
 
My son has the same question, except he’s in his teens so the Baltimore Catechism response isn’t cutting it for him.

Have any of you played “The Sims”? When we explain to him that God made us to know, love and serve Him…he gets a bit insulted by that…he feels we’re God’s game/toy…something for amusement.

He says if He loved us that much why didn’t he just make us angels to live beside Him as He did with those already there…why create our souls for earth rather than for heaven?

If Hell is being separated from God for eternity, why separate us from Him at all? Isn’t our time on earth a mini-hell then?

But he’s still resistant to giving up “his” life. He harbors some resentment that God gave him life because it isn’t really a ‘gift’ since it has strings attached - and a major string at that - to give up oneself for Him. That makes him a bit angry…it makes him feel like a puppet because even though we have free will, there are consequences for choosing paths not in His design. It doesn’t paint for him a picture of a God who loves us as much as it does a God who is playing a game of chance as Space Ghost noted.

Speaking of the consequences, we then talk about needing to fill His desire for us so that we can live in the next life with him for eternity. Wouldn’t he want to be reunited with all his friends and family who died before him? Would he want us to miss him so? He says we wouldn’t miss him because there is no sorrow, no evil, no bad things in heaven…we’d be so happy to be in God’s presence we probably wouldn’t even notice he was gone. As for himself, if he chooses to live his ‘own’ life instead of fulfilling the one God has designed for him then at least it was his decision to life his life in his way and that includes his choice for eternity. :eek:

Keep in mind, this was brought up in a long philosophical discussion our family was having one afternoon. It isn’t really the way he feels, but he was raising the questions that have run through his mind as he’s been reflecting on the subject, and for that we are grateful because it has motivated us (his cradle Catholic parents) to re-examine our own justifications for our faith.

The turning point so far has come with our explanation that we have work to be done on earth for Him, just as Jesus did. That is why God chooses to send us to earth first…and He hopes that we will not forget Him while we are away. That seems to have helped a lot. He’s beginning to see that we aren’t here for our own enjoyment as much as we are to fulfill a mission, and this is helping him with the Catholic concept of dating, marriage, childrearing, etc.
 
Would you rather create robots and program them to love you, or would you rather create a being, give it free choice and knowledge and have them love you out of free will? I would choose that latter… but then I am not, nor will I ever be, nor do I want to be God… I don’t know his motives. I wasn’t meant to. I agree with an above post. I will ask when i get there 👍
 
Seems to me that this question is addressed to

perfection in the Book of Job, where Job regrets having
ever been born etc., his friends offer him “phoney comfort”
and finally God Himself answers Job.

Addenda:
Some of the bravest people in the world are those who
suffer chronic depression, yet accept that God gave them
life and try to make the best of it, despite an incapicity
to experience pleasure in life.

Additionally, I don’t think it’s a matter of chance in terms
of the time we are born. God “places” us in time, which
furthers the line of thinking that we have unique tasks to
perform in our life, in this time frame.
Best,
reen12
 
I think his purpose was His glory. He did it out of his goodness. Here is a snip from Vatican I council:
  1. This one true God, by his goodness and almighty power, not with the intention of increasing his happiness, nor indeed of obtaining happiness, but in order to manifest his perfection by the good things which he bestows on what he creates, by an absolutely free plan, together from the beginning of time brought into being from nothing the twofold created order, that is the spiritual and the bodily, the angelic and the earthly, and thereafter the human which is, in a way, common to both since it is composed of spirit and body
 
Hmmm, great question!

Perhaps God made us to know Him and to love Him, so He can be known and loved. If we seek Him we will know and love Him.

When we do come to Him, out of choice, and seeking His presence it surely must be more meaningful than if He simply created us as robots who He simply designed to do as He willed.
 
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