Purpose of our creation

Imagine your next-door neighbour has made an amazing, complex machine and you ask what it’s for.  If your neighbour says, “It hasn’t got a purpose” you’d think that was very odd! 

Everything we make has a purpose and the more important its purpose, the more trouble we take over making it.  For example, you would take more trouble over making a parachute than an umbrella, for one is meant just to keep the rain off but the purpose of the other is to save someone’s life.

Likewise, because God made human beings to be very special, so he must have made us for a very special purpose – and that is nothing less than to love him and be loved by him and to be united with him for ever. 

For one day we must all die.  That is to say, our body will die – we shall not need it any more – and will go to dust, but our soul will go on living.  In other words, you and I will never stop thinking.  It is God’s wish that one day we should see him face to face and be united with him and be happy with him for ever in Heaven.

Union with God

In the Bible we read that “…God is light and in him there is no darkness at all“ (NRSV, 1.John 1:5).  In one of his letters to the early Christians, St Paul prays that they may be “filled with all the fullness of God” (NRSV, Ephesians 3:19). 

We can compare the union of the soul with God with that of a crystal and the sunlight.  The crystal is filled with the sunlight and you cannot separate one from the other, and yet each remains itself.  The complete union of the soul with God is as full as that.  Only one thing can prevent that, and that is sin, by which we mean any wrong thought, word or action.  The crystal and the sunlight can only be united if the crystal is completely pure, otherwise the sunlight cannot fill it.  If the crystal were just dark glass, then although it might be standing in the sunlight, it would be quite separate from it.

So just as a crystal has to be as clear as the light in order to share the light, so we have to be as pure as God in order to share his life in Heaven.  This means that our souls have first to be made clean and pure from all their sin before we can be united with God in Heaven – and Heaven is where God is seen.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (NRSV, Matthew 5:8).

SUMMARY

1. Our body and soul together make the complete person.  The body is made of material substances and will die.  The soul is spirit and will live for ever.

2. We have powers of reason, conscience and free will, and can choose to know, love and please God.

3. God made me to love him and to be loved by him; to see him and to live with him; and to be united with him and enjoy him for ever.

References

1. Potter, C. (2009) You are here. A portable history of the universe, London: Hutchinson.

2. Henbest, N. and Couper, H. (1982) The restless universe, London: George Philip.

3. Henbest, N. and Couper, H. (1982) op cit

4. Philips, H. (2006) Instant expert: the human brain. Available from: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9969-instant-expert-the-human-brain.html  (Accessed 09 August 2010

5. McGrath, A.E. (2007) Christian theology: an introduction (4th edition), Oxford: Blackwell