What Does God Want of Me?
by: Mark McNeil
Recently a student of mine asked the question, “What does God want of
me?” The way in which the question was posed suggested this was not merely a
question of curiosity but rather a question expressing a more basic discomfort
with the Christian world-view in relationship to his experience of the world.
In other words, I took the question to express some concern about whether or not
the Christian outlook on reality was in fact consistent with that reality. This
was further shown by his prepared follow-up question, “Well, if that is what God
wants of me, then why hasn’t He made it more clear and evident?” Instead, my
student suggested, a deistic world-view would seem more consistent with our
experience. This is so, he argued, because God does not seem to make Himself
known in the world and this must be the case because He has left it (especially
free human persons) to its own devices. All that is “known,” then, is perhaps
that there is a God and we are “free.” The precise way in which our freedom
should be directed is not so evident and therefore we may exercise our freedom
to find our own way.
My response to this line of questioning and reasoning was to deny God’s “silence” and to affirm not only that God exists and that we are “free” but also that His purposes for our lives are evident if we will but listen and look.
We discover the “purpose” of a thing by examining its nature and the orientation of that nature. For instance, the seed of an apple has the “purpose” of becoming an apple-producing tree. If it receives the proper environment, it will inevitably move towards that “end” or purpose. Outside that environment, it simply decays or makes no movement in any particular direction.
With respect to the human person, his “good” is discovered through an examination of his nature and its potentialities. It is evident that we have bodies that are very much like those of other animals. We grow, reproduce, drink, eat, see, smell, etc. In these respects we would analyze their purpose, at least initially, very much like an ape. The powers of sexuality, for instance, would be ordered towards reproduction and the continuance of the species. There would also be a level of animal pleasure that would be an intended objective. In eating there is the clear goal of sustaining and nourishing the body as a living organism. We could continue this analysis of the bodily and sensory functions of animals and show that all the activities of these creatures are ordered towards the good or perfection of that bodily system. Whenever one does not eat for an extended amount of time, for example, such would result in the weakening and, eventually, death of the living creature. Its actions, then, are ordered towards it good or desired completion in accord with the “nature” of the creature. In this way we can discover the “good” of any type of creature by examining its powers and their objects. The good of the power of sight, then, is beholding colors, shapes, etc. “Evil” for the power of sight would be the destruction of means used to attain that good goal (e.g, the destruction or damaging of the eye).
My point is that we do not discover the “purpose” of something by reading a tag on its neck or by reading a divinely given instruction manual somehow attached to it. Rather, the “evident” purpose of a thing is found in an examination of its nature and its proper objects, powers, etc. This is actually of more value than if we were given a statement of purpose for each creature since it presupposes we have actually come to know the creature and have thereby equipped ourselves to speak about its good. It requires, however, that we are able to look on a different level for the discovery of purpose and also that we are able to think on that level. Think of how “science” would become impossible if we were looking for scientific data in the wrong place. Expecting codes in the skies giving us the “truth” about biology we would probably not progress very far.
My suggestion here is that we should examine the human person in the same fashion that we examine everything else. We should expect to find our “purpose” in serious consideration of our own nature. The “data” with which we work in such an examination should be not only of most interest to us but most available. Since we live in and through human nature it is not demanding too much to expect we will at least apply ourselves to understanding our own nature and purpose even if we never seriously investigate the natures of pigs, dogs, and monkeys.
The Human Purpose
Even a cursory look at the world about us shows that human beings are quite unique. Our uniqueness is not found in the bodily powers of sense, growth or reproduction, however. Instead, our uniqueness is found in the various things we do and produce that set us apart from everything else in this world. Just recently I sat for an hour listening to musicians play various instruments at our school. Throughout the musical I thought of both the power of music in human experience and also the uniqueness of music as an art within the human family. Those animals that do “sing” do not do so in any way that compares with human creativity. I have not noticed birds singing songs their “parents” did not sing. I have not noticed their interest in producing instruments of music in order to enrich and beautify their natural talents. Humans are not only capable of musical enjoyment and skills, but also countless other arts and interests. Humans alone can develop, learn, and consider abstract mathematical concepts and problems. Humans alone can ponder the moral rightness or wrongness of an act. Humans alone write and produce languages. Humans alone develop advanced cultures and traditions. Humans alone can know that they are knowing. Humans alone can develop sciences of the various kinds of reality all about them. Humans can consider the world and its parts for their own sake and not necessarily for an immediate end pertaining to self-preservation or instinct. Humans alone build book stores and write books to fill them. Humans alone build churches and write theology books. Humans alone consciously worship God and live in an awareness of divine commands.
Additionally, humans alone have the power to choose their destiny. Each of us is conscious of the mysterious power of freedom. We are conscious of acts as “good” and others as “evil” and we understand ourselves to bear the responsibility for what we make of ourselves morally. This awareness supports lawful society and renders unacceptable claims of absolute determinism.
The two “powers” possessed by human persons, then, are intellect (rationality) and freedom. We shall then find the purpose of the human person in discovering the “goal” or end of these powers. This is not to say that the body is not important in finding this definition. My only point is that the body alone will not give the uniquely human purpose or end since it is shared by other creatures. By finding the unique human powers, we can then locate the human good and then discover how this affects our understanding of the body and its acts.
With respect to the intellect, it is clear that its proper object is knowable objects. The intellect seeks to know the truth about things. The various sciences, for instance, seek to penetrate into the objects seen through the senses and even those that escape their immediate grasp. Upon “seeing” into the natures of the things observed, the mind is able to generalize about them and develop universally valid sciences. We may generalize about certain cells and how they work since they have a shared structure and nature in every instance. We may generalize about laws of motion or thermodynamics based on progressive insight into their objects through observation. The human intellect, then, seeks to understand things observed and this in turn leads it to a variety of conclusions and implications not directly observed through the senses. Pondering shapes and units, for instance, yields the different disciplines of math and geometry. Pondering the structure of thought about things experienced yields laws of logic. Pondering the causes of experienced things yields disciplines like cosmology and metaphysics. Ultimately one is led to consider the ultimate cause of a universe everywhere exhibiting contingency or dependence. This ultimate cause we call God.
We might state concisely, then, that the goal of the intellect is to know the truth and truth is ultimately and completely found in the cause of all knowable reality which would be God. I will return to this point again when considering whether or not this truth is clearly “revealed” in the world of our experience. For now it is sufficient, however, to conclude that the human intellect has as its ultimate purpose and object, knowledge of the truth and this culminates in the knowledge of absolute truth.
The human will, by its use of freedom, causes the person to act upon what is known. One cannot desire what is absolutely unknown. Will pertains to desire and it is different from bodily passions or instincts in that it is a desire for what is known in the intellect. The human will is not “determined,” however, to accept the greatest good known to the intellect. Instead one can turn to some “lesser” object by willing to focus upon it. The will is “bad” whenever it opts for something not good. There is nothing “bad” in itself. We are speaking of something as “bad” inasmuch as it is harmful in some way to the good of the willing subject. There are some acts that a healthy intellect and will could never perform (e.g., kill one’s self). There are other acts a person could perform because the will is habituated in doing what is, say, pleasurable to the body but harmful to the same body. One may do an evil or bad act by distorting or misusing an ability for a purpose either contrary or harmful to the power itself. By lying, for instance, one is using the power of speech to communicate ideas to another mind that are false. Since the goal of the intellect is to know the truth and therefore the purpose of words is to facilitate in spreading and communicating truth, lying works counter to the good of the person.
The point here is that the goal of the will is a complementary one to that of the intellect. The desire for truth is the good of the will. The intellect’s goal is to know the truth and the will is to complement that goal with a positive desire for it.
If the ultimate object of the intellect is God then the goal of the will is to love God. We have then discovered what God wants of us written into our very nature. God desires we make use of our intellect and will to direct ourselves to know and love Him. This is more evident, I might add, in and through human experience, than if it were carved into our skin. These purposes are evident in our every experience of knowing and willing and are clear in considering their ultimate object.
The final issue yet to be addressed is the burden of the second question posed at the outset. If it is in fact God’s desire that we know and love Him as the ultimate goal of our unique human powers of intellect and will, why isn’t this more clear to us? The assumption of the question is that the conclusion of the above argument is too obscure and difficult to attain to be a truly powerful argument. It would seem that if the goal of human life were such a serious matter God would make it so clear that even the weakest mind would be able to grasp it as true and therefore be compelled to act upon it.
My reply must surely sound bold. I affirm that the evidence for God and our purpose in the world is so evident that our rejection and questioning of it is not a matter of the weakness of the evidence but instead is a moral problem that reflects on our unwillingness to hear and see what is evident before our very eyes.
It seems quite evident that everything I can possibly experience in this world is, upon examination, evidently dependent upon something else for its present reality. In other words, there is nothing I can see that is self-explanatory. This is a remarkable and stunning fact. One of the things making us unique, as expressed above, is our desire to know and understand the world of our experience. The quest for knowledge is ultimately a quest for causes or sufficient explanations for experienced reality. Our minds are completely unsatisfied with “just because” answers. If I walk outside and my car is gone, I am not happy with a passerby saying, “Oh, it just disappeared for no reason.” Nor are we satisfied with glib answers when it comes to effects in the sensory world of nature. If something comes to be, we look for a true account of the happening.
The claim here is that everything showing itself to be an effect directs attention to its cause and, therefore, beyond itself. If this is true of the whole universe, something I find quite true, then the universe itself is silently but forcefully declaring itself to be an act or effect of a transcendent cause. To deny this conclusion is to claim that the universe does sufficiently explain itself so that there is no good reason to look beyond it for its meaning or source. That such is not the case is seen in the examination of any given object of our consideration. The human mind both in respect to ultimate questions and more proximate ones to our immediately awareness, comes to know things in this order. We know causes by their effects.
Even the most meaningful aspects of our lives are grounded in this order of discovery. Consider the love of a mother for her child. A mother’s love is not so directly known in the senses that I see “love” itself. Instead, I see love as expressed in acts towards the child. The child then discovers the love of his mother in and through her acts. We might say the same with every meaningful interpersonal relationship. What creates and sustains a positive human relationship is the sharing of interpersonal acts that disclose the inner feelings and intentions of the persons. “Directly” known are the acts but these reveal their source in the person.
Applying this line of thought to the subject at hand, we find God (the ultimate cause of the universe) acting and producing the created world. We find ourselves in that world endowed with the powers of intellect and freedom. As “acts” of God, then, they disclose the divine intentions towards us. If the above analysis is correct, we find that God “speaks” to us through our natures as effects of His causality and thereby reveals Himself as powerfully as the most meaningful things known in human experience. In fact, it should be argued that He reveals Himself even more powerfully than the other meaningful things known since He is discovered as “cause” of the very possibility of those relationships.
My challenge here is also an invitation into a new way of looking at reality. I mean “new” not in the sense that I have somehow created it. To the contrary, my claims are grounded in other, much greater, minds than my own. The relevant point, however, is that this perspective is true. It is true because it corresponds with our experience of the world. It is “new” because it brings focus to features of our experience that are often overlooked or, I’m afraid, ignored because of other interests. If adopted, this perspective not only gives us direction for our lives in relationship to our highest calling, viz. God, but it also helps to retrain our thinking so that we are not looking for the “voice” of God in the wrong way. God has indeed “spoken” to each rational human person in absolutely everything about us and within our own selves. The universe truly “declares the glory of God” if we will but see it as an act of God disclosing its cause.
Perhaps a final point will help draw these considerations to a close. The most natural challenge to the line of reasoning found here is to draw attention to evil acts in the world. Should we see these, too, as revelatory acts of God’s intentions and our meaning? Certainly it is meaningful to see a mother’s love ultimately as an expression of God’s good intentions but what about hate between persons? How does that “reveal” God to us?
The difficult problem of evil should always follow a careful attempt to understand the nature of evil itself. Evil is nothing in itself. It is the lack or misuse of something that is good. One’s lack of love is found in hate. One lack of love for the truth is found when the truth is distorted or denied in a lie. We could add examples endlessly. God, however, is the cause of the being of the world. The evil present is a turn away from the calling of the Creator. By evil acts, then, we lie about our own calling and betray our ultimate privilege of reflecting our ultimate cause and declaring the purpose of the human family. In any case, we continue to “see” God’s intentions and purposes for us only in the case of evil we see a negative example of what God does not want for us. This is so because such acts move away from the meaning and goals of our nature, especially in its unique human powers.
In conclusion, I have argued that the purpose of the human person may be found in an examination of his nature. By doing so, we discover that the unique human powers of intellect and will direct us to God as the ultimate goal of our desire to know and love. It is then our highest purpose to know and love God forever. We then considered how “evident” this is in human experience. I claimed and argued that our knowledge of our purpose is clearer to us than even the most meaningful relationships constituting our lives. The way in which we discover our highest purpose is in a similar way as the discovery of those relationships. As the acts of a mother towards her child reveal her love, so the mother herself shows herself to be an “act” of God revealing Himself. Every part of the created world, then, ultimately reveals God and invites us to our highest end.
Mark A McNeil
12-2-01
NOTES: The above reasoning presupposes a traditional theistic understanding of the nature of God. A non-Christian or non-theistic reader might wish to challenge the idea of God presupposed. I do believe, however, that a convincing philosophical case can be made for the traditional understanding of God as infinite, eternal, uncaused, personal, and good.
Second, the above argumentation is not designed to be explicitly Christian. It is so implicitly. This is so because I suggest that the cause of our forgetfulness of God and His purposes for us is a moral problem. This ultimately leads to the problem of sin. The Christian faith deals with this problem in the Christ-event and thereby reveals the path knowable through reason but obscured on account of the moral effects of sin in human reason and acts.