“Only deification is capable of justifying creation. It is the only theodicy.”
Sergius Bulgakov
Lately I have been wondering what the point is for us being here. Why did God create us. None of us ask to be born and we can’t rightly leave. And life is hard and there is pain and suffering and sometimes it doesn’t make sense. There is also great joy and love that we experience. But at the end of it all, what does it all matter?
If Jesus is, “The lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” and that has been accomplished when He cried, “It is finished”, then what does anything even matter? If I am some great inventor and I invent something that makes man’s life better. Or I win the Nobel prize for an idea that re-routes humanity into a more peaceful and harmonious existence. Or I am a child-raping murderer. All sins have been forgiven so does the inventor have a better place in the next life than the child-raping murderer? I don’t really know. My logical human mind wants to say that yes what we do matters and determines our place in the next life. But it seems unfair to create man unequally, in other words, some of us are born with a greater mental capacity to figure things out than others. And we are also all born into different circumstances that affect the direction of our lives. Some of us were given guidance and opportunities through our families and others of us were given chaos and abuse through our families. And it seems the latter would damn those souls to a lower position in the next life through no fault of their own. And that seems unfair and how could a loving God judge us according to such inequity?
It is interesting that the work of salvation has been finished for all mankind and yet we are still called to repent. So it makes me wonder how much my sinfulness has to do with salvation? What does repentance have to do with salvation if the work of salvation has already been finished? If the reality of “the good news” is not one of how to be save but rather that we are saved, then where does repentance come in. Why should I quit sinning when some sins seem to be to my advantage in this life. Why shouldn’t I cheat on my taxes when the government is just corrupt and cheating everyone else out of their money anyway? Why should I love my neighbor when my neighbor is an asshole and maybe punching him in the face is what he needs? Greed, despite its reputation, is good and Michael Douglas in Wall Street enlightened us all to its benevolent nature. My point is, if our trespasses have been forgiven and we can benefit from participating in sinfulness in a sinful world, then why worry about it and why should we be judged for it?
Well nobody can ever really know the answer to that. All we can do is theorize and project our hopes and sensibility onto the reality we live in and continually edit what we find to be true and not true.
I believe that what we do matters. And the heart and motives with which we do it matters as well. I believe that the purpose of living in this existence is to shape us into Christ. When I hear people say, “that everything happens for a reason”, my gut clenches. Anything too deterministic starts pushing out the truth that we have been created with free will as part of our reflecting the nature and image of God and so I start building a trench around that idea to keep it from breaching the shores of free will.
God created us with free will. We all make choices and our lives are the result, in part, of those choices. But what about the guy who had drug addict parents and no real guidance growing up? Because he has a few priors rather than a college degree is it fair to say that it was because of his choices? Can you compare him to the guy who had a stable home with college educated parents who invested time in raising their kids and gave guidance to help their daughter attain a college degree and a career she desired. Sure both of them had choices but not the same choices. Our choices matter in the sense of how we are learning from them.
Ultimately we are here to become like Christ. If we are able to continue moving forward in life towards that end, then perhaps it doesn’t matter so much what we do in this life as much as what we are becoming. Do we see the choices that we have to make with the dividing line being the line between losing our life or keeping our life. Dying to self or preserving our ego. I think it matters that in this life I purge all that is not Christ in me as it will be purged from me in the next life and that may be a little painful. I may find myself weeping and gnashing my teeth in the next life wishing I had allowed myself to become more like Christ. That when I had the chance, I put on the wedding clothes even if they felt a bit awkward.
The trials and sufferings of this life help purge my desire to hold on to this life, which ultimately shapes me to be more like Christ, and the joys I get to experience offer me a taste of what is to come.