God is End, but Not the Purpose

Of human life, as the Bible makes clear. 

I was sitting in the bar of the hotel overlooking the park somewhere in the UK. The sun had come out and I escaped the darkened conference room that was my supposed raison d'etre for having crossed the Atlantic. I was instead pursuing my raison d'etre for being a living human person: making connections with my fellow humans. 

As I engaged the barkeep I learned that he was born in Borneo, a place I know pretty well. We talked about the food specialties of his dialect group and the difficulties he had getting the ingredients in the UK. He wanted his husband to experience this food, but couldn't really take him back home. A dilemma for many a migrant seeking a place where they can live out their full humanity. 

Now you may have already choked on my assertion above that the reason for being human is to make connections with my fellow humans. Surely as a good Christian I should have asserted that the purpose of being humans "is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever," the widely paraphrased line from the Westminster Catechism. In support of this assertions one finds various Psalms, Ecclesiastes 12:13, and other verses exhorting humans to offer God praise, seek God out, and be obedient to God's commands. All good advice but tangential to the question at hand. 

They are not what God actually says about the reason for being human.  The reason God created humans, and the first command to the first humans, is clearly "be fruitful and multiple and cover the face of the earth." Genesis 1:27-31, Genesis 9:1-3. For this purpose humans must know each other, and not just in the "Biblical sense." We don't have the least chance of fulfilling our fundamental obligation to God, ourselves, and to the creation over which we are made stewards, unless we take on this task of knowing one another. It is that knowing that makes us fruitful, and in many senses allows us to multiply.

 

The Westminster Catechism is wrong. As creatures of God, like all creatures of God, we should offer God our praise. It aligns us with God and God's purposes by keeping us conscious of our Creator and our purpose. But it is not the reason we were created. 

When God came to us in Jesus Christ, God did remarkably little in terms of asking for praise. Quite the opposite. Jesus came and exemplified what it means to have our humanity restored by feeding the poor, healing the sick, freeing those imprisoned, giving sight to the blind. In every respect Jesus reminded us that the citizens of the Reign of God live primarily for one another. Not once does Jesus say, "The Reign of God is the place where everyone praises God all the time." Instead, when he offers a vision of the final judgement those who come into God's Reign are those who have served their fellow humans. No mention at all of either having the right belief or the right liturgy. 

Of course beliefs and forms of worship are important aspects of human obedience to God. The acknowledgement of God and God's will are central disciplines for maintaining our humanity so that we can fulfill our human vocation. But they are, as my old preaching professor used to say, important secondary considerations. And when undertaken as the center of Christian life they may become distractions, actually drawing us away from God and God's intention for our lives.

   

The Body of Christ is certainly called to worship within the love of the Trinity, and to instruct disciples in the gospel. But unfortunately those called to lead in these matters rather naturally come to see their work as being of central importance to every Christian and indeed human. Let's face it, the Westminster Confession was written and promulgated by professional theologians and church leaders. Naturally they put their areas of expertise at the center of the human enterprise. 

Moreover those who have found themselves enlivened, motivated, and inspired by worship and the intellectual study of God and God's Word feel them to be profoundly important. If you have been brought back into your full humanity through the praise of your creator then that praise becomes a superlative activity. But we cannot mistake the means for the end. Many will call "Lord, Lord" and find themselves judged to have failed to fulfill God's will for their lives. 

And this is consequential for all Christian education, and in particular theological education and the training of church leaders. We cannot know and lead others into their human vocation unless we understand where human self-understanding intersects with the teaching of Jesus about being human.

 

Alexander Pope was right, "the proper study of humanity is humanity." Within the study of humanity, the classic ars liberalis, theology and its focus on human faith is but one branch, neither separate nor most important. It cannot exist without the others. If we cannot study what it means to be human in our place, and time, and complex world then we cannot understand what it means to be a Christian or lead Christian churches.