Jun 30 Tue
Why did God place us in an imperfect world?
Some people wonder: Why stick around in this life if the next life is so great? In fact, why has God sent us into this world at all if His ultimate goal for us is union with Him? Why not just get us there?
Why send us here, risking the possibility that things might turn out badly? It’s as though God was saying: “I am putting you in this very fragile ethical situation where you’ll be pretty much over your heads, and although I want you to succeed, if you screw up, you’re doomed. Good luck!”
Everything about the Christian faith tells us that is not what God is doing. So why are we in this world when we’re meant for the next? Perhaps it will help to engage in a little thought experiment.
Let’s say there is a loving Creator who freely wants to share that love with some creatures, a God who “created the universe to enter into a history of love with mankind.”
How would He do this?
Love must be received and given freely. So, God can’t keep these creatures with Him, “under His wing,” so to speak, because that wouldn’t allow them any real freedom, any more than children kept at home, even with very loving parents, have any real freedom to become who they are meant to become.
So, God’s creatures cannot remain always and only with and in Him; they must go out to develop in a place and in circumstances where they can learn to love freely.
It would have to be in a place vast enough to keep their minds always expanding, preparing, bit by bit, for union with their transcendent Source. It would need sufficient resources to support these creatures, but not be perfect in every way. If it were, people might choose God only as a source of pleasant things, as though He were simply the divine “caretaker.”
That’s not love; it’s dependency. To learn to love like adults, they can’t be treated like children forever.
So, this Creator would have to put us out and away from Him, in some sense. And He can’t make Himself visible at every moment lest we simply depend on Him constantly to mend our troubles and pains and to provide for us and others. If He did, we wouldn’t grow in love. We just existed, like spoiled children.
To learn to be selfless lovers (which is the only real kind), these creatures would need to learn to put the needs of others ahead of their own.
But how would they do that if they were in a world with no needs? So too, without struggle, there can be no real virtue. To develop virtue, people must be tested, “like gold tested in fire.”
“To be faithful to God requires a constant battle. Hand-to-hand combat, man to man — the old man against the man of God — in one small thing after another, without giving in."
“Each day, be conscious of your duty to be a saint. — A saint! And that doesn’t mean doing strange things. It means a daily struggle in the interior life and in heroically fulfilling your duty right through to the end." St. Josemaría
Some excerpts from Randall Smith