Why Are We Here? (The Vocational Gospel, Part 1)

The chief End for which Man had his being, was that he might bear the Image of his Creator, to govern this World and to live in Obedience to his Creator
(St. Paul's Catechism, by Thomas Grantham, 1687)

I want to start at the broadest place possible: why are we here? Why did God create human beings? What purpose do we serve? I asked this question on my Facebook page, and I heard back from a lot of different people--pastors, seminary professors, and laypeople alike. The majority of them answered in one (or both) of two ways:

1. Human beings exist to bring glory to God, and/or
2. Human beings exist to "live in community with," or love, God and each other.

These answers are not surprising. After all, most Christians have been taught this view of the purpose of humanity. It comes from the Reformed Tradition, specifically the Westminster Catechisms:

Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever. 

(The Westminster Shorter Catechism, 1647)

For 370 years, English-speaking Christians have generally taught that these are the two purposes of humanity ("Enjoy him forever" is the 17th-century way of saying "live in community with him"). I have several objections to this view of humanity's purpose, but this is meant to be a brief introduction, so let me focus on the most decisive: this is not what the Bible teaches.

"Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever" is not a quotation from scripture. In fact, it is not even a paraphrase. It's simply a human tradition. If you look to scripture, you get a very different idea of why God made human beings. Let's start at the beginning:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”So God created man in his own image,    in the image of God he created him;    male and female he created them.And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
(Genesis 1:26-28, ESV)

Right there, in the very beginning, in the moment God created humanity, we see him state our purpose: to have dominion over the earth and its creatures--not absolute dominion, of course, because he proceeds to give Adam and Eve very specific commands to follow. But this is the basic design of humanity and their place in the world: we are here to rule the world on God's behalf. This is the starting place for the Vocational Gospel: recognizing that humanity was created for a job, a vocation--NOT to simply sit on clouds and sing hymns to harp music. We were made for work.

But, of course, Adam and Eve sinned. They disobeyed God. They ruined that original arrangement. Perhaps that changed God's plans? Perhaps after Adam and Eve sinned God decided to abandon his plan and take human beings to Heaven instead?

No. God did not change his plan. From the beginning God intended human beings to rule on his behalf. How do I know? Because God keeps returning to this plan every time he acts in the story of Scripture. After all, every covenant God makes in the Old Testament affirms this basic design: whether with Noah (Genesis 9:1-2), Abraham (Genesis 15:18), Israel (Exodus 19:5-6), or David (2 Samuel 7:12-13), the basic idea behind the Covenant stays the same: God grants authority to a person, or group of people, to rule over the land on his behalf. As we will see in a later post, this was the entire purpose of the Law of Moses as well. The point is that every time God acted in the history of humanity, he was acting to establish this basic design: humanity, ruling over earth, on God's behalf.

But what about the New Testament? Maybe God abandoned this plan when he sent Jesus with the Gospel? I'm saving the message of Jesus for a later post, when I can deal with it all on its own, but if we skip over Jesus for a moment we can take a brief glimpse of God's intentions for humanity at the end of time. Here is the last part of John's vision in Revelation, the last appearance of humanity in the Bible:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. (Revelation 22:1-5, ESV)

There's a couple of things to notice about this passage. First, the location is Earth. This may not be clear from the passage I've quoted, but when John sets the scene in Revelation 21:1, he makes it clear that we are in the New Jerusalem, which has descended from the News Heavens onto the New Earth. Second, the New Earth looks a lot like the Garden of Eden, which is where humanity started. And finally, in case we were unsure, John makes clear that in the New Eden humanity will have been restored to our original role: reigning over the Earth, on God's behalf. 

This is the reason why we are here. This is what we are designed for. We are different from all of God's other creatures because we are physical beings with the ability to intentionally shape and mold this world, for good or for bad. In my next post I will be going into more detail about our place in the world and God's grand design, which I am calling the Divine Ecosystem. See you then!