Created for love

Posted by Mark Chapman on August 15th, 2010 at 2:29 am

Herb “Padre” Agee

By Herb “Padre” Agee

Engle­wood United Methodist Church

Have you ever won­dered why God cre­ated us?

Of course you have, every­body has. We lie in bed at night and won­der stuff like that before we fall asleep, or it keeps us awake half the night. Isa­iah 43 says that we were cre­ated for his glory. I think I remem­ber being taught that he cre­ated us to wor­ship him. That’s kind of what you get when you read “for his glory,” isn’t it? But I don’t think that, at all.

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It makes God sound so arro­gant to say that he cre­ated us to wor­ship him. That’s like me mak­ing a bunch of lit­tle clay peo­ple and putting them in pos­tures so they are bow­ing to me or grov­el­ing before me and telling me how won­der­ful and majes­tic I am. Wouldn’t that be weird? Then, for those that aren’t bow­ing, I would angrily smash them with my fist, even though I was the one who designed them in the first place.

Does that make any sense to you at all? Now, I real­ize that some­one will say, “But that’s what the scrip­ture says.” Well, if it does, then I think we are mis­in­ter­pret­ing the scrip­ture. Why would the God of the uni­verse need measly lit­tle peo­ple telling him how won­der­ful he is, and then need to smash them if they didn’t wor­ship him? It makes God sound like a crazy narcissist.

Oddly enough, a lot of our the­ol­ogy and wor­ship leans in that direction.

Let me pon­der and ram­ble a lit­tle bit here. I think God cre­ated us so he could love us. There, I’ve said it. With­out some­one, God could not have the most amaz­ing expe­ri­ence that we, as humans, know and call love.

Think about when you were first in love. You just wanted to be around that per­son all of the time. You would go places you really didn’t want to go, just so you could be with them. How could God expe­ri­ence that with­out some­one to love?

I think he also wanted us to have the chance to expe­ri­ence that love, too. For those of you with chil­dren, think about the love that you have for them. It’s amaz­ing! And, it can never be lost. The love you have for your chil­dren or grand­chil­dren is, I think, the most god­like expe­ri­ence you can ever have.

OK, so God couldn’t expe­ri­ence “love” with­out hav­ing some object or crea­ture on which to bestow his love. Those crea­tures couldn’t be “pro­grammed” to love him back or obey him; they couldn’t in any way be required to respond to his love or return it. Oth­er­wise, it wouldn’t be love. God took the risk of cre­at­ing us “for his glory”; mean­ing, I think, so he could “glory in us,” just like Zepha­niah 3:17 says, “He delights in us.”

Like­wise, we cre­ate our chil­dren, not know­ing what the out­come will be. We take a god­like risk when we have a child. We risk our love.

Think about it. If you didn’t get to love your chil­dren, they would be worth­less. They take up all of your time and money and energy. You worry about them from the moment they are con­ceived until you die; God for­bid they should die before you, for then you will grieve until you die. They might love you back, they might not. They might become pro­duc­tive mem­bers of the fam­ily and soci­ety or they might not. They might take care of you when you get old, or they might stick you in some crummy lit­tle nurs­ing home and steal all of your money.

They might hurt you, they might dis­own you and change their name, and they might never speak to you again. You don’t know what will hap­pen, but they can never stop you from lov­ing them. That’s what you get out of it, and if you didn’t get to love them, none of it would be worth it. Only love makes it all worthwhile.

OK, all of that is why I think God cre­ated us to love; oth­er­wise we are absolutely worth­less to him. But, even in our most amaz­ingly piti­ful and worth­less moments, God gets to love us and for­give us. That makes it all worthwhile.

I’m not say­ing this is the­o­log­i­cal ortho­doxy, just my ponderings.

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