"Where were you when I laid the earth's foundations?"
-Job 38:4
In my church's young adult meetings, we are having presentations on different people of faith in the past. These people include George Muller, Polycarp, C.S. Lewis, and other similar people. I am scheduled to give my presentation on St. Augustine very soon. While reading St. Augustine's book, "The Confessions of St. Augustine", it made me think about the nature of God and man. I've written before on the fact that we are spiritual beings, and that we are sinful. I know that the nature of man and God are both very difficult to discuss in full, but that isn't my goal. I want to focus on a couple of ideas that should help us understand man and God.
The first thing I want to discuss is purpose. I often talk about purpose, because it is extremely important to understand. I'm not going to delve too deeply into what our purpose is, but rather how our purpose defines our nature. The nature of man is to have a purpose. We are purpose driven people, whether we think so or not. People are never content doing nothing- they always feel the need to be doing something. This is why we love distractions so much, because it gives us something to do when we have nothing better to do. Many people's purpose is to make themselves happy and comfortable. People work hard to make money, because they believe that money will make them happy and somehow give them happiness.
I've said most of this before, but what I've learned is that people have to look outside of themselves to fulfill their purpose. Think about it; no one was ever content in fulfilling their purpose within themselves. This is because we actually cannot fulfill our purpose within ourselves. This why people always look to find a good job, a good spouse, or numerous other things in order to fulfill their purpose. You might be asking yourself, "our happiness is not our true purpose is it?", and you would be correct. Our purpose is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. What's interesting about our purpose is that it is not about us; it is about God. Also, we are not able to glorify and enjoy Him on our own, we need His help.
To summarize what I've discussed so far, man must look outside of himself in order to both find and fulfill his purpose. Man is incapable of finding or fulfilling his purpose by looking within himself. This is because man's purpose is both found and fulfilled in God, not man himself. Now let's think about God. Does God have a purpose? I believe so. What is God's purpose? This is a more difficult question, but I believe it is probably similar to ours; to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. That may sound strange, and to be honest, it is. We are so used to people glorifying something outside themselves, and enjoying something outside themselves. However, God's purpose is found within Himself. God does not need to look outside of Himself to find His purpose or to fulfill it. This is a key difference in the nature of God and the nature of man. Man must look outside of himself to find and fulfill his purpose, but God's purpose is both found and fulfilled within Himself.
Let's continue and think of other qualities of man. Let's think back to the beginning; creation. Man is a created being, and always will be. Man is not able to create himself, or even to create anything. (What I mean by create is make something of nothing). However, God was not created, He always was. God always existed. Let's also think of man's limitations. A man is bounded by space and by time; a man cannot be everywhere at once, and he is bounded by time. In other words, a man is finite. On the other hand, God is infinite, not bound by space or time. He is everywhere, and time has no hold over Him; He exists outside of time. Lastly, let's think of man's worth. Man's worth is defined in so many different ways by people, such as appearance, monetary value, or contribution to society. However, a man's worth is really only found in God. Again, we have this idea of a man having to look outside himself. God's worth is defined within Himself; He needs nothing else to establish his worth.
There are many things that separate man's nature from God's nature, but I could only touch on a few. Man must look outside of himself to find his purpose and worth. Man is created and finite. God's purpose and worth are found in Himself, and God is uncreated and infinite. A man cannot create himself because he is limited and finite. Therefore, he cannot find purpose or worth within himself. Why is this? Think about where purpose and worth come from. Take a stapler for example. A stapler was created by someone, and that person gave it a purpose; to staple paper together. How much is the stapler worth? It depends on the creator. He defines the purpose and worth of that stapler. If I did not know what the purpose of a stapler was, I would only have to look at the creator. The same is true for us. Since we are created, our purpose must be found in the Creator.
-Smart
