As creatures, human beings are created with a purpose determined by their Creator. The monotheistic religions in particular recognize that God created human beings to serve, love, and glorify Him.
We can thus find fulfillment through service and obedience. However, as our heavenly Father, God would also want us to be children who reflect His image and likeness in the world by spreading love and benevolence throughout the human race. God is the Enjoyer of all phenomena in some texts; specifically, we can speak of God’s joy when His purpose of creation is fulfilled.
It is our privilege as human beings to return such joy to God. Father Moon explains God’s purpose for creating human beings as a creative partnership, where we take after God’s loving nature, and God, in turn, rejoices to see countless images of Himself as we establish loving families and relate to one another and all God’s creatures with divine love.
Nevertheless, due to the Fall of the first ancestors, people do not form loving families or treat the creation with love. Therefore, God has never experienced the fullness of joy. (See Chapter 6: God’s Grief.)
1. Our Purpose Is to Serve God
I have created the jinn and humankind only that they may serve Me. No sustenance do I require that they should feed Me. For God is He who gives all sustenance, the Lord of Power, Steadfast. Qur’an 51.56-58
All that God created in His world He created only for His glory, as it is said, “All that is called by my name, for my glory I created and fashioned and made it” (Isaiah 43.7). Avot 6.11 (Judaism)
There is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist.
1 Corinthians 8.6
The greatest bliss is the good pleasure of God: that is the supreme felicity.
Qur’an 9.72
Why, is he better who founds his building upon the fear of God and His good pleasure, or he who founds his building upon the brink of a crumbling bank that will tumble with him into the fire of hell? And God does not guide the people of the evildoers. Qur’an 9.109
If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you this day, by lov- ing the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his stat- utes and his ordinances, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land. Deuteronomy 30.16
Do not try to develop what is natural to man; develop what is natural to Heaven. He who develops Heaven benefits life; he who develops man injures life.
Chuang Tzu 19 (Taoism)
If it be your wish, O people, to know God and to discover the greatness of His might, look, then, upon Me with My own eyes, and not with the eyes of anyone besides Me. You will, otherwise, never be capable of recognizing Me, though you ponder My Cause as long as My Kingdom endures.
Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh 127 (Bahá’i Faith)
Teachings of Sun Myung Moon
Originally, human beings were created to be happy, full of life and joy before God, their Parent. Our existence should be for the glory of God. (52:36, December 12, 1971)
What should we human beings set as our purpose? Rather than setting our purpose on the individual, family, community, nation, world, or even the cosmos, we should set our purpose on God. Our purpose should be to bring God and humankind together. (41:323, February 18, 1971)
For what purpose were we born? What should be our center as we go through life, and what should be our ultimate goal? These questions absolutely cannot be answered if we exclude God. Without God, our life will have no connection to the Cause.
Even if he achieves some success in his life, a person who lacks a connection to the Cause cannot reap the result, and the value of his result cannot be recognized. A building is constructed according to a blueprint created by an architect. A build- ing built without a blueprint cannot become what the Architect intends. (21:100, November 17, 1968)
My life is for the sake of God and the world. You also should think of living for God and the world. You should not think to live merely for yourself… Always check how closely you are aligned with the life that God wants you to live. (147:115, August 31, 1986)
2. God’s Joy in Human Beings
God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. Genesis 1.31
I was a secret treasure, and I created the creatures in order that I might be known. Hadith (Islam)
O Lord of all, hail unto Thee!
The Soul of all, causing all acts,
Enjoying all, all life art Thou!
Lord of all pleasure and delight!
Maitri Upanishad 5.1 (Hinduism)
Happiness is spiritual, born of Truth and Love. It is unselfish; therefore it cannot exist alone, but requires all mankind to share it.
Science and Health, 57 (Christian Science)
As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you. Isaiah 62.5
When all human beings have accomplished the purification of their minds and come to lead a life full of joy, I, Tsukihi (God), will become cheered up. And when I become cheered up, so will all human beings. When the minds of all the world become cheered up, God and human beings will become altogether cheered up in one accord. Ofudesaki 7.109-111 (Tenrikyo)
What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care for him? Yet thou hast made him little less than God, and dost crown him with glory and honor. Psalm 8.4-5
The Messenger of Allah said: “God says: I have created human beings to win, not for Me be the winner.” al-Ghazzali, Revival of Religious Science (Islam)
Brahma’s creative activity is not undertaken by way of any need on His part, but simply by way of sport. Vedanta Sutra 2.1.32-33 (Hinduism)
We created not the heaven and the earth and all that is between them in play. If We had wished to find a pastime, We could have found it in Our presence—if We ever did. Nay, but We hurl the true against the false, and it prevails over it, and lo! [the false] vanishes… To Him belongs whosoever is in the heavens and the earth. And those who dwell in His presence are not too proud to worship Him, nor do they weary. Qur’an 21.16-19
Having created the world and all that lives and moves therein, He, through the direct opera- tion of His unconstrained and sovereign Will, chose to confer upon man the unique distinc- tion and capacity to know Him and to love Him—a capacity that must needs be regarded as the generating impulse and the primary purpose underlying the whole of creation.
Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah 27 (Baha’i Faith)
Teachings of Sun Myung Moon
God came to us to feel joy through our daily lives. (Way of God’s Will 2.2) Though God is the Absolute Being, He cannot be happy alone. Adjectives such as “good” and “happy” cannot apply to any being that lives in isolation.
They apply only where there is a robust mutual relationship. Imagine a professional singer who finds herself exiled to an uninhabited island. She may sing at the top of her voice, but with no one to listen, will it bring her happiness? In the same way, even the self-existent God needs a partner to share love with to experience joy and be happy. (September 12, 2005)
God’s creation was a necessary act. The ideal of true love that God is creating cannot be realized by a solitary being. This ideal exists so that God can share with human beings the joy of His exalted and righteous Will.
When we understand the God of true love correctly, it is self-evident that this unhappy world of sin and strife was not His original plan. (400:81, December 27, 2002)
Just as in a family, where the basis of the parents’ happiness is when they have children, it is likewise unmistakable that God’s purpose in searching for humanity is to attain His happiness through His children. There is no basis for God’s happiness if human beings are excluded.
Therefore, God strives to connect with human beings and bring them to Himself, establishing a realm where God and human beings are in unity. Just as we do, God experiences happiness when all the varieties of hearts are present in the family. (32:197, July 15, 1970)
If we were to ask God to tell us why He created this world, He would no doubt answer, “Because I liked it.” Because He liked it. Because it gave Him joy. God created this world to obtain joy. This state of liking, this joy, is obtained through love. God wanted to rejoice; therefore He created this world for the realization of love.
God wanted to rejoice over a world of warm and harmonious love, where human beings and all creatures would dwell as one in God’s love. God wanted to rejoice over men and women who would form true conjugal relationships in His love, and then build families, tribes, nations, and a world of love; and God would taste the joy of love through the loving oneness of these human beings.
This was the very ideal of God’s creation. If human beings had accomplished everything for God exactly as He had envisioned and according to His Will, then God would have become the God of joy, the God of glory, and the God of happiness. (113:312)
God did not create human beings as objects for His amusement or as a hobby. It is impossible to express in words how hard God worked and the efforts He devoted to creating human beings and establishing them as the center of all created beings. In creating human beings, God devoted Himself, making many efforts.
He gave them all His heart and soul and the essence of His life. He invested His love and affection. He created them to be in a relationship that no force can ever undo or sever. Because God created them in such a way, only when He beholds them [in their original unfallen state] can He finally feel at peace. (20:207, June 9, 1968)
God created all things in heaven and earth because it pleased Him to behold them. Many Christians today say, “God is the Creator, and we are His creatures. There can be no parity or resemblance between the Creator and His creatures.” This would mean that God is always absolute and alone, in a position without an object partner. Nothing would be greater unhappiness.
Consider a man of authority, even the president of a country; his wife has died, and he lives alone. Would his son say to him, “Father, you must be so happy to be living alone”? Surely his father would reply, “You rascal. How can I be happy?” Rathe, the son, should say, “Father, would you like me to find you a new wife?” That would be a filial son. (57:247, June 4, 1972)
God’s purpose in creating the universe was to feel joy when He saw the purpose of goodness fulfilled in the Heavenly Kingdom, which the whole creation, including human beings, could have established…
The purpose of the universe’s existence, centered on human beings, is to return joy to God, the Creator. (Exposition of the Divine Principle, Creation 3.1)