Part 3 in a series exploring the Westminster Catechism question, “What is the chief end of man?” Click here for Part 1. Click here for Part 2.
So all the way back to the Westminster Shorter Catechism and its first question: What is the chief end of man? Their answer is: Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
One of the benefits of a Reformed upbringing is that you get to bypass any existential questions about your place in the universe (this is called “identity foreclosure”1). As with any high-control group, Reformed Baptists had the truth; it was up to others to agree with us or be misguided, lesser, and intentionally blind. For RBs, your level of blindness inversely correlated to your level of doctrinally sound. The more doctrinally sound you are (since ‘doctrinally sound’ is obviously a work of sanctification and a fruit of the Spirit), the easier it is to see these answers, because God bypassed the “wise” to save the “foolish,” by which he actually meant “more clear-sighted than everyone else.” In fact, if all the philosophers had just been Reformed Baptist, philosophy as a discipline would cease to exist. Plato? Aristotle? Socrates? Morons.
Clear, obvious answers do not get debated, they exist. This question/answer set is one. In my experience, it became the basis for a lot of statements like “God did not create us for our glory,” which implies that we were created for his glory—alone. God’s glory is the sole reason for our existence.
Is that true?
We know God doesn’t need us. Perfect and complete in himself, he doesn’t lack glory that only our creation, our lives, our response, our be-ing, can give or reflect. He was glorified in himself before ever the worlds were created. If he doesn’t need us, why would he create us?
Because he wants us.
If God is love, in perfect union, unity, fellowship with himself, and utterly satisfied and delighting in that trinitarian relationship, then he creates just to have more beings on whom to lavish his love and goodness and care.
He didn't create us with him in mind. He created us with us in mind. God made us so we could participate in him. He contains a fullness of joy that overflows, and he can’t help but share. We are created to enjoy him, and he created us to enjoy us.
Here is some beauty! he says. Here is some light! Here is some color! Here is a satisfying meal, a filling love, a relaxing view. He gave us glory and honor, and all things richly to enjoy, because he delights in us.
For my existence to be solely ‘for God’s glory’ strips him of his love and relational being, and makes his glory a thing I have to constantly be generating. Reformed life is all about striving, and very little about enjoyment. And I think he is glorified in my joy, in my abundant life in him, but it’s not based in my striving. Enjoyment is rest.
I am growing to understand a Christlike version of me, someone who loves strawberries, the ocean, pine trees, good bourbon, bad puns. I can become more just, more merciful, more kind as I develop a passion for accessible design, for amplifying marginalized voices, for developing a boundaried sense of self—stained glass, as Keith Green puts it, living my individual life with God shining through.
That is what I believe now, that those things in me are God’s own spirit, making Deryn more fully and truly Deryn as I live my life as God’s. I believe he sees and loves who I am, because he gave me these taste buds, and this passion for learning, and this burning anger at injustice.
As God, Christ has communicable and incommunicable attributes, and I will never look just like him, because I’m not supposed to. I can reflect his love in my specific life circumstances. I can grow in expressing his mercy as I live my unique day to day. I can yearn for his justice and try to live justly in 21st-century America.
I am called to be like Christ, not to be Christ. And I can be assured of my place in God’s heart because he chose me. He chose me because, like Christ, he delighted in me. Why do you love some people? It’s not about their worthiness as a friend or a person, though of course you may admire them. It’s because you like them. Because they make you laugh, or say interesting things, or because for any number of reasons you are drawn to them. It’s not about worth. It’s just about love. Jesus was a substitute, a sacrifice, a victor—any and all of these things—because God the Trinity loves us, his world, his people, his creation.
And I was created to be a recipient of God’s grace, to rest in his love, and to enjoy him forever.
Part 1: God is anger • Part 2: Worm theology • Part 3: Love and rest
Definition: “Crisis: Never suffer from doubts about identity issues, hence crisis is not experienced. Commitment: Has accepted and endorsed the values of his parents [and religious group!], hence commitment is strong. Characteristics: Close-minded, feels superior to peers; strong identification with and more dependent on parents and other authority figures for guidance and approval.” Emphasis mine. Kasinath HM. Adolescence: Search for an identity. J Educ Psychol. 2013;7(1):3.