WHAT DOES GOD WANT OF PEOPLE?

The Bible tells us that God created human beings.  It is natural to believe that there was and is a purpose inherent in this act.  The assumption is that Humanity is partnered with God to accomplish this goal.

For this essay, I will set aside questions of whether God “wants” anything or needs “purpose.”  Religious leaders, prophets, scholars, and teachers have implied or plainly said that Human beings were created for a reason.  This concept has been taught from the beginning of awareness of God.

My answer is that God wants from us what we want from other people. 

We desire that our family, friends, and loved ones to be like we are.

Each of us prefer that those we care about to have a worldview that is similar to our own.  They should share our morality structure, our attitudes, and our values.  We all want to belong to groups.  Others in our groups should agree with our political views and sense of humor.  Naturally, commonality of language, clothing, and family life are important.  We associate with others who enjoy the same types of entertainment, food, and other activities.  Within each of these categories of interaction, a fair amount of variety is acceptable.  We do not want our social group to be monolithic.  We want to be stimulated by our friends’ different experiences.  But we want them to have similar orientations.

What we want of others are approximations.

We do not want others to be exactly like ourselves.  Our relationships with others begin with learned cultural similarities.  We each have experiences in life that draw us to people who have grown in a comparable direction from their experiences.  Discovering kindred spirits in people we meet creates bonds.     

All of these similarities spring from our earthly gifts.  Thus, our desires also originate within a mortal and material nature.  That is what and who we are.

God is wholly spiritual.

God is the only entity that is 100% spiritual.

God wants us to be more spiritual.  We should embrace and seek that ethereal aspect of ourselves that we have been gifted.  This otherworldly goal that has been assigned us by the deity is to be coupled with our existence as physical beings.  Our task is to develop our spiritual selves and couple it to our material lives.

We cannot be exactly like God.  If we were, we would be God.  And we are not.  We do share an innate and incredible aspect of ourselves that reflects the spiritual nature of God. 

Every human being has a body and a soul.  These entities are part of our makeup.  The two exist together and complement each other.

The spiritual is a statement of fact.  It is truth.  It is not good or evil.  Such subjective valuations are part of our earthly gift.  A physical world promotes appraisals and ranking.  Thus, when we read that God has commanded us, we interpret this to mean that God is teaching us to be good and resist evil.  

Our heavenly powers inspire awe.  Thus, the commandments are teaching each of us to access a spiritual essence.    

The world and humanity have progressed in a certain direction.  We should not be complacent that we understand that direction.  Human and earthly developments over thousands of years are consequences of the interaction between our earthly and heavenly powers.  The former is observable by the senses and amenable to interpretation by the mind.  The latter is not perceptible by these native tools and not comprehended logically.

The world as created is incomplete.   Our task is to activate and nurture the spiritual.  The result is that each soul interacts with the physical world.  By this effort do we complete ourselves and enhance the experience of life.

The rules our sacred texts give us often seem to be about being kind to other people.  Indeed, working with the spiritual includes such outcomes as charity, tolerance, forgiveness, and respect.  These are collateral advantages of bringing heavenly and earthly powers together. 

The Torah is the name for the Five Books of Moses.  Most of the commandments therein have to do with Temple observance, the laws of the Sabbath and the new moon, Holiday rituals, dietary laws, prohibitions against idol worship, our relationship with God, how to treat animals, and other aspects of a religious life.  Many of these rules can be interpreted as kindly ways to treat our fellow human beings.

Every individual is a participant in sparking the God-like in our world.  It is foreseeable that caring for each other is part of this endeavor. The earthly expression of our divine collaboration leads to acts of kindness, charity, and respect for others.

But accessing the spiritual is the primary focus.  When we do this, we enhance our lives and the life of the planet.  This completes creation.  Some refer to it as repairing the world.

The nature of the spiritual is ambiguity.  As our earthly minds try to interpret the laws, our hopes and desires cloud the meaning.

For example, many believe that our responsibility is to defeat evil.  Today, people of goo intention are firm in their belief that other good people are evil.  We should concentrate on activating our spirituality and have faith that this process will resolve the contradictions.   

The role a soul plays in one’s life is not straightforward.  The paths we each travel, the coincidences along the way, and the epiphanies we experience are some of the prestige awards from the interaction between the earthly and the heavenly.  We can personally be active participants in stimulating this connection.

Life is a meditative experience.  When someone is focused in her or his life, the soul awakens and connects.  Everyone focuses as they pursue various goals and activities.  These meditative moments bring heavenly power into the earthly sphere of existence.  This connection is constantly being formed.

It is also possible to reach out to the spiritual intentionally.  A person does this by single-mindedly absorbing his- or herself in anything.  Meditation is taught in many forms.  Reading, cooking, exercise, lovemaking, writing, praying, playing a musical instrument, teaching, eating, watching television, taking a walk are just a small sample of activities that can be meditative.  Anything a person participates in is potentially a meditation. 

That is how we satisfy what God want of us.  It may not accomplish many of the necessary goals in life.  Activating the spiritual within ourselves will not create healthy societies or well-functioning cities and states.  It will not make our relationships with others all that they should be.  We cannot count on this to improve international rapport.  It will not ensure peace or harmony.  The needs of living must still be available.  We must pursue these objectives in addition to satisfying what God wants.     

Meditation best achieves bonding the material with the divine when one prohibits distraction.  The more mindfully a person focuses, the greater the spiritual awakening.