Shalom everyone,
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about having a mission and a purpose in life. This article here is a follow-up to it. In this blog, I want to take a look at the concept of God having a plan – the Great and Ultimate Plan.
Free Will and Objections to a Plan
Now, some people object to the very idea of God having a plan, because they think it implies that we have no free will, and that we are all merely following a pre-written, pre-ordained script. However, God is no puppet-master; God does not drive the intimate details of our lives. Dt 30:19 says that we have a choice (as does Josh 24:15, Prov 16:1). God moves the greater things, but the smaller things are up to us.
Look at the Universe. Scientists can predict the movement of whole galaxies, the dying of stars, the shifting of the continental plates, weather-storms and hurricanes. They can do this because of the natural laws of the Universe which God has written and ordained. However, they cannot predict our individual daily decisions or movements, because we have free will. So it is with God’s Plan.
On the larger scale, over aeons of time, God has already written the script. God’s designs and plans cannot be broken or altered, and certainly not by mere mortals. However, as individuals, we have free will, and we can make any decision we wish. Yet still YHVH, who knows all things, is aware of the multiple decisions that we might make, the multiple timelines that can result from what we decide to do, and the various outcomes of all those timelines. YHVH’s Wisdom has taken the multiverse into account.
Prov 16:9 says, ‘The mind of mortals plans their direction, then YHVH makes firm their steps.’ What this means is that, even though God has an ultimate destination for each one of us – and God’s plan for us all is good – how we get there is our own decision. Similarly, Ps 37:23 says, ‘The steps of human beings are made firm by YHVH, when they delight in God’s Way.’
Human wickedness is not part of God’s Great Design
God’s own hopes for people who ultimately turn out wicked and despicable, are nevertheless positive. It is always YHVH’s hope that the wicked will turn from their evil ways and choose good (Ezek 33:11), because YHVH wants us all to live – YHVH ultimately wants good for us all. Wickedness is turning away from God’s goodness for us – a conscious choice to turn from God. God knows all the possible paths that we might take, and God knows the outcome of them all, of every possible choice.
Human wickedness is not God’s plan – it’s the very antithesis of God’s plan. God cannot call us to account and judge us, if what we have done was not our choice. Without free will, the evil that we do would be God’s fault, which would imply that God is evil and unjust, which cannot be! By rational logic alone, what we do, our decisions and our choices, are our own – not pre-destined by God.
Why a Great Plan at all?
The small things are ours to decide, but the greater things – the overall plan – is up to God to direct and design.
God had a need to love, so God created us, as beings to be loved by God. Furthermore, God’s love is the greatest and highest love there is, but as things are (that is, the way the world currently works), it isn’t enough for God, so God’s ultimate plan is to have heaven dwell on earth, so that God can completely and fully love God’s creation, God’s created creatures and beings. God’s Ultimate Plan is to dwell amongst the children whom God loves – all of us humans. Our ultimate mission therefore, is to live lives that will enable that to happen.
But isn’t all that in the far future? A future we won’t see? On the contrary, we will see it! Always remember, that even though our earthly lives are not long enough to see that day with earthly eyes, our eternal souls will definitely see that day, and we will be there to witness it all with our heavenly, spiritual eyes!
God Needs Us
What this all means is that God needs us. God needs us to be here on earth to do something vitally important on God’s behalf. Before we were even sent down here to be born on earth, our heavenly souls volunteered to help God in the task of fulfilling God’s Kingdom.
For God’s Plan to work, God needs what we are able to contribute to making that Plan work. When God’s Kingdom is fulfilled, God’s Own Self will also be fulfilled, by being able to dwell in our realm completely. By being in a state where God’s love is perfected, and we are fulfilled, we become the perfect beings that God created us to eventually become, so that we can find union with God. This means, we come to know the mind, the plans and designs of God; we become privy to everything God knows – the Hebrew Bible refers to this event as being admitted into the inner Council, or sōdh, of YHVH; this is the underlying theology behind Job 15:8, Jer 23:18, 23:22, Ps 89:7.
As we mortals currently are, if YHVH were to dwell completely, fully, and absolutely with us, with the fire of God’s Glory at its full heavenly strength, our mortal bodies would be burnt to a crisp! This is the reason for the fear expressed by the Israelites in Dt 5:21-23. God needs us to evolve, so that we become beings which are spiritually healthy and strong enough to be able to dwell in the fullness of God’s Glory.
God made us in God’s Image – that is, reflecting the qualities that God has, not in our physical form, but in our nature and purpose. We were created to be stewards of the earth, because God is the Prime Steward of all the Earth. We were created to help make life abundant, because God’s Presence makes life and all living things abundant. We were created to help bring goodness into the world, because God is the ultimate Goodness. We were created to heal and repair the world, because YHVH our God is the Great Healer and Restorer.
What God’s Plan is not
Some religious people might answer questions like, ‘Why am I here? Why must I do good?’ by saying, ‘So that you can find salvation and get to heaven, and if you don’t obey God, you’ll be punished.’ If our purpose of being on earth is just so that we can get to heaven, what’s the point of being here in the first place? Isn’t that where we came from anyway?
Life is not simply a matter of having to follow rules, and if we don’t, God will punish us. This mindset is ultimately unfulfilling and depressing, because it makes us sound like we were solely created to obey God, who is a tyrant who will punish us for not doing what God says – “I’ve created rules, and I created you so that you would follow My rules.” Well, what if we don’t want to play the tyrant’s game?
God’s True Plan for us and for the Universe
The Israelite faith can give an alternative to those answers. Why are we here? Because God needs what we can contribute to creation, to the world, and to humanity. God needs what we can do for God. Why must we do good? So that we can set ourselves in prime position to help God to fulfil God’s Kingdom, so that one day, Heaven and God’s fullest Glory will be able to dwell on earth, without harming us. The destiny of our species is to evolve to become perfected beings (or ‘holy ones’, as described in Dan 7:18, 7:22, 7:27), so that we are able to dwell in the presence of YHVH’s fiery Glory (the fire of God’s Divine Radiance), without being harmed.
This is the ultimate destination of all our efforts, the ultimate purpose of the Universe. Isaiah 60:19-20 says,
“The sun shall no longer be
your light by day,
nor shall the brightness of the moon
give light to you by night,
but YHVH will become your everlasting Light,
and your God will be your glory.
Your sun will no longer go down,
nor shall your moon set any more;
for it is YHVH who will be your everlasting Light,
and your days of mourning shall be ended.”
Revelation 21:23a says,
“And the city [Jerusalem] has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the Glory of God is its light.”
Rev 22:5a says,
“There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or even the light of the sun, for YHVH God will give them light.”
Summary
Why are we all fighting over a grain of sand? After all, compared to the infinity of the Universe, our planet is but the tiniest mote of sand on a beach. To resonate with the harmony of God’s created Universe, should we not set our tiny mote of dust to ring in harmony with the rest of God’s Universe instead?
YHVH’s Plan for us and for the Universe is not about getting us all to heaven, because that’s where we came from in the first place (and in Jewish thought, where we all end up anyway); our souls were born in heaven before we were sent here to be born in our fleshly state. And we’re not playing a tyrant’s game of merely doing what God’s tells us to do.
God needs us. God needs what we are able to contribute to God’s Kingdom. God’s ultimate Plan is for Heaven and God’s Glory to dwell among us on earth, in the ultimate act of Love desiring to be with what Love desires – us.
God could of course wave a magic wand and accomplish all this in an instant. But then our love for YHVH would not be a free choice; we would all be slaves, mindlessly obeying God because that is what our slave-master ordered us to do. A kingdom of slavery is not a kingdom of anything even close to love. That is why it all has to be this way; that is why God devised God’s Ultimate Plan, so that the Kingdom of heaven that we shall create with our Creator, is a true Kingdom of Divine, heavenly Love.
“Thy Kingdom come …. on earth, as it is in heaven”.