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The Purpose of Life
The First Blessing
Be Fruitful
In my creative
writing course in High School, we were asked to come up with a
title for our annual journal. In it would be all the best, funniest,
and most creative excerpts of our class time for that year. I
think I did have one or two things submitted within it's back pages,,
but I've forgotten them after all this time. However, I am proud
to say that my idea for it's title carried the day.
Paper
Mirrors.
Paper Mirrors won because I think everyone recognized the clear
but subtle truth it conveyed. That the investment within it's
pages was a simple reflection of ourselves, hopefully at our best.
In other words, we see a reflection of ourselves in our creative
efforts. And if our works exhibit the original spark of our
ideas then we're of course pleased. We feel joy and happiness.
The same is true for God.
His fundamental motive for creating was to experience
love, joy and happiness. The nature and impulse of love itself
is to seek another. God, being eternal, sought an eternal
partner. Man & Woman didn't merely begin as an idea within
God. More precisely, God was reproducing himself in the couple
of Adam & Eve. More than any other creation God sought to
become one with this first couple, living within and through them,,
his very own children.
1 Corinthians 3:16 - 17
Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's
spirit lives in you? ,,, for God's temple is sacred, and you are
that temple.
So God Blessed them saying,,
"Be fruitful and
multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea
and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on
the ground." Gen 1:28
So then God is seeking love and joy through man,,, you
and I. Then our purpose, our life is fulfilled in returning joy
and love to God. Our life is inextricably linked to God.
How then is our purpose fulfilled? How do we return joy to God?
This we call the Three Great Blessings, which were
conveyed in Gen 1:28. Be fruitful,
multiply and have dominion. But here I
would like to share their more precise inner meaning.
Be Fruitful
To be
Fruitful, means to grow and mature. Just as a tree must mature
before it bears fruit. Adam & Eve were to grow and mature
into perfection before advancing to the next blessing.
Jesus said
"You must be perfect as your
Heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt. 5:48).
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Jesus himself had to grow to reach perfection.
Isaiah 7:14 Therefore
the Lord himself will give you a sign; The virgin will be with child
and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. He
will eat curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and
choose the right. But before the boy knows enough to reject the
wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will
be laid waste.
This period of growth within man is the most critical stage in
the creation process, because this is the stage wherein lies the
danger of man's fall and disobedience. And for reasons we'll
discuss later, God does not interfere with man's free will and
responsibility, but seeks to influence man indirectly in the growing
process by giving his words and commandments. Be ye perfect,,, Being
one with God, we would think and feel precisely as He does.
In that state of divine love there would be no
possibility of a fall or corruption of man. Every thought or
act would be motivated by love from God for our fellow
man.
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The Purpose of Life
The Second Blessing
Multiply
Gen 1:28 Be fruitful and
multiply,
Jesus said,
"Haven't you read,
that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and
said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be
united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'?
So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore, what God has
joined together, let man not separate." Matt 19:4-6
There is no greater change of life that one can
experience than in the birth of your own children, and to share this
with the man or woman you love. This experience has moved my
wife and I so far beyond single life that I scarcely remember what
it was like. And I must admit that the transformation was even
more remarkable and beautiful to observe in her. So much of
her mind, efforts and time are taken up in caring for the home,
myself and our son. Yes, there are people in the world,, but
then there are Parents.
In Paul's
letter to the church in Corinth he states;
"It is good for
a man not to marry. But since there is so much immorality, each man
should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband." 1
Cor 7:1-2
"Now to the unmarried and
widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if
they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better
to marry than to burn with passion." 1Cor 7:8-9
Paul of course is speaking to the state of fallen
man, and his disposition to sin. In our discussion of The
Three Blessings we're speaking of the world as God designed and
intended. Man & Woman would approach marriage with
God's blessing and as a Holy
Sacrament and in the state of spiritual maturity and
perfection. Man & Woman would then
embrace the Heart of God as True
Parents and give birth to their own sinless children. Children
would be raised literally in the lap of God, experiencing
His love through perfected parents. Brothers &
sisters would grow in an atmosphere of unselfishness and
love as the primary motive and ethic in life. Then
that love and goodness would be multiplied through the family to the
society, nation and world. This was God's hope and plan before
the fall.
The Purpose of Life
The Third Blessing
Have Dominion
The Bible offers a sad indictment on our record as stewards
of God's handiwork.
Romans 8:19 "The creation
waits in eager expectations for the Sons of God to be revealed. For
the creation was subjected to frustration, not by it's own
choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope, that
the creation itself will be liberated to it's bondage to decay and
brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know
that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of
childbirth right up to the present time."
What God intended was that through the fulfillment of
the First Blessing, individual perfection, and that of the
Second Blessing, family perfection, that man would then stand
qualified as Holy Temples and Lords of Creation. And as such we
would exist in harmony and love within it.
"Rule over the fish of
the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature
that moves on the ground." Gen 1:28
Therefore, life in the spirit world was not the
only place God meant for us to find heaven. The whole process and
experience of life in this world, and in the next, was intended
for us to experience God's love to it's fullest.
Jesus understood this and in his prayer
expressed God's intention.
"Our
Father in Heaven, hallowed by thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will
be done, on earth as it is in heaven." Matt 6:9-10
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