What God Wants, Why He Wants It
In acting, as well as in writing, we talk about discovering what a character wants, the basic assumption being that what we want drives our action. Even in the most altruistic of actions, there are those who would argue we are self-interested at heart, wanting the rewards of good feeling or the knowledge that we have a done a thing for God.
If God were a character, how would you describe what He wants? What He was after in the beginning in making His creation?
If I ask an actor what his character wants, I inevitably have to ask what the character wants for himself. This is one of the questions I'm asking about God. What does He want from us, for Himself?
The first things that suggests themselves are the overt biblical answers. He wants justice and mercy, and for us to walk humbly with Him. He wants us to love Him, and our neighbor. He wants us to go forth into all the world and make disciples. But if God were an actor, and were to give me these answers, I would look at Him and ask, "But what good will all of that do You?"
I suppose we can't discover the first causes of the First Cause. But the culture already makes this move any time they accuse God of being a small god because of his wrath or his odd demands, say, of Abraham sacrificing his son, or the various behaviors of the judges, or even the rather bizarre notion of a god needing blood to satisfy the legal problem brought about by His creation's sin, and not just any blood, but the blood of his begotten son/god. Looking at it like this, the culture ascribe motives to God that are essentially vain and selfish and petulant.
This, of course, we can't ascribe to. But it seems a fair question to ask. If God is Love, then what is the desire of Love for itself? God (Love) demands many things of creation, and I wonder, to what end? What is God's reward for all this praise we give Him? Does it enlarge His being, bring Him more joy, so that His joy at any time can be said to be finite, that it is ever expanding, just like the Universe? And what of when He doesn't get what He wants? Is that the trigger for His wrath? Does His emotional life truly ebb and flow infinitesimally according to our actions, so that He is wrath and joy are ever mixing simultaneously, yet never finding completion or full expression?
Obviously, it's a bit absurd to use these categories for the infinite God. Any such language reduces Him, shrinks Him down to our size. He has no need of us, or His creation, which means He chose to create us, for some good which He alone understands.
My point is simply this: it seems that God is beyond wanting what He demands of us for himself. Most believers would agree that God is not a selfish God. For love is not selfish. Love is hardly even self-interested, which we can barely grasp. Surely God does not love us because we do anything that pleasures Him. Surely His Love is unchanging, regardless of our action. Surely Love drove His act of creation, which implies much about our lives and our relationship to God.
All of this is a meditation on the meaning of God's love for us. If we say we are made for God's pleasure and glory, does it not imply a self-interested motive on God's part, as if before creation, he didn't have enough pleasure and/or glory? So He made a world, so He could get more? Surely not. So that the creation cries out its praise not on demand, but in response, because such Love is the very fabric of creation's being. How amazing that God has poured His nature--Life and Love--into his creatures, sharing His being, His character, His very Self, with us. What can creation do, but raise its voice in thanks?
Which, in my mind, leads us back to the connection between love and command, love and obedience. Tomorrow, I'll make my stab at the first causes of the First Cause, and try then to make the bridge between love and obedience that in my own lifetime, has caused me so much trouble.
Sharing life...
5:32:23 AM 
