There is a sense in which I want to agree wholeheartedly with your comments about purpose. We'd rightly be concerned about a parent who told their child that their purpose was X when a child wanted to live for purpose Y. Freedom of choice in how we live our lives, and the guiding purpose we define for it are important things that you and I would both want to be free choices for the individual. In a very real sense though this is what God allows for us - God love us so much that He does not constrain our purpose in the sense of how we choose to live our life, He gives us more or less free reign in what we do, and we use this freedom to rebel against Him both by not loving our fellow man and by not loving Him.
As you suggest, I think the answer is in how appropriate the relation between parent and child and God and humanity is. While God refers to us as his children in some sense, it also refers to us as his creations and him as our maker. Now it's also true that in a sense parents are the creators of children, but parents do not design their children with intentionality as to their nature, parents are driven by a desire to make copies of themselves, the sense in which they create children is a much lesser sense that the way in which God made humanity. God as omniscient creator did not merely make a kind of (inferior) copy of Himself in man, but carefully planned out all of the aspects of man's nature.
People are by nature replicating genetic machines, generally speaking they have an inbuilt desire to make genetic copies of themselves. Some people for whatever reason will have a lesser sense of this desire, and many will not successfully replicate, but that doesn't mean that in a sense people lack that purpose. Obviously I'm not saying that there is intentionality in evolution that bestows this purpose on people, the point I'm trying to make is that people can't by choice alter their fundamental nature - they can deny it and fail to achieve it, but the general nature of man as a replicating genetic machine remains.
Similarly men and women are created to worship, glorify, love, and be in relation with God. That many choose not to or fail to achieve this ideal state of humanity, and so never achieve the utmost of human purpose does not alter the fact that they were created for that purpose.
Essentially I'm saying that this disagreement may just be an issue of semantics (with purpose having different levels of meaning), but that human free will does not negate pre-existing natural purpose.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-08-24 10:19 pm (UTC)As you suggest, I think the answer is in how appropriate the relation between parent and child and God and humanity is. While God refers to us as his children in some sense, it also refers to us as his creations and him as our maker. Now it's also true that in a sense parents are the creators of children, but parents do not design their children with intentionality as to their nature, parents are driven by a desire to make copies of themselves, the sense in which they create children is a much lesser sense that the way in which God made humanity. God as omniscient creator did not merely make a kind of (inferior) copy of Himself in man, but carefully planned out all of the aspects of man's nature.
People are by nature replicating genetic machines, generally speaking they have an inbuilt desire to make genetic copies of themselves. Some people for whatever reason will have a lesser sense of this desire, and many will not successfully replicate, but that doesn't mean that in a sense people lack that purpose. Obviously I'm not saying that there is intentionality in evolution that bestows this purpose on people, the point I'm trying to make is that people can't by choice alter their fundamental nature - they can deny it and fail to achieve it, but the general nature of man as a replicating genetic machine remains.
Similarly men and women are created to worship, glorify, love, and be in relation with God. That many choose not to or fail to achieve this ideal state of humanity, and so never achieve the utmost of human purpose does not alter the fact that they were created for that purpose.
Essentially I'm saying that this disagreement may just be an issue of semantics (with purpose having different levels of meaning), but that human free will does not negate pre-existing natural purpose.