The Purpose of Life
Daphne Patai was here last week to give a talk, and at dinner she said that someone had once told her that the purpose of the detailed law of Orthodox Judaism is to make you think always about God. I like the sound of that. It makes more sense than the idea of “fencing the law” that I have heard before— that by interpreting the Law to require extraordinary efforts such as not turning on lights on the Sabbath one would minimize violations of the Law. That kind of fencing is not the way to minimize violations at all. Far more important is self-examination and other less cut-and-dried activities, and that kind of fencing and the neglect of the heart that it induced is what Jesus criticized in the Pharisees. But “to make you think always of God” is much better.
I don’t think, though, that God wants us to be obsessed with Him, any more than a woman wants a lover to be not only madly in love but obsessed with her to the neglect of the rest of his life. The Westminster Catechism begins
Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.
The second part of the answer seems reasonable, from Biblical evidence, but it pertains most to the afterlife. Since Man was created by God, the first part must be correct, but it is not much of a clarification. Which is better, the active life or, as Aquinas says, the contemplative life? Should we be doing good things in the world, or be forever worshipping? I suppose I am twisting what he meant, since he himself wrote books and taught, which is not worship. He was a Dominican, not a Benedictine monk. I am inclined to think that God wanted us to be involved in the Earth, not merely to be waiting out our mortal life and trying to keep our minds off it. Otherwise, why put us here on Earth?