What is the Purpose of Our Human Existence?

One of the primary questions humans ask is why they were born into the human condition? After all, experience teaches us that we are finite and limited creatures who will physically die, some after conception before they take their first breath, some during infanthood, some during childhood and adolescence, and most others at various times after attaining adulthood.

A person’s death can arise from a multitude of different causes such as those resulting from their own choices, the intentional or unintended acts or omissions of others, disease or other physical impairment, accidents, natural disasters and the like, or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It calls us to consider whether there is, in fact, "a time to be born and a time to die” (Ecclesiastes 3:2).

Moreover, we will all experience at various times during our life some form and degree of physical, psychological, emotional, relational, and spiritual pain and suffering however caused. Yet, at other times, we may also experience a sense of love, joy, peace, meaning, wholeness, harmony, happiness, fulfillment, and pleasure.

The Catholic Church's tradition teaches that the purpose of our human life is to seek, to know and to love God, to do good according to God’s will, and hopefully to share in God’s blessed life (see CCC, nos. 1-2; YOUCAT at no. 1). It claims that we can begin to experience only partially now, but come to fully realize in heaven, “What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2:9). However, we may question how the human experience has purpose for those souls such as a fetus who is aborted prior to birth, an infant who dies soon after birth, or by others who have a limited or an undeveloped consciousness.

As a result of experiencing so much pain and suffering on earth, we may also rhetorically ask that if there is a “heaven” where our soul enters after we physically die on earth, represented to be a reality full of eternal love, joy, bliss and happiness, and free of all pain and suffering, why did God not allow us to just skip our human existence on earth and create us directly in heaven, just like the angels? A variety of reasons have been offered to try to explain the need for us to first experience our human condition on earth. For example, some summarily claim our earthly existence is part of God's plan for creation and salvation, while others assert the human experience is needed for us to learn that we are finite creatures, who are called to first grow in love before we can eventually enter into heaven and experience God "face to face." For most, if not all, this will still require a lengthy period of purgation or purification even after we die. Still others claim that God, who is spirit, wants to experience materiality through God's creation. After all, didn't the divine become incarnate in the human person of Jesus of Nazareth? Doesn't the Spirit dwell within us?

In the end, we must recognize that God is ultimate Mystery who is beyond the comprehension of humans. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways—[says] the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, my thoughts higher than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:8-9). Despite our many questions, only God truly knows why God created a material universe, or rational and self-reflective creatures, like humans, to experience the joys, pleasures, trials and tribulations of life on earth.

Perhaps all we can do at this stage is to place our complete trust and hope in God’s ultimate goodness, unconditional love, presence, mercy, healing, and salvation; recognize that the divine chose to become incarnated in the fully human Jesus who was like us in all ways except sin (Heb. 4:15), who experienced joy, meaning, wholeness, and fulfilling relationshps, but also rejection, excruciating pain, suffering, and physical death inherent in the human condition; that we can be part of a community of loving, compassionate, other-centered people of God who are present to one another, recognize that all are created in the image and likeness of God, who care, support and encourage one another, and who witness to God's love for one another as we journey together; and that like Jesus Christ, we will also come to experience resurrection to new life in, with, and through God.

Hopefully like Julian of Norwich, a Christian mystic, we can also proclaim that in the end, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."