Dear Annette:

Why do we humans have children when we know in advance that they will disobey us at times? It is because of love. Love is ordered to sharing. Children are a expression of love and we wish to share our love with them and give them the benefits of the blessing we have been given.

God is love and since love is best fulfilled in sharing that love and expressing that love, He created us, his children.

The one line answer in the Baltimore Catechism on the question why man was created is, "God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next."

A more detailed answer is given in the current Catechism:

1 God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Savior. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life.


293  Scripture and Tradition never cease to teach and celebrate this fundamental truth: "The world was made for the glory of God." St. Bonaventure explains that God created all things "not to increase his glory, but to show it forth and to communicate it",135 for God has no other reason for creating than his love and goodness: "Creatures came into existence when the key of love opened his hand." The First Vatican Council explains:

   This one, true God, of his own goodness and "almighty power", not for increasing his own beatitude, nor for attaining his perfection, but in order to manifest this perfection through the benefits which he bestows on creatures, with absolute freedom of counsel "and from the beginning of time, made out of nothing both orders of creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal. . ."

294 The glory of God consists in the realization of this manifestation and communication of his goodness, for which the world was created. God made us "to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace", for "the glory of God is man fully alive; moreover man's life is the vision of God: if God's revelation through creation has already obtained life for all the beings that dwell on earth, how much more will the Word's manifestation of the Father obtain life for those who see God." The ultimate purpose of creation is that God "who is the creator of all things may at last become "all in all", thus simultaneously assuring his own glory and our beatitude."

God made us out of love so He could share with us His own blessed life.

Love cannot be forced, however. Thus, God gave us one of His attributes -- free will. The free will He gave us is given so that we will choose love (that is, Him). But, with that fundamental purpose comes the possibility of rejecting God. This possibility must be allowed if love is to exist. Without this possibility of choosing to accept or reject God we would be only puppets on a string and that is not love.

So God created us to share in His glory and blessedness and to live in friendship with Him forever. He created us with the gift of Free Will so we can freely choose Him or not. 1 Corinthians 13 says that love does not demand its own way. God does demand from us (that is force us) that we love Him. He gives us the choice to love or not.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary