Q&A: Why can’t choosing the good be the meaning of our existence?
Why can’t choosing the good be the meaning of our existence?
Question
“On the other hand, that goal cannot be our own self-improvement, since there is always the possibility that He would simply not create us at all, and then there would be no one to improve (there would be no lack requiring improvement). Therefore that goal has to be located outside the created universe.”—
Why is it not reasonable that the goal is that we choose the good? (If the goal is free choice, it seems reasonable to me that within free choice, the goal of free choice is that we choose the good…) If I start from the assumption that the goal is that we *choose* the good, then it’s clear to me that His not creating us would not fulfill the goal.
In addition, “The conclusion is that the very fact that we were created means that we too, and our actions and choices, are means toward something outside us, higher than us. Our actions are meant to advance other principles as well, which for now we will call ‘religious,’ not only moral ones”—
so before we received the Torah, was there no goal and/or no meaningful actions in life?
Answer
Why is it necessary that we choose the good, beyond the actual doing of good itself? That itself apparently comes to serve some further purpose. Indeed, before the giving of the Torah, the time was not yet ripe. The goal concerns the entire world and all of humanity, not one person or a particular group. There is a division of tasks, and in that way the overall goal is fulfilled. The division is also spread out along the timeline of history. The early generations built a foundational level, and then the Torah was given.
Maybe God created us in His image in the sense that God feels good when we feel good, and He feels pleasure when we enjoy ourselves, and suffering when we suffer, and therefore our purpose is basically to take care of as much goodness and pleasure as possible for as many human beings as possible? That fits the conscience and morality we were created with, and it sounds more logical to me than the idea that God gains something from our wrapping the skin of dead animals around our arm, and that the reason is simply “because that’s what He wants.”