(Episode 4)

This episode presents Rabbi Reinman’s views, based on the Talmud and the Rambam, on the purpose of creation and the role of people in the created world.

Chapter 4

The Purpose of Creation

Before we can study the patterns of history and determine the forces that drive it, we have to identify the purpose of its existence. Coming from the House of Classical Judaism, we know that God created the world, but why did He create it? God is perfect. He has no needs, no wants in the human sense that derive from a void that must be filled. What then was His purpose in creating the world? What is the ultimate goal of creation?

The traditional commentators offer a number of answers, some rational, some kabbalistic. I don’t claim to understand them all, and my purpose here is not to weigh the relative merits of these answers and determine which is valid. They are probably all valid in some sense. I just want to present what I consider to be the Rambam’s view. As the subtitle of this book points out, this is a Jewish view, not the definitive, authoritative Jewish of the world.

The Rambam writes in the fifth chapter of Shemoneh Perakim, “A person must harness all his faculties and talents for the achievement of one purpose, and that is the attainment of knowledge of God to the extent that a person can have such knowledge. He must focus all his actions on this purpose. All his activities, whether eating or drinking, sleeping or awake, moving or at rest, should be to assure that his body is healthy and that his faculties are unimpaired in their efforts to achieve this purpose.”

According to the Rambam, the overriding purpose of human existence is the recognition of God and the discovery of as much as can possibly be known about Him. The Rambam in his famous The Guide for the Perplexed dwells on this theme constantly and at great length. The Rambam discusses the unity of God, that His attributes, such as wisdom, strength and kindness, are not different parts of Him as they would be in human beings. They are one simple, unknowable essence. Works such as the Guide provide fundamental concepts about God. Perhaps at some point I will do a series on the Guide, God willing.[1] But the knowledge of God gained from such works does not fill a lifetime.

How do you spend every moment of your life getting to know God? It is by studying the world He created and mainly by studying the wisdom He has imparted to humankind through the holy Torah.

One of the commandments in the Torah is to love God. How does a person love the infinite, unknowable God? The Rambam writes, “When a person considers his great and wonderful deeds and creations, and discerns the immeasurable wisdom that went into them, he immediately loves and praises Him, and he develops a great thirst to know Him.”[2]

He immediately loves and praises Him. Immediately! Now, we can understand that he is immediately filled with admiration and awe, but why love? The Rambam doesn’t mention gratitude, but even so, does gratitude immediately lead to love?

Elsewhere, the Rambam is even more emphatic. “How do we come to love God? When we consider His commandments and creation to the point where we really appreciate them we will be filled with delight, and we will inevitably love Him.”[3] Inevitably! Do admiration and awe lead to love inevitably? Does gratitude lead to love inevitably?

The main question is, why is it so important that we gain such a tremendous knowledge of God that we must spend every waking moment in the pursuit of that knowledge? And why does God want us to love Him?

The solution, I believe, can be found in the Talmud, which presents an idea and connects it homiletically to a verse in the Prophets, “There is no rock (tzur) like our Lord.”[4] The Talmud offers a variant reading that states, “There is no painter (tzayar) like our Lord.” God is the Divine Painter. This entire universe is an artistic masterpiece He created.[5]

The Midrash goes further. It states that when a human painter makes a painting, he praises the painting, but when God makes a painting, the painting praises Him.[6] When a Rembrandt makes a painting, he steps back and considers his work with satisfaction. “Look at my brushwork. My foreshortening. My use of color and light.” But when God makes a painting, He takes the masterpiece to an entirely different level. His painting has consciousness and intelligence. It is capable of recognizing the work of the Painter. It follows, therefore, that the deeper the recognition of the painting, meaning the intelligent creatures who are the most important elements of the painting, the greater the artistic achievement of the Painter.

Furthermore, God could have revealed His supernatural powers right before the eyes of the world, and all the world would have recognized the Painter. Instead, He chose to remain concealed so that people would recognize Him through an act of contemplation, free will and the determination not to be distracted by physical pleasures and drives. He wanted people to seek Him out and get to know Him as much as possible.

The Midrash also states that God desired a residence in the lower world.[7] I think this means that He wanted to be recognized by people living in a material world and constantly struggling with physical desires and drives. God wanted these very people to overcome their struggles by acts of free will and seek Him out and get to know Him and appreciate His incredible work.

So. that is why God created the world. He is not the Creator because he created the world. On the contrary, he created the world because he is the Creator, the Divine Painter. God is wise. He is strong. He is creative. A creator creates, and God is the ultimate creator. Who knows how many other masterpieces he has created, how many other universes that do not intersect with our universe. He is the Creator. And He creates.

That is why there is such a strong, overwhelming emphasis on gaining knowledge of God. More than worship and service, which are appropriate, He desires knowledge, because when people seek Him and explore knowledge of Him and His works, the artistic enterprise of creation achieves ever greater success.

Can people give God a gift, something He would not otherwise have? The answer is yes. We can give Him the success of His artistic enterprise. We can become the painting that recognizes the Painter. If we do not, this masterpiece called the universe will not be fully successful. The failure will, or course, not be His failure, because that is how He designed the universe. By choosing to give people free will, He placed the success of creation in their hands. If people exercise their free will and choose correctly, the enterprise of creation is successful, and they will have given God the gift of all gifts.

We also know that giving inevitably leads to love. The more we give the more we love. If we look at God’s works and study them, if we discover the fantastic wisdom and complexity to the point where we are overwhelmed with admiration and delight, and if we are fully aware that this is what He wants from us, that this is what creation needs to be successful, we will love Him. Immediately. Inevitably.

The ultimate purpose of creation is that “the land will be as filled with knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.”[8] The complete and absolute fulfillment of the artistic enterprise of this universe comes when the entire world recognizes the Divine Painter. This is essentially the messianic idea. The coming of the Messiah is not to end our troubles and bring peace to the world, although that will certainly happen. It is to bring an end to Shechinta b’Galusa, the exile of the Divine Presence, when God’s existence is no longer unseen. The messianic era is when the Divine Presence emerges from obscurity and is recognized all over the world.

How will this happen?

God can reveal Himself to the world through the performance of miracles. That would work, but as fulfillment of the painting recognizing the Painter, it would be less than ideal. What would be ideal? That the entire world arrive at the knowledge of God by examining His deeds and the wisdom of His Torah with open eyes. It is not a simple thing. Perhaps it will never happen. Perhaps there will come a time when failure is assured, and God will choose to accept a less than ideal outcome and reveal Himself through miracles. But until that time, the struggle between the recognition of God and its opposite goes on. That struggle is the history of the world, as we shall see in the coming chapters.

[1] For an introduction in layman’s language to the thoughts of the Rambam in The Guide for the Perplexed, see my Guide to the Guide: A Chapter-by-Chapter Summary (Amazon).

[2] Mishneh Torah, Yesodei Hatorah 2:2.

[3] Sefer Hamitzvos, Aseh 3.

[4] I Samuel 2:2.

[5] Berachos 9a.

[6] Tanchuma, Tazria 3.

[7] Tanchuma, Naso 24.

[8] Yeshayahu 11:9.