Bedrock of Human Purpose: Faith
To reiterate the primary point of this series of articles: Paulus’s contemporaries did not question whether God existed. The apostle asked whether we should worship in material submission for material gain, by way of sacrificial rituals materially and asking for our own interests to be fulfilled from a place of our own desires, or worship in spiritual submission for harmony with His plan and goodness. This distinction is critical as it separates the spiritual journey from mere intellectual inquiry, and without abandoning the intellectual frame of mind. Our apostle’s message was not about proving the existence of Deity but about trusting in the goodness of the ultimate divine design that transcends all human ambition, material desire, and encapsulates the purpose of life itself.
Faith is not an act of reasoning but a perfectly reasonable yet highly spiritual act of surrender. Our highest good and highest universal rests not in what we can grasp through mortal eyes but in the unchanging Will of God. Paulus did not address those who doubted the existence of a higher power; he addressed those unaligned with the divine. Many believed evil things regarding deities, and the forces or things they worshipped. He sought to deepen people’s understanding of the goodness in the highest power, above any and all. Our faith was never about overcoming doubt in deity itself but about embracing the perfection of divine love in the face of human imperfection; overcoming our personality, a euphemism for imperfection.
Believing in God’s plan is to align our imperfect lives with the eternal design: a design mostly intelligible yet proved through patterns ultimately demanding an ever-deepening trust. This is why Paulus emphasised the highest goods perceivable being empowering community moderated with high standards, a truth that transcends all material wants and needs. The apostle did not speak of God as a distant or indifferent force; he spoke of Him as the ultimate source of purpose, the unchanging anchor in a world of seeming chaos; made so by mortal misconceptions, powers, and desires. To live with this trust is to recognise that our freedom does not have anything to do with what we personally can control but in how we align what we do have relatively; freedom is skill toward goodness which is only brought about by concentration and focus upon goodness and progress toward it.
No one trusts in God’s plan today, and this has gotten us to a point where every person is consumed by their own fears and obsessions, where the greatest spiritual currency is victimhood itself. Yet to pause and see that divine design that surrounds you. Combat that hell, that delusional prison of crude selfishness. Without faith and trust in the Highest, we reduce our lives and purpose as well. Value connection over isolation; life with grace. Grace compels us to seek truth through the humility in grand wonder. Faith is foundation. Wonderment is inspired, compelling, aspirational, and elevational.