Man's Holy Purpose is to strive to be a godlike being: loving, caring, compassionate, peaceful.
God set the stage for you to inherit His goodness when He declared, "Let us make humans in our image, in our likeness." (Gen. 1:26) You're born carrying an empty pot that is filled quickly with your inheritance from God-His values. In fact, God lives in us. (1 John 4:12) All you need is to be content with your inheritance. The Bible says, A godly life brings huge profits to people who are content with what they have. (1 Tim. 6:6)
Your existence with God is based on a covenant to be part of God's purpose, and do His work on Earth. All you need is faith to know what that work entails. Anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. (John 14:12)
In Proverbs we are told, The Lord...offers his friendship to the godly. (Prov. 3:32) God will help you gain His purpose if you accept His friendship. That friendship requires you to be grounded in the love and law of God and to be encompassed in the Divine Nature of God.
God's Divine Love demands that you nurture love, compassion, trustworthiness, and dependability in all your relationships and circumstances. His Divine Law demands that you refrain from pursuing unholy purposes.
When external forces, such as religion, impose Divine Love and Divine Law, these set the stage for a common human dilemma: resist or comply. You can secure genuine love and embrace its laws only by internalizing the Divine. When you experience the Divinity internally, spiritual enlightenment comes effortlessly. You won't have to decide to resist or comply because there are no external rules, only inner communion. If you don't stand apart from God, you are within God, and dwelling within the Divine is a way of being godlike.
Try to be godly but don't try to be God. If anything, be unassuming. The Bible says: When you do good deeds, don't try to show off. (Matt. 6:1) Being godly is the opposite of wanting to be comparable to God. Omnipotence and omniscience are irreducible powers. Pretending to possess them brings the delusional attitudes assumed by some people who are very successful in their work, profession, or business. These people esteem their mind as their God. Pursuing excessive wealth, power, and success are unholy ambitions that tend to generate insecure grandiosity. Those who pursue the unholy purpose-no matter how strong they might be-will find no peace.
Pursuing a Holy Purpose brings you a peaceful existence in the midst of human drama. The attitude of the godly person is humble but secure, serious but genial, self-confident but modest. Godly people are never afraid of doubt, but are always reassured. To them all power and omniscience belong only to God. Your highest possible virtue is to know the goodness God has created and to emulate His love, compassion, and holiness.
Of course, no one leads an entirely virtuous life. If you intend to remain virtuous, you may merit and receive God's promise of a bright and beautiful life and, more important, you may become more like Him. The Bible says you'll then witness our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him. (2 Cor. 3:18)
A single virtuous act doesn't make you virtuous. Being godly changes the way you relate to others in your life and the way you connect to the material world. It alters your disposition toward other races, creeds, and nations. Godliness isn't directed at any one thing, but at everyone and everything. Once you reach a godly state, you automatically become faithful, whether you are working, having sex, parenting, or relating to members of your community.
T. Byram Karasu, M.D. is the author of The Spirit of Happiness
