Creation of Humanity

Why did God create humans? If He knew many of us were not going to follow Him, wasn’t he just condemning us to hell?

Firstly I want to warn that in looking into this I have to address issues of choice to follow God as necessary for ‘salvation’, and some of it may come across as preaching. This is not what I am trying to do at all, it’s not intended to convince you of the need to do this or that, but simply to explain how it can work in a Christian context.

I guess to start with the best thing is to consider how it all fits together. The idea is that God knows everything, because He is God. And so when he created humans, he knew that some of us were going to rebel against him and thus suffer ‘eternal separation from God’, or hell. It’s important to note that this is not saying that he predestined us to this fate, but that he knew what we would choose through our own free choice in our lives.

I think the best way I can see this is that it is giving people an opportunity out of love. I’ll draw an analogy here with parents, based on a generalisation that they are loving and caring (I know there are exceptions). Parents have children with the full knowledge that their child could grow up and have a terrible life of some sort – through illness and suffering, crime and hatred, depression, whatever it may be. Everyone on earth suffers in some way, and the reality is that life is hard, and so our parents are ‘condemning’ us to the suffering of this world, as well as the good. But parents still have kids despite this hardship. However the reason parents usually have kids is out of love – to give them opportunities, hope, and the chance of a good life, as far as possible. Their kids won’t always take these opportunities, or may have them snatched away by something like illness, but their parents gave them this opportunity out of love for them.

What if this is why God created humanity? He knew full well that some of His children would suffer terrible lives, and worse, that some would suffer a terrible eternity through their own choosing. But in creating life, and creating humanity, God was providing them with an opportunity of an amazing nature. He gave much more than any parent on earth could hope to give. In a (non-religious) view of parenting, the best they can hope to achieve is a child that grows up generally happy and well off, living a decent life. But in taking this view of why God created humanity, people may suffer a hard life on earth, but if they choose to follow God they are then given the gift of an eternity with God, and all the blessings that come with that.

Yes, God knew that some of his children would choose not to take the opportunity to follow Him, but the reality is that they are condemning themselves. Just as it’s not a parent’s fault if their child chooses to go ‘astray’, nor is it God’s fault if his children do the same thing, and condemn themselves.

So I think it is possible to understand the way God can have created humans not to condemn them, but to love them. I’m not going to say that that’s likely to be the full story, there’s sure to be a lot more to it than that, and this also leads into many other topics. But I think a significant part of the story is that God wanted to create beings who could share with Him in His love and life, if they choose to follow Him. I don’t think it’s a case of God creating to condemn, as any condemnation we bring upon ourselves. John 3:17: “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.” God is only filled with love for us.

Naturally, this means the ball is in our court as to whether or not we follow God, and I don’t intend to ague that issue. All I want to do is see how God is not an unloving God who created people to condemn them, but instead a God who loves his people and wants all of them to share in eternity.

Some Bible verses to check out on this topic: John 3:16-17; Romans 8:1-2; Genesis 1:26.