Our Chief End or Purpose

The Reformed Shorter Catechism asks, What is the chief end or purpose of humankind? and gives as answer, To glorify God. So also Jonathan Edwards argues that the end for which God created the world is his own glory. To many modern persons these positions seem pernicious and inhumane. But such persons mistake the point, for they see not that these doctrines center in love, that most divinizing and humanizing of instruments. In other words, to hold that our end is to glorify God is not to reduce us to sycophants of an egomaniacal monarch. Rather, it is to proclaim that our end (our telos — our purpose and fulfillment) is to love God. In our own human relationships is it not the end or fulfillment of our love, when true and pure, to glorify the beloved? What then but that our end is to glorify God himself, not out of abject servitude, but out of eucharistic love. And is this not then a doctrine in which we rejoice, that such is our true and pure end, to glorify God! For he who is our Alpha and Omega made us for that very end; and thus he honors and glorifies us, for so he passionately desires us to fulfill our end, which is love of him.