Pleasure as the purpose of human existence is an written to help you evaluate the context in which you take your pleasure.
Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth; Walk in the ways of your heart, and in the sight of your eyes; but know that for all these God will bring you into judgment. (1)
What a wonderful advice! What a vision of youth! Pleasure is beautiful; pleasure is tasty; pleasure is to be sought. Who can live without pleasure?
Rejoicing keeps psychosomatic illnesses away from us and gives us the feeling that only the present matters.
To live with the regret of having missed the pleasures of his youth is repulsive and cruel. Living life to the full should not just be a moment, but a quest, a sacred calling and a reason for existence.
The human heart was designed to desire, to love, and to beat to the rhythm of the pleasures of life. A tight and saddened heart is a bad companion for humans. He is closer to death than to life.
The eyes are made to contemplate the beautiful, the magnificent, the sublime, the true and the real. To stop contemplating is to stop living. To live is to admire, to marvel. No one should be deprived of his right to contemplation and wonder.
Our sense of contemplation is natural. It has its source in the Creator who, after having finished creating everything, began to contemplate and admire his masterpieces. Not even for a second did He feel regret for what He created, out of nothing or something non-eternal that already existed.
Pleasure is the observation, meditation and exaltation of what makes our heart beat to end up creating in us the desire to taste, delight and experience.
Pleasure is sacred because it is divine. Youth is that sensitive time when thrills are passionately and frantically sought after.
If we seek pleasure it is because necessarily there is something or someone who can satisfy it, if only fleetingly.
Our thirst for pleasure reflects the reality of our bodily constitution, our physiognomy. Our hormones of pleasure or happiness do not betray us. They simply push us to fill a void or respond to a natural and existential need.
On reflection, isn’t the real pleasure in God, its Creator? Does God rejoice when He sees His own creatures laughing, singing, dancing and jumping for joy?
In creation, each living being in its own way of rejoicing, entertaining and creating pleasures. The living is pleasure, rejoicing to the maximum.
So, is the purpose of human existence pleasure in all its components and in its typology? Were humans created for pleasure? If so, for the pleasure of what or who?
Everything was created within a specific framework, defined by the Creator. Stepping out of this frame only breeds dysfunction and a meaningless existence.
Human pleasure has been defined within a framework, in the existential God-man equation. It is not the human who has defined the framework, but rather Its Designer. Therefore, he has been created, designed for the pleasure of God within the framework of a relationship first willed and desired by God Himself.
When the human being goes out of the box to take his pleasure, he deliberately chooses to be dysfunctional and to live a frail existence, without ultimate goal. All his pleasures bring in the end only bitterness, sorrow, fear of death and permanent guilt. Even healthy pleasure is but a moment, a poisoned gift, and a rotten golden plank.
If God did not create the human being to fill any void that He would have felt in Himself, the human on the other hand has an existential void to fill.
When pleasure is not lived and experienced as an act of worship and submission to God, everything becomes bland and meaningless.
Pleasure, taken in the context of worship, is indeed the purpose of human existence.
Thus, the end of the discourse is correct: …Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man’s all.(2)
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Key takeaway thought: The human being has been created for the pleasure of God within the framework of a relationship first willed and desired by God himself.
Meditative question: Do you consider every moment of pleasure you experience on earth as an act of worship to God? If not, do you now want to live for the pleasure of God?
Deep prayer: God of love, thank you because You created me with pleasure and for Your greatest pleasure! You want me to rejoice in You and live a life of joy. What a privilege! I confess, however, that I have often left the framework You have put in place for me to enjoy. I recognize that all pleasure without You only brings bitterness in the end. Put me back in this framework that You have made so that every moment of pleasure is an act of adoration to You. I pray to You so in the name of Jesus. Amen!
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Notes and references
1. Ecclesiastes 11 verses 9 and 10. You can replace young man by human being to make it more general.
2. Ecclesiastes 12 verse 13