God is self sufficient and perfect.
He is pure action with no potential to achieve further.

Why would he feel obligated to create finite beings such as ourselves?

Heck, I can't even the narrow my question without saying things wrong. Clearly he doesn't have feelings of obligation towards us, being as he is perfect and the obligation lies within us. I just don't know how to phrase that question in a way we would all understand while being theologically correct.

I understand Thomistic evil, for example let's take a plant and a bird. For the plant to achieve its goodness; it's full potential, it must flourish as a plant. But for a bird to reach its full potential it must flourish as a bird, and eat plants.

So on a finite level, a plant dropping seeds or a bird hatching eggs is continuing to flourish in the mortal realm.

But how can we understand God's desire to create? He operates out of every single box we could try to put him in. Time, space, dimension, species, mortality, etc etc. I understand that goodness as a whole is a gift from God, as is his grace.

But why does God create?

Some things , despite atheists complaints, might be beyond human discernment.

Perhaps because all of His creations are an aspect or reflection of Him that can independently enjoy infinite experiences of Him because He wanted to share His life with us.

I'm not a Biblical scholar, but I know he loves us more than we can understand.  That's all I needed to know.

To answer the question, you are in the image of God, and God creates. Your ability to create and reason for creating is likely linked to the spark of the creator. Animals don't create in any meaningful way and they aren't in the image of God. They won't go to he moon, they won't write sonnets, paint, perform surgery, understand the laws of nature, or organize their toolbox. It is the human creative mind that does those things.

Can people be self fulfilled before children, but have them anyway and share their fulfilled lives with? The answer is yes. Could God be self fulfilled before he created his children, but choose to have them anyway to share with? The answer is yes.

He creates for the same reason a craftsman creates an intricate thing for himself: Because he wants to. He needs no other reason.

(At least that's my take.)

Funny enough this came from a lecture on how atheists are really good at helping us tell people what God is not.

But he has that with the spiritual world and with Angels, who share knowledge we can only dream of.

But even angels... he is perfect by himself, and he needs to prove to no one (including himself) his greatness. He is beyond duty or need or desire.

So if he's beyond desire, then why create?

That's the best one so far, in my opinion. But he is beyond wants as well.

I'm in a really good place with why we as humans are here. Like a super great place, in terms of our roles as subcreators, our reason possessed by no other earthly animal, our having a soul. I'm really good with human direction and gifts and image.

But man this thing has been bouncing around in my head all day.

For His glory?

We should seek to glorify God in all ways, but God has no need to glorify himself.

I'm sorry to keep shooting these down I just can't figure this one out.

lol, it's okay, I'm not offended, but you're certainly on your own path of discovery.

Working on it every day brother. I think men are happiest when they contemplate God.

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Try the Hindu perspective:  the divine spirit 'dreams' and that is what we and all creation are.

You know how sometimes you can read something that jumps right off the page? I really like your answer.
While Bible scholars can be intellectually correct, truth flows from personal experience.

Love requires someone to love.
so God creates us as recipients of His love
so we can learn to love others as He loves us.

I sometimes think he was bored and needed some entertainment.

He is beyond boredom.

Out of perfect love and goodness.

God has three persons. Father, Son and Holy Ghost.  They are distinct in relationship to eachother. So God is relational.
Also God is Love. Love is never turned inward and not shared.  So by nature God is Love and relationally shares his Love.  It follows that God would want to share His Love with others.  So he created finite beings that could accept his Love, and Love back.

ETA: Edited for spelling and tense.

He has feelings towards us, if by the word feelings you mean reactions based upon what he knows. If by that you mean passions that override his thinking and are outside of his control, than no, absolutely not.  He has obligations towards us because has entered into relation with us, in varying ways - he has chosen to be obliged, we cannot put him under obligation.


You asked the question just fine. God posesses all perfections and was not incomplete and was not lonely and we could add nothing to God and we cannot take anything from God. He wasn't obliged by an outside higher power to create us (God cannot be obliged by do something by another power, if he could, he wouldn't be God.



If you refuse to accept the fact that you need understandable revelation from God, you cannot and will not ever find anything out about him. That is not possible with any created means. If you accept that any source is God's revelation you have to accept it as such and you have to treat it as such. That carries with it requirements that natural man hates and is repulsed by because it shows our corruption and our inability to please God, and how God has made the only way to be right with him, by understanding and believing you cannot make yourself right with him and your works will never cut it, and believing and understanding that Christ died for your sins, in your place.



He created because he Desired to.



He created all things for himself.



Because he created all things, and upholds their existence, he is worthy of all the Glory.



Creation declares his glory.



And we see that Glory, and we know we should worship God, but because we are corrupted, we see that glory and suppress it with lies, and diversions.

God created for his Glory to be manifest. Which would add nothing to him nor subtract anything from him.

We messed up when the real man adam in the real physical garden of eden at the fruit and we all became corrupted in nature, and God promised a way of making that right, and Christ, the 2nd person of the trinity became incarnate, and lived the perfect life no child of adam could, and died for all who believe on his name (Christ = messiah). He will come back bodily at the last day, and fix all of creation, and give everyone who refused to believe on him as savior what t heir works deserve, and give all the saved mercy they don't deserve.

Creation and all this is for his Glory, according to what he desires, by his plan, and for him.

Consciousness seeks novel experiences and higher consciousness. What better way to achieve that than via the “all” that is presently around us?

Nothing can be novel to God or be higher in consciousness than him.

For His glory.

"But why does God create?"

Because He wants to.

He certainly can, but I think that's the most interesting part of the question. By that I mean finding good words to describe him, and his actions. Want implies some sort of deficiency:

I want to provide for my kids.
I want to lead a good and just life.
I want beef for dinner.
I want a good relationship with my wife.

All of those statements are noble, but imply being imperfect. You may already have a very excellent relationship with your wife, and you may be very content with chicken, and your children may be very well taken care of.

But want is a human aspect we cannot ascribe to God. He is perfect and bereft of potential, because he is pure action.

Yes. He loves us and His forgiveness for sin and reward of everlasting life through Jesus's death on the cross knows no bounds as long as we repent and try our best to make amends.

He created a whole universe that goes on forever yet only put life on one planet (that we know of ). Like a grain of sand in a massive gravel pit. Even with billions of souls on earth that is still a very exclusive club when you think about it. All those galaxies created just so that after a particularly bad day in this vale of tears corrupted by Adam and Eve's disobedience their descendants can always look up to the starlit sky at night in awe and be reminded that God's glory is greater than any temporary problem we have on this demon infested rock.

How easily we get caught up in the petty BS of this world and forget why God created us, what He asks from us, and how incredibly short our time is here compared to the hereafter. Sin blinds your eyes and hardens your heart towards what is really important and it is very contagious if you don't have your guard up as evidenced by our sick culture today. I'm as guilty as anyone for repeatedly falling slave to that trap.

Even better, Gods need to create a race of intelligent beings for the purpose of worshiping him speaks to narcissism

He is above narcissism.

On a Saturday afternoon, when I'm feeling pretty happy and content, why do I think "I'm going out to the shop to make something?"

Maybe it has something to do with the joy and satisfaction from not only the act of creation, but also the lasting joy in your creation.  But I'm just spit-balling here.

Brother, I love you.

I think we find God in our role as subcreators.

Anyone can destroy things.

A man creates things. (Yes you can go deeper into this and say because God creates we are happy when we create)

The word "want" does not require you to think it is based on a need.

It merely indicates a desire to do something based on one's own will and plan.

Narcissisim only applies when you over-value yourself.

Funny way you have of saying you hate God for him being God and you not.

I think it shows his love for us.

A plant cannot love, but it is a creation of God.

I think in a way we can try to understand God and us by examining the relationship between man and dog. The dog can love us, but is not on our level of rationality. We can love God but can never be on his level. But just as we can know a very special dog, God can identify a very special human being. And that is something we should all strive to be.

While it'sperfectly natural to think in terms of human emotions,
your mistaken conclusion is based on the false premise
that God needs to be worshipped.

The truth is we were created to be objects of God's Love.
And the expressions of God's love are Justice and Mercy.

I doodle in meetings just to pass the time.  The doodles don't mean anything.  Maybe we're just God's doodles while he thinks about bigger things.

Maybe, clearly I don't know the answer or I wouldn't have asked.

But I would think being as God is the first mover there has to be more to it.

We naturally apply human terms to God because the human intellect is all we know.
No matter how hard we pull on the handle, it is impossible to lift the bucket in which we are standing.

The only thing which has the power to alter this situation
is a transcendent experience of something which is outside of our intellect.
We were designed by God to possess this ability.

We don't even need to seek this experience,
for our own awareness is the very canvas
on which we are painting our intellectual images.

For awareness, by its very nature, is larger than human intellect.

When your awareness turns upon itself by becoming aware that you are aware...

...you are that you are.

Thank you, friend.

Eastern Orthodox monks do not want to raise families, and they do not want beef or chicken for dinner. They renounce the world, including their immediate families. The only thing they desire is to please God by being as simple and pure of heart as they can.

That is something to chew on for sure. I'm not there yet.

One clue is that we are created in His image.  As others have touched on, and I believe as well, is that He gets the same satisfaction from creating that I do when I spend time in the workshop and make something useful that did not exist until I made it so.  I very much enjoy using my mind and hands to take various materials and create.  To bring order from disorder.  Or to repair a broken machine that someone else made.  To put it back into order.  Why?  Good question.  Which is obviously what you are trying to answer.

Some food for thought in a similar vein:  I can't remember where I got this idea from, but I was pondering, "Why did God give humans free will?"  The world would be a much better place if people didn't have the ability to do evil, or make bad choices.  If everyone were perfect.  Then I got this idea trying to think about it from His perspective.

When you are omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, what is the one thing you DO NOT have?

Limits.

So maybe He created a world in which beings created in His image would live, except they have physical and mental limitation?  SEVERE ones in comparison to Him.  Why?  Perhaps just to see what happens?

That's kind of where I'm at.  Maybe not helpful, but hopefully useful to you.

I believe you're onto something.

If not for the evil in this world,
it would be impossible for us to know what goodness is
or to have the opportunity to aspire to it.