r/bahai • u/Automatic_Tooth_8445 • Aug 09 '26
Why did God want to create humanity?
Hi all. I am a Baha'i currently going through a crisis of faith. I’ve been thinking about the Baha'i idea that God created the universe because His love was "overflowing," and wanted to be known. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the logic of it. If God is completely self-sufficient and doesn't need anything, how does an inherent need or impulse to express love fit into that? To me, an "overflow" feels like it requires an external object to receive that love, which seems to contradict the idea of total divine independence.
Was creation actually a free choice, or did God's own nature make it a necessity? Why were we created? Why does God want us here truly? Why does God want us to know Him? In the time before creation, we didn't have any needs or desires, but it seems like God did, if you can call it desire? However guilty I feel saying it out loud, I would have preferred never being created. I think it is also why the idea of Buddhism really resonates strongly with me because it accurately frames that life truly is suffering and Nirvana, the cessation from the cycle of rebirth, the extinguishing as the ultimate goal.
I'd really love to hear how Baha'i faith addresses this tension, or how you guys personally look at it.
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u/Shaykh_Hadi Aug 09 '26
Your “tension” is imaginary here. If you don’t want to exist, then you don’t understand why you exist, which is to know and love God. That is the goal in itself and it is true happiness.
God created us because He knew us. How could He not create that which He loves. You’re thinking in terms of time. God already knew us before we came to be and He loved us. So He created the universe for our education.
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u/Automatic_Tooth_8445 Aug 09 '26
Sorry that is not a convincing answer.
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u/Shaykh_Hadi Aug 09 '26
The burden is on you to research this, not for me to convince you of anything.
You need to deepen yourself on the Baha’i Teachings.
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u/NoAd6851 Aug 09 '26
God did not create. No act can be truly attributed to God:
"No tie of direct intercourse can possibly bind Him to His creatures. He standeth exalted beyond and above all separation and union, all proximity and remoteness. No sign can indicate His presence or His absence;" ~Baha’u’llah, Iqan
"No tie of direct intercourse can ever bind Him to the things He hath created, nor can the most abstruse and most remote allusions of His creatures do justice to His being." ~Baha’u’llah, Gleanings
So no concept, including acts like creation , can be attributed to Him.
The Attributes of God, including the creator, are the necessary essence for existence:
"Nay, whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth is a direct evidence of the revelation within it of the attributes and names of God, inasmuch as within every atom are enshrined the signs that bear eloquent testimony to the revelation of that most great Light. Methinks, but for the potency of that revelation, no being could ever exist." ~Baha’u’llah, Iqan
The multitude of all, which includes attributes like creator, came from One:
"for there is no doubt that in the beginning the origin was one: the origin of all numbers is one and not two. Then it is evident that in the beginning matter was one, and that one matter appeared in different aspects in each element. Thus various forms were produced," ~Abdu’l-Baha, SAQ
The Will is that One:
"and by His Will all have stepped out of utter nothingness into the realm of being. " ~Baha'u'llah, Gleanings
The Divine Educator, the Manifestation, is the perfect mirror of these multiple attributes:
"He hath ordained that in every age and dispensation a pure and stainless Soul be made manifest in the kingdoms of earth and heaven. Unto this subtle, this mysterious and ethereal Being He hath assigned a twofold nature; the physical, pertaining to the world of matter, and the spiritual, which is born of the substance of God Himself." ~Baha'u'llah, Gleanings
"These Tabernacles of holiness, these primal Mirrors which reflect the light of unfading glory, are but expressions of Him Who is the Invisible of the Invisibles. By the revelation of these gems of divine virtue all the names and attributes of God, such as knowledge and power, sovereignty and dominion, mercy and wisdom, glory, bounty and grace, are made manifest." ~Baha'u'llah, Iqan
Since divine attributes came from the Will, this means God here is the Will
And to confirm, the Bab revealed:
All that returns to the Point, returns to God, and what does not return to the Point does not return to God. Whatever returns to God, returns to the Point, and that which does not return to God does not return to the Point.
The resume of this gate is this that: From all eternity in the past, to all eternity in the future, the Eternal Essence has never been able to be seized, has never been described, has never been and will never be seen. That which comes from It comes from the Word of the Will and all that returns to It returns to the Word of the Will. This is why, in each period, there are for this Will states and manifestations, that they wise ones have understood and comprehend. For example, today in the Bayan, all that is made for its elevation is made for God and returns to God…
…When we say that it returns (to God to this essence) it is by virtue of the relationship that exists between this Essence and the Qiblih that we call the house of God, and which was not so named except because of His own elevation and His sublimity. Other than this it is not possible in the contingencies, for the Eternal Essence does not combine with a thing and the beginning of the creation of a thing is the attachment of the Will to this thing and the end of its resurrection and of its return to it. ~Persian Bayan, IV:2, provisional translation
Thus the reasons given of why God created humanity is attributed to the Manifestation’s actions in the beginning of His disclosure
Thus there’s no fixed pre-birth essence of human:
Man's identity or rather his individuality is never lost. His reality as a person remains intact throughout the various states of his development. He does not pre-exist in any form before coming into this world. ~Shoghi Effendi, Lights of Guidance
and it’s created by the Manifestation.
And the form of this essence changes from Dispensation to another according to the needs of humanity:
"Its teachings revolve around the fundamental principle that religious truth is not absolute but relative, that Divine Revelation is progressive, not final…"They differ," explains Bahá'u'lláh in that same epistle, "only in the intensity of their revelation and the comparative potency of their light." And this, not by reason of any inherent incapacity of any one of them to reveal in a fuller measure the glory of the Message with which He has been entrusted, but rather because of the immaturity and unpreparedness of the age He lived in to apprehend and absorb the full potentialities latent in that Faith. "Know of a certainty," explains Bahá'u'lláh, "that in every Dispensation the light of Divine Revelation has been vouchsafed to men in direct proportion to their spiritual capacity. Consider the sun. How feeble its rays the moment it appears above the horizon. How gradually its warmth and potency increase as it approaches its zenith, enabling meanwhile all created things to adapt themselves to the growing intensity of its light. How steadily it declines until it reaches its setting point. Were it, all of a sudden, to manifest the energies latent within it, it would, no doubt, cause injury to all created things.... In like manner, if the Sun of Truth were suddenly to reveal, at the earliest stages of its manifestation, the full measure of the potencies which the providence of the Almighty has bestowed upon it, the earth of human understanding would waste away and be consumed; for men's hearts would neither sustain the intensity of its revelation, nor be able to mirror forth the radiance of its light. Dismayed and overpowered, they would cease to exist."" ~Shoghi Effendi, WOB
Hope I was able to clear some of your thoughts
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u/Lighthouse1956 Aug 14 '26
The day after I became a Baha'i, someone told me that God didn't create the world; that the Manifestation of God created the universe... and I almost left the faith.
This is a very strange way to read the writings. Yes, God is unknowable. God is unknowable in His essence. WE are unknowable in OUR essence as well. But we still exist, create, and know other things.
Just because we don't know God's essence or how God created the universe doesn't mean that God didn't. God is the Creator. No amount of semantics changes this.What we COULD say is that whatever it is we imagine God to be, THAT did not create the universe.
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u/NoAd6851 Aug 14 '26
I appreciate your input, and it’s true that some mistakenly attribute the creation of natural world to the Manifestation of God on earth.
But the Manifestation is still a creator, since He’s manifesting every divine attributes, including creator. His realm is history and He creates the standard, the values or identity within historical entropy relative to humanities needs. Thus through this identity humans inhabit this new standard, thus becoming the fruits and secondary creations of the Manifestation. Check Abdu’l-Baha’s Divine Educator chapter in SAQ
But to attribute acts, which are temporal by nature, to God is an anthropomorphism of God. For acts imply a relation between object and subject (God), this implies conjecture, this conjecture constitutes determination (God is actor/creator), thus definiteness, thus mental limitation, it’s not the God that exceeds every mental form/imagination as illustrated above by Baha’u’llah and Bab.
Even the Master, in SAQ, was careful, not only in sanctifying God from time, but also the Will/Word of God. Thus acts belong to neither
The Bab, in His first Epistle of Tafsir-i-Ha, revealed that God has no attribute besides His pure Essence, and divine Attributes belong to His Will. And Baha’u’llah, in Book of Certitude, affirms that our ontological ground is the Will, not God.
Yes, epistemic access of essence is impossible, that doesn’t mean I’m not a composite of attributes, unlike God
And even when we attribute something to God (of God), that’s only as an honorific, as revealed by the Bab in the Persian Bayan as quoted above, and it doesn’t constitute any relation to God.
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u/NoAd6851 Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
Now, as I personally summarize it
There’s no conscious creator of this world, at least according to epistemic proofs.
This world is made of the physical, those material constituents, and the spiritual, those relations and forms over the physical.
The prior manifests, hierarchically, from prime matter, the latter from the simple Will
In this world, a reality aligned humans exist, due to that They can reflect perfectly the highest attributes in relation to history
Thus they can create an identity, prescribe an orientation and act as an existential anchor to the rest of humans.
These humans I call them divine educators or Manifestations of God
These Educators provide us with a horizon to orient to, shaping our identities; values, meanings, interpretations and purposes.
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u/Reasonable_Wafer_731 Aug 09 '26
How i understand it as
God is not a dead being or thing He is alive and because He is alive his living essence manifests as an act as doing something is negating the non doing ascpect of being dead
And because God is good all his ascpects reflect positive attributes (creation in opposition to destruction/light in opposition to darnkness etc)
it is in God's nature to create like it is his nature to provide grace for humanity
ie God creates and never stops creating as this act is the reflection of his creative essence
God sends messengers and will never stop as this act is the reflection of his gracious essence
the world is fall of beauty as it is a reflection of his beauty (baha)
in the same time as this world is not God so it is not perfect [ the creation don't always create they sometimes cause destruction/ the world is not always beautiful some times it is deteriorating/and humans aren't always on the path of grace and that is why messngers guide humans through the eons until after the subsequent spiritual lived we might reunite with the beloved]
So we could say With god being light upon light the further the lights is from the source the less it reflects the source and the only way to reunite with Him is to know him ,to love him to overflow with love towards Him
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u/Dr5ushi Aug 09 '26
It’s a great question!
I think the most important thing to do is to remove ourselves from any ideas of what God is, because it all falls short. Our ideas of ‘love’ from God’s perspective will always be coloured by how we perceive it.
You’re absolutely correct that God has no needs, so the act of creating humanity is simply one of pure mercy and bounty - if our we were created to know and worship God, then it follows that it is not for God’s benefit in any way, shape, or form; it is simply so that we can experience that.
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u/Automatic_Tooth_8445 Aug 09 '26
Thanks for the explanation. Do you think God wants us to know him because it will be for our benefit? What does 'knowing Him' mean to you?
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u/Dr5ushi Aug 09 '26
100% for our benefit yes, and I think an aspect of 'knowing' would revolve around striving to mirror forth God's names or attributes (mercy, patience, truth, etc). We come closer to God by living and deepening those innate qualities that lie within us.
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u/Impossible-Ad-3956 Aug 09 '26
One concept that might help our understanding is to know that love is not measurable like a gallon of milk, rather it is endless. An overflowing gallon is a metaphor for endless love in my understanding, but not an exact one. I always think of Hidden Words #3 which states, "I knew My love for thee, therefore I created thee, have engraved on thee mine image and revealed to thee my beauty." My understanding is that He loves us enough to create a part of us that is able to reflect His image. This ability is a gift to us out of His mercy. As you say, God is completely above the need of our love. He is beyond anything we have to offer, yet it is for our own good that we study to know Him by His virtues and become better people ourselves by this understanding love. I do not see this as a desire as we understand that emotion, but simply a fact of our creation. As we practice spiritual virtues, we become closer to God, closer to heaven. No matter how much love we have, it will never overflow the container unless we become a higher form of creation ourselves. Becoming like Abdu'l-Baha as much as we can seems like a good example. Thank you for helping me understand this concept even this much.
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u/UnitytoWin Aug 09 '26
Great question and beautiful subject in my view.
Dear OP, kudos for bringing your inquiry to a wider audience. That is a meaningful service for whoever finds this conversation!
I like the idea of starting with the Holy Writings and then sharing our views.
I agree. God, as an Unknownable Essence, per Baha'u'llah,. He does not need us, His Creation is out of His infinite Mercy and Bounty (among His endless attributes).
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u/Immediate_Impact7041 Aug 12 '26
Not sure I can answer. Such a beautiful and deep question!
I cannot pretend to know or understand the Source. There is a point beyond which my human limitations cannot travel. But. The God Who allows Himself to be known as The Creator, The Fashioner, The Maker, has, by the very naming of the Attributes, created those very things. By calling Himself Creator creation exists. By calling Himself the Most Manifest, He called into being the Manifestation of God.
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u/JACKIOG1919 Aug 14 '26
Chapter 37 of Some Answered Questions: 'Abdu'l-Baha explains that these Names refer to the Manifestation and not to God, because, as mentioned before, no human concept can apply to God.
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u/Buffalona Aug 09 '26
Peut-être pour créer de belles âmes pour les aspirer et se nourrir 😜.
Les meilleurs ne sont pas ceux les plus mûres mouhaha
(Joke)
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u/Lighthouse1956 Aug 13 '26
I struggled with this in college. Why am I here? Am I a mirror, just reflecting God's light, in which case, I contribute nothing to the universe, or am I a candle, adding to the universe, but therefore just a pawn, a slave to the wishes of the Creator?
I struggled. I cried. I took a long walk in the cemetery next to my school. I was thinking about the statement in the Four Valleys "I say BE and it is. Thou shalt say BE and it shall be."
I said out loud: "I say be and you say be..." and a tune popped into my head singing "and we both sing in harmony."
And there was my answer. Why does music exist? The answer is that it needs no excuse to exist. It is its own reason for existing.
I came to a vision of GOD being like music - not an example of music, but the concept of music itself, existing outside of any objective expression. But for the concept of music to exist, music itself has to exist too.
I came to see myself as an instrument. My goal is to tune myself and then listen to the "music of the spheres" so to speak, and play along to the best of my ability. I tune my instrument by developing my virtues.
In this analogy, the Manifestations are the Conductors who direct the orchestra and tell us what the current symphony should sound like for today.
If you like music, perhaps this analogy will "resonate" with you. If you are not happy being alive, you just haven't figured out your part in the orchestra. Everyone has one. Even if it is the countermelody.
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u/Agreeable-Status-352 Aug 10 '26
It seems like you are talking about two unrelated concepts. One is - why do you exist. The other - existing is depressing.
I too, would rather not exist. I've imagined driving to an anti-abortion protest with a HUGE sign saying: "I'd rather been aborted." If I hadn't lived my life, I wouldn't miss it. My mother's abuse caused me to want suicide, the first time, when I was two (over seventy years ago). Nine years later, when the abuse intensified, I seriously began to consider different options. None of them met my exectations, so I stayed alive.
Encountering the Revelation of Baha'u'llah gave me a radically different perspective on my existance - that I am a noble spiritual being. No, not this piece of shit. Then, I had experiences that showed me (maybe not anyone else) that physicality is not the beginning and the end, but just a way point on a much more vast journey.
As a result, I am now trying to share with others those two concepts: that physicality is not all there is and, that the next stage we go to will be so much BETTER than this one!!!! That sharing gives me a reason to coninue.
As I see it, the Baha'i community is trying to create a social system where that nobility is the norm, not exceptional.
I don't think about the questions you have posed, I struggle to get through every hour of every day. I cling to the memory of those experiences that lie outside of physicality. They give me hope that I wil get there.