Purpose of Life"What does one conclude about the point of life, or the meaning of life?" I pressed. "The purpose of man’s existence in the world is to serve God," he spoke slowly, emphasizing each word. "And, what is the nature of one’s service? For example, how does one characterize oneself as a result of this experience?" "Well, first is the question of how you know what to do. I mean, some guy can come around and say, ‘Hey! I’m serving God,’ when he is, in fact, being very destructive and definitely not serving God at all. We tell a story about a man who’s about to rob a house. He’s sitting outside the house and says, ‘God, please help me pull off this robbery! "‘ The Rabbi laughed. My assistant and I joined him. "Is that serving God?" Rabbi Eliezrie asked. "So, the first question is how do we know what is service of God? We must have a certain level of intellectual and spiritual humility because to find the answer to that question we look into the Torah. When we believe that God gave the Torah to the Jewish people on Mount Sinai and that the Torah gives a direction, a mission, to the Jews to fulfill the six hundred thirteen mitzvahs, we seek to do the will of the Lord as expressed to us through the Torah." His penetrating eyes met mine. "By the way, God gave a mission to the non-Jews to fulfill seven commandments which are really inclusive of many more of the six hundred and thirteen commandments." |
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