The World as the Womb of Divine Love

Some people wonder: Why stick around in this life if the next life is so great? In fact, why has God sent us into this world at all if His ultimate goal for us is union with Him? Why not just get us there? Why send us here, risking the possibility that things might turn out badly? It’s as though God was saying: “I am putting you in this very fragile ethical situation where you’ll be pretty much over your heads, and although I want you to succeed, if you screw up, you’re doomed. Good luck!”  

Everything about the Christian faith tells us that is not what God is doing. So why are we in this world when we’re meant for the next? Perhaps it will help to engage in a little thought experiment. 

Let’s say there is a loving Creator who freely wants to share that love with some creatures, a God who, as Pope Benedict XVI put it, “created the universe in order to enter into a history of love with mankind.”  

How would He do this?

Love must be received and given freely.  So God can’t keep these creatures with Him, “under His wing,” so to speak, because that wouldn’t allow them any real freedom, any more than children kept at home, even with very loving parents, have any real freedom to become who they are meant to become.  

So God’s creatures cannot remain always and only with and in Him; they must go out to develop in a place and in circumstances where they can learn to love freely. 

It would have to be in a place that was vast enough to keep their minds always expanding, preparing bit by bit for union with their transcendent Source. It would need to have sufficient resources to support these creatures but not be perfect in every way. If it were, then people might only choose God as a source of pleasant things, as though He was simply the divine “caretaker.”  

That’s not love; it’s dependency.  To learn to love like adults, they can’t be treated like children forever. So this Creator would have to put us out and away from Him, in some sense. And He can’t make Himself visible at every moment lest we simply depend on Him constantly to mend our troubles and pains and to provide for us and others. If He does, we don’t grow in love. We simply exist, like spoiled children. 

To learn to be selfless lovers (which is the only real kind), these creatures would need to learn to put the needs of others ahead of their own.  But how would they do that if they were in a world with no needs?  So too, without struggle, there can be no real virtue.  To develop virtue, people must be tested, “like gold tested in fire.”  

And if we’re in a world with others like us – as we must be if we’re going to learn to love (loving trees or dogs will not be enough because they’re too subservient to our wills) – and if those others are as free as we are – free to love or not love – then it simply is the case that, occasionally, or maybe quite a lot, they will choose not to love.  They will choose to be selfish rather than selfless, to dominate others rather than serve, and to take what they can get rather than share.  

What then?  

You don’t have to struggle much to love people who are perfect. Love is perfected by the challenge of loving people who aren’t perfect.  Learning how to deal with those who say NO to love and who decide instead to dominate would be another important way of developing the love these creatures need. 

It would also be especially important since each of these creatures would need to learn from dealing with others who say no to love how to deal with themselves when they make the same mistakes.  A world in which there is freedom to love or not love must have a love able to deal with the no-saying.

To be prepared to love God, these creatures would need first to face smaller choices, then bigger ones. They would need to be able to make mistakes and learn from them, learning by stages to embrace the yes to God’s love. 

On this view, we could think of this life as a kind of “womb” that prepares us for the next, fuller life. But you can no more skip this “gestation” period than a baby can skip time in the womb.  

And yet, had someone come to you in the womb and tried to “sell you” on being born (imagining for the moment that you had been a conscious, thinking being), you likely would have been resistant, because (a) you wouldn’t know what life would be like after birth, and (b) even if you believed it existed, it would be so different from the life you’ve experienced that it might sound either unbelievable or not entirely desirable. 

Walking and running instead of floating in nice, warm amniotic fluid? Doing paperwork? Figuring out complex math problems? Having to find a restroom every time I need to go?  And that whole business of “being born” into this “other world”: it sounds very unpleasant. You might decide it would make more sense to simply stay in the place you know. 

The womb has its benefits, but it’s only temporary.  Real life lies beyond. If someone told you that in the womb, it would seem unbelievable. Would it have helped if it had been your mother who told you this? It still might seem incredible, but she – the one gestating you, the one willing to suffer to give you birth – should at least have some credibility. 

But if this life is a womb preparing us for union with the divine communion of love, then we’d better use the time wisely, to be ready with yes when the Bridegroom calls.