The Bible tells one story. Humanity growing up.
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Q: Why did God create humanity?
A: To prove — to Satan, and to ourselves — that we can get this right.
Let’s start with the question everyone asks and almost no one answers simply: who is God?
God is the creator of our universe. Everything you can see, measure, or imagine exists because God made it. But let’s set aside the popular image of a flawless, untouchable being sitting on a throne of perfection. That version of God is a myth invented by people who wanted you to stop asking questions.
The God you’ll find in the Bible is not like that. This God gets angry. Gets sad. Feels betrayed. Experiences joy when things go right and frustration when they don’t. God created humanity, and like any parent raising children, God has been navigating the emotional ups and downs of that decision ever since.
Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. — Genesis 6:5-6 ESV
God regretted creating us. That’s not the language of a detached, perfect being. That’s the language of a parent watching their children destroy everything they were given.
Not as pets. Not for entertainment. And not because God needed someone to worship Him.
God created humanity with a mission. Think of it this way: God has a vision for what we could be — a species that overcomes its fears and vices to sustainably manage the world we’ve been given. Earth is our sacred domain, entrusted to us. If we make it uninhabitable, game over. If we destroy each other, game over. But if we prove we can live together without those outcomes, we win.
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” — Genesis 1:26 ESV
“Dominion” is not a trophy. It’s a responsibility. You were made in the image of God — not to sit on a throne, but to steward what God built.
Here’s where things part ways with most of what you’ve heard.
Satan is not God’s arch-nemesis. Satan is not an equal and opposite force of evil locked in a cosmic war with good. Read the Book of Job carefully — it’s one of the most misunderstood books in the Bible.
Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. The LORD said to Satan, “From where have you come?” Satan answered the LORD and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.” — Job 1:6-7 ESV
Satan shows up among the sons of God. He doesn’t sneak in. He doesn’t rebel. He presents himself, and God engages him in conversation. What follows is a challenge: Satan tells God that Job is only faithful because God has blessed him with prosperity. Take it away, Satan says, and watch him crumble. God grants Satan permission to test Job — within limits God sets.
This is not a war. It’s a wager. Satan is the skeptic in the room, the one who looks at humanity and says, “They’ll fail.” God is the one who says, “Watch them.” And the stakes are everything.
All the evil things people blame on Satan? They’re inseparable from God, because Satan operates only with God’s permission. The question was never whether God could stop evil. The question is why God allows it — and the answer is that the test wouldn’t mean anything if it weren’t real.
Yes. And this is the whole point.
God could have created beings who had no choice but to follow the program. Obedient automatons. Instead, God created beings with agency — the capacity to choose, to rebel, to destroy, and also to love, to build, and to sacrifice.
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live. — Deuteronomy 30:19 ESV
“Choose.” That word only makes sense if the alternative is real. And if you’ve ever watched a parent let a child make a mistake they could have prevented, you understand why. Parents derive no joy from raising blindly subservient children. God is rooting for us to grow into beings who make good choices on our own — not because we’re forced to, but because we’ve chosen to.
Forced obedience would prove Satan right. It would make for a hollow victory. God intentionally leaves the rest of the story in our hands.
Jesus answered this directly. No ambiguity, no fine print.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. — Matthew 22:37-40 ESV
Love God. Love other people. Everything else in the Bible hangs on those two commands. And notice: the mission — stewarding the earth, taking care of each other, proving we can do this — is really just a concrete expression of those two commandments lived out at scale.
Simple to understand. Extraordinarily difficult to live. And that tension between understanding and living is what the next twenty-two hours are about.
That last question matters more than you think. Because the mission isn’t abstract — it’s built from eight billion individual choices to love or not love the person in front of you.