What Is the Purpose of Life?

In the Christian tradition, baptism wipes away original sin and the Catholic practice is to baptize infants as soon as practical. Upon baptism, a infant is absolutely sinless and ready for heaven (and even absent baptism an infant is destined for what was once called limbo, not heaven but certainly better than hell).

Beyond that, things get complicated and dangerous.

Live after baptism is, essentially, a hell hazard entailing a series of moral risks. Errors in judgment are almost inevitable. Such moral errors can be forgiven but not only is there a risk of dying with unforgiven mortal sin but even those sins forgiven require atonement in purgatory.

The moment after baptism is the pinnacle of our mortal existence; after that, life is a downward spiral. At best, a saint will achieve something close to what he had in that moment. The rest of us do even worse.

So wouldn’t we be better off to die immediately after Baptism. Where is the upside of mortal life? What is the purpose of it

Goethe offers one possible answer:

Just as Goethe's Mephistopheles is no garden variety corrupter and collector of souls, so Goethe's God is no smiling savior of obedient spirits and pious do-gooders. Neither the Hebrew God, who demands subservience, nor the Christian God, who requires faith and love, Goethe's God values something else. He prizes action, striving, risk. "Man errs so long as he will strive," God tells Mephistopheles in the "Prologue in Heaven" that precedes the play. Human error or corruption or sin or whatever you want to name it is incidental. Error is the cost of striving, of action. And so Goethe's God readily forgives it. What counts is exertion, deeds, doing something rather than nothing.[1]

Is Goethe right? Is there something in mortal life worth the risk of eternal damnation?

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1. Worldly Wisdom: Great Books and the Meanings of Life by James Sloan Allen