The teleological mind

The word “teleological” may sound Greek to us at the moment.

And it should not surprise us, for true enough it is of Greek origin.

But the word actually refers to almost everything that we usually do.

Whenever we do something, we always have a reason or purpose for doing

so. That is what being teleological means.

   

          To have a teleological mind is to always have a purpose in

all our actuations, or to refer things to the purpose, reason or end

why they were done. It is opposed to any attitude that makes us do

things simply at random or without a purpose. That would be inhuman,

to say the least.

  

          To have a teleological mind can also mean that anything that

happens is due to some purpose or design of things in general. Nothing

happens by mere chance. Everything has a reason, no matter how

unreasonable things may seem to us at the moment. To have a

teleological mind always refers us to the end or purpose of things, to

the design of things.

  

          It presumes that there is already an over-all design in the

universe under which everything is governed. Yes, including our free

human acts that can go any which way. These acts would still fall

under some law or design that can explain why we acted in a particular

way.

  

          This truth is succinctly expressed in the Book of

Ecclesiastes when it talked about “vanity of vanities,” because

whatever we do, even if we do them purely under our own will that can

even be against God’s will, things are still under God’s law. There is

nothing new under the sun, we are told.

  

          It’s good to be more aware of the need to develop a

teleological mind that goes all the way. We should not just do things

with a short-term purpose. Neither a long-term one. Neither should we

do things with some earthly value in mind only, no matter how

brilliant and legitimate it may be.

   

          We should strive to do things with our final end in mind!

And that is none other than to be with God in eternity, fully

transformed into his image and likeness which is what God designs us

to. This is our be-all and end-all. We should do things in view of

eternity.

  

          This obviously is not an easy task to carry out. It will

require all our resources, plus, of course, the grace of God, without

which nothing of eternal value can be achieved. But we can always

start somewhere. The important thing is that we start and do something

about it.

   

          First of all, we need to activate our faith, because without

it our over-all vision would simply be earth-and-time-bound. Faith

takes us to another level of reality where we have a chance to be in

communion with God and the spiritual and supernatural realities.

  

          Of course, with faith we have to exercise the virtue of hope

given our earthly condition of still being a work in progress where we

have to our part in completing with God our own creation and

redemption. Then, our faith is perfected in charity.

   

          That we are meant for God and for the spiritual and

supernatural realities can be explained by the fact that we have the

capacity to know and love with our intelligence and will. These human

faculties are not meant to be used only on natural things alone.

  

          With our intelligence and will we have the capacity to be

elevated to the supernatural order of God. This is what is called the

“obediential potency” of our intelligence and will which can get

actualized when we receive and correspond to the grace of God.

  

          To have a teleological mind is to always refer ourselves to

God in everything that we do or in everything that happens to us. He

is our final end, and no matter how mysterious he is to us, we just

have to try to refer everything to him.