God's Plan
I don't claim to know it. I'm willing to believe He has one.
A lot of people take issue with the traditional Christian view of God seeing all ages as one. Even more will gleefully point out that a "plan," properly defined, is based on the passage of time and the operation of cause and effect, both of which are meaningless to a Being that can see through time the way Man sees through plate glass.
Well, perhaps I don't know much about God, either. I'm an engineer, not a theologian. But from our narrow perspective, in which the fourth dimension is opaque to our vision, a Divine plan makes as much sense as any mortal's plan might. And I submit that it's not necessary for us to be able to see the end of it, as Teilhard de Chardin and others have attempted to do.
The bones of any Divine plan must be the laws of Nature, laid down by the Almighty at the birth of the universe. Those laws prescribe that a thing is what it is and not something that it isn't, that any action will evoke a particular reaction, that nothing can be added to or taken away from the sum of creation. Man may learn to exploit Nature's laws, but he can never set them aside.
Insofar as humans have a place in God's plan -- and wouldn't we? I mean, really! -- we must be guided, both in our attempts to comprehend it and our efforts to comply with it, by our own natures as He has bestowed them upon us.
Man is a creature of individual consciousness who requires some degree of social acceptance to flourish. The world being a place of limits, he must set priorities to his desires and act on them accordingly. The world being indifferent to his desires, he must learn its rules and contrive to use them for his ends. Since some of his aims intersect the aims of others, he must develop a sense for when cooperation is possible, and when competition, or even combat, is mandatory.
Man is also a creature who responds to incentives and penalties, though not in the same ways. He will seek out incentives, conforming his conduct to whatever pattern is required to get them. Penalties, however, will not extinguish his desires or his efforts to satisfy them, but will rather induce him to look for a way around them.
These universal rules of human nature are our guides to our part in God's plan. They give rise to moral laws concerning rights: Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness. These are strictures whose violation may be expected to provoke a corrective backlash, and throughout all of history this has been the case. If Moses had never brought the tablets down the mountain, if Christ had never walked the Earth, the moral law would still be the same, and its force would be undiminished.
Herbert Spencer was scathing toward persons who avowed that to observe moral strictures put one at a disadvantage in social or commercial dealings. He compared their objections to devil worship, pointing out that only a cruel and malicious Deity would establish moral rules that would injure or impoverish His creatures. Time has produced no refutation of his concept.
To act in accordance with its nature is all a creature can reasonably be expected to do. Of course, there are neo-nihilists who deny that Man has a "nature," but inasmuch as their arguments are self-refuting, amounting to an assertion that Man is not necessarily different from any other thing, we can pass over them in silence.
Will we be judged according to how well we fulfill our parts in God's plan? Will His ultimate disposition of us depend on whether He is pleased with our performance? Perhaps. I'm no mind reader, and even if I were, I doubt the Almighty's mind would be open to my inspection. All I can do, short of revelation, is to study the world He has made for us, strive to comprehend its logic, and use what I learn as best I can. No matter what your religious beliefs or inclinations, this is a course I commend to you.