Purpose is that which we posit now in order to fulfil over time. That which is to be fulfilled may be objective, subjective or be an action event.
Our definition is not confined to human endeavour. Not only man has purpose. We say that all other creatures also have purpose, and all purposes of all beings are sub-purposes of the infinite power that made them all. From the atomic purpose of basic existence, through simple life forms, to plants, animals and civilised man, sacrifices of lower forms & functions to the higher have had to be made by the intelligent source power of the universe.
Human Purpose
In the process of attaining the civilised state, man has had to sacrifice, transcend, whatever forces seemed to oppose this state. But man has made mistakes. He is not omniscient as is God. Man has made sacrifices which had to be made, but he has not always made these sacrifices in the most intelligent way. Some of his methods of sacrifice have been unintelligently suppressive, and so have brought unintelligent reactions. There is no ‘short, sharp shock’ solution to all the world’s ailments. Suppressive methods may, bring some instant superficial improvements in external behaviour patterns, but they do so at the expense of long term laying of deep resentments, which in one generation or another suddenly erupt with devastating results.
Enforced Social Cohesion
Today we are reaping the results of unintelligent sacrifices and suppressions made in the name of an enforced social cohesion. But life does not grow from outside in, but from inside out. Not by the external imposition of resented controls will man take his next evolutionary step; his improvement, where genuine, will come from greater understanding of his real place and function in the universe. God has a purpose for mankind, and will establish it in His own good time. Meanwhile it is for man to study, with all the intelligence and power God has conferred upon him, that divine purpose, so that he can intelligently cooperate with it. And for this cooperation, for the time being, man must sacrifice not his human energies (Isaac-Self), but his animal willed Ram-in-a-thicket energies.