Divine Delight in the Useless and Unnecessary

Later in the week I hope to publish the second installment of my response to Lane Keister, but before I do I wanted to pass along something I read the other day that really bore witness to what I've been thinking about for a while, and which was written in much better prose than I'll ever pull off.
But first I need to back up a bit....

Not many of you know this, but I am working on a novel called That's Me in the Corner, and a week or so ago I wrote the following passage:

"I don't drink to get drunk or have coffee to wake myself up. I just do these things because I like to, for their own sake, even if there's no tangible benefit. In fact, even though I can't explain it, the pointlessness of much of what I do is precisely why I like doing it so much."

A day later I came across a statement from Aristotle in which he said that the best activities are the most useless. "Hmm," I thought, "apparently I'm an Aristotelian. Who knew?" Then, just yesterday I was reading the first volume of Mark Shea's Mary, Mother of the Son, in which Shea was responding to those who would ask why Mary is "necessary" and the saints "useful" for us today. He writes that God sees fit to work in the way he does simply because he lovingly feels like it:

"This leads to some startling realizations. For example, it leads to the realizations that life is as much about play as it is about work. It leads to the subversive possibility that God is not a human resources manager fretting about economic theory, parsimonious allocation of limited glory resources and the need to eliminate an oversized workforce of saints who are making his job unnecessary. It leads to the possibility that eternal confusion awaits all those with the notion that the glory of God is a zero-sum game."

Shea then goes on to cite Robert Farrar Capon's The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection, in which the author insists that "the world will always be more delicious than it is useful." Creation is "the orange peel hung on God's chandalier, the wishbone in his kitchen closet. He likes it; therefore it stays." Shea concludes:

"In Mary, the whole of God's delight in us could be seen at its most playful and at its most solemn, involving us in his life and work, not because he needed us, but because he rejoiced to have it so.In short, God chose Mary as he chose us: not because he needed her, but because he loved her freely."

Who, Catholics denyers of divine sovereignty?