I wonder what it must feel like, for those without a faith system, to wake up one morning and suddenly ask why questions. I would think it would be difficult to explain pain and suffering, to explain beauty and meaning and purpose with only subjectivity as framework. When I think of this, I think of that Douglas Coupland book with all the nursery rhyme characters who are lost, looking for something good that was supposed to happen but never happens because the plastic surgery didn’t work or the drugs started to own them or the depression that is always, always waiting just outside the door found a crack it could slip through to whisper hard and unwanted truths into the ears of the characters whose stories were supposed to come true, were supposed to end with a happily ever after. And I wonder, quite honestly, if I will end up like this, if I will discover that my Christian faith, my American faith, was a fraud, and that there was nothing behind it, that it wasn’t even pointing me toward something real and authentic, and I, too, will join the ranks of the dispossessed, staring up into the cosmos asking why, only to have the cosmos shrug its broad black shoulders as if to return the question.
I would imagine having the capacity to ask why questions but not having any answers would just make life feel something like rehab.
This passage was an excerpt from Through Painted Deserts.
thank you for your honesty. it is refreshing in a world like likes to keep the facade.
I’ve never been to rehab, but somehow, I think my life must be at least a little like rehab.
For some reason, this makes me think of a poem I came across recently, by Carl Sandburg;
“Experience”
This morning I looked at the map of the day
And said to myself, “This is the way! This is the way I will go;
Thus shall I range on the roads of achievement,
The way is so clear–it shall all be a joy on the lines marked out.”
And then as I went came a place that was strange,–
‘Twas a place not known on the map!
And I stumbled and fell and lay in the weeds,
And looked on the day with rue.
I am learning a little–never to be sure–
To be positive only with what is past,
And to peer sometimes at the things to come
As a wanderer treading the night
When the mazy stars neither point nor beckon,
And of all the roads, no road is sure.
I see those men with maps and talk
Who tell how to go and where and why;
I hear with my ears the words of their months,
As they finger with ease the marks on the maps;
And only as one looks robust, lonely and querulous,
As if he had gone to a country far
And made for himself a map,
Do I cry to him, “I would see your map!
I would heed that map you have!”
The questions “Why is everything here.. and why does nature work the way it does?” are ones that I don’t feel can be explained outside of God’s word. I look around everything and the way that it all works together in unison, and i can’t help but believe that a divine creator had to create it. Every science explanation leaves me scratching my head with questions still remaining…
I find that having faith sometimes punishes one for asking any questions at all. Sometimes the big black cosmos’ shoulder seems broad and friendly in comparison to the bitter bony arm of Orthodox Christianity.
Yes, I agree with you!
Existentialism was very popular in the 1960′s. A good depiction of this is the story “Five Characters in Search of an Exit” written by Marvin Petel, teleplay by Rod Serling for The Twilight Zone. A good line in the story is one of the characters singing, (to the tune of Auld Lang Syne) “We’re here because we’re here, because we’re here, because we’re here …”
Nicely said and so true for many,thanks for the honesty. I too have these same thoughts, but the truth is always inside me waiting gracefully to console me when I have these times of fear. Read the “Urantia Book”. There is no other book more illuminating and freeing to a soul with many questions and especially many “why” questions. I know many of you are Christian so I hope this does not offend you! But please take my word on it, your life will CHANGE once you find this book. Blessings to all.
Don.
If having Jordan host this blog awhile is allowing you to hole up and write stuff that is anything like this…well, I’m even more grateful to Jordan, and waiting even more fervently (is it possible to fervently wait?) for your next book.
Don. This is good.
Lori
And everyone else. Do you guys ever feel like our American faith IS a facade, just holding off the questions with easy answers…but never really answering them?
So many of my friends are in that position right now.
It would be quite disconcerting.
I believe God gives everyone a moment to see what is in one’s heart.
My favorite book will always be Exodus…it is the story of life…for everyone.
This is how I know the Cosmos doesn’t shrug its shoulders at me … because there are too many things in my life that point to the Hand of Providence. I know that God pursues me. I even know that he LOVES me … sometimes I even think he dotes on me.
I am a HUGE Why-asker. I can be fairly disillusioned with the American church and with Christianity as it is presented from the pulpit. I don’t always understand the Bible, and that FRUSTRATES me! I dislike certain doctrines and hard-line beliefs.
As much as I struggle with the organized part of religion, there is a DEEP faith inside of me that KNOWS I am cared for. Too many situations that cannot be ignored, that I believe were orchestrated by a loving hand
There are so many things I do not understand … but I cling to the love and providence I have experienced from God. That part of my faith no one can ever shake … no shrugging from the Cosmos, just an embrace.
I imagine that the big “why” questions feel largely the same for people of faith as they do for people without faith. Pain and suffering are topics that aren’t easily assuaged, with or without a faith-based narrative. And the answers that people often give from a faith-based narrative (e.g. “God creates and destines some eternal creatures for everlasting torment with no possibility of redemption because glory.” from some Reformed ways of thinking) are sometimes worse, or more monstrous, than doubt.
At least half the time, I’m not sure if my Christian faith is an expression of a firmly held conviction or a last-ditch hope that we don’t have to continue hurting each other into perpetuity. The other half of the time I’m asleep or not thinking about God at all.
Also, there are problems with your rehab metaphor. So are answers drugs, or are questions? And are you in rehab because you’re trying to find answers and they’re elusive, or to stop needing them?
Because if questions are the drug and you’re in rehab so that you can stop asking them, that’s formulaic shut-up-and-accept-what-you’re-told belief.
If answers are the drug, to not need them is the purview of the faithless, or of those can handle a little subjectivity and take a cosmic shoulder shrug.
After meeting you at Flood last weekend, I was inspired to get online and check you out. I was intrigued by what you said about your re-write of this book. Looking forward to getting my hands on it! Thanks for whetting my appetite even more!
I wanted to pick up the Million Miles book available on Sunday but had my hands full with three boys and didn’t make it to the table. So I went on a hunt for it and the process of looking for your book inspired the content of my first shared blog post. http://itsakoolife.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/bookstores-frosting-and-dirt/
Your writing is so genuine and authentic….I was encouraged to find that was exactly how I would describe the guy I met face to face.
When I read this, I thought immediatley of that scene in Left Behind (the first book) where the pastor looks dumbfounded because he had thought he believed and his fraud was illustrated when he realized he was left behind. Once in a while, I fear that and comb through my own soul looking for descrepencies. Is my love sincere for the One who hung on the cross?