“Why”?

I hear that a lot now with an almost three-year-old at my side.

I remember hearing it a lot in college too. Agnosticism was popular among my peers, and it certainly seemed comfortable.

But as my chatty three-year-old has taught me, there are two ways to ask “Why”?
One is out of genuine curiosity, a pure desire to know that which is unknown.
The other is an insincere question and is used to avoid thought. My son will often ask “why”? to simply fill silence or to avoid answering a question himself.

Most of the “why?” I heard in college was the latter. With no real desire to know, but an actual aversion and avoidance of the truth that stands before us.

I will always ask the first “why”? That question that presents the very deepest desire of my heart to know and pursue the truth. Because, there has to be an answer to the cosmos, and it seems we are only fully human if we demand it.

There has to be purpose behind this world that is stunning despite (or maybe because of) its ashes.

There has to be a purpose for our consciousness and reason and desire for order and explanation.

Every religion and philosophy is mutually exclusive by their existence; even those that claim to be “all inclusive”, by nature exclude those that are not. They cannot all be right. And I cannot accept the apathy of agnosticism. The retort that says “I don’t know”, which really translates to, “I don’t care enough to find out”.

I am human, I can think and reason and feel, so I have to ask, “why”? with a real desire to know the answer. If I’m not asking and desiring the truth, I don’t think I’m really living.

And every time I ask. He answers.

And he answered with finality when he hung on a tree and bled freely for this world that he breathed to life and filled with purpose.

He whispered the secrets of the universe as he hung in agony in our stead, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

He answered with his life, his death, and his triumph over the grave.

And he’ll answer any who are human enough to ask.

philosophy is either eternal or it is not philosophy. The modern habit of saying, ‘this is my opinion, but I may be wrong,’ is entirely irrational. If I say that it may be wrong I say that it is not my opinion. The modern habit of saying, ‘every man has a different philosophy; this is my philosophy and it suits me’: the habit of saying this is mere weak-mindedness. A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon. 

The Book of Job, By G.K. Chesterton