Truth walks toward us on the paths of our questions… Wait awhile in the stillness, and do not rush to conclusion, no matter how uncomfortable the unknowing.

Notice that here the truth is actively moving toward us, not elusive or fleeing us, and using our own questions as a means of reaching us.  If this is true, then people who tell us not to ask questions may be hindering our way to God, who is Truth. (Of course, for the questions themselves to become a path for divine Truth, we must make sure they are real questions, and not defiant certainties disguised as questions.)

The image of truth walking toward us is faithful to what we know of our God, who actively pursues us – who seeks us, even when we least deserve to be found.

We can also be confident that in our unknowing, before the questions are answered, we are already in God the All-Knowing.  We can sit quietly even in our darkness and confusion, trusting that we remain in God.

Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
I took them up in my arms;
but they did not know that I healed them.
I led them with cords of human kindness,
with bands of love.

Hosea 11:3-4

“Peace,” she replies. “Or perhaps joy.”

After a moment she asks him, “What about your own word for life?”

“You wouldn’t want to hear it.”

No, she probably wouldn’t.  The word he is thinking of is “futility.”

Josh, you may remember, is the ex-Christian with whom I correspond from time to time. He admits that a certain amount of happiness is found in life, as well as a certain amount of pain and sorrow.  But at the end, he concludes, it all means nothing.

While he has lost the sense of any meaning to life, Josh has found purpose in his current crusade against Christianity. He has become what we might call a dysvangelist (or more etymologically correct, a “dysangelist”), one who proclaims, not Good News, but bad or disordered news. His co-religionists include the band of in-your-face “new atheists” whose books are hot sellers these days. Josh is less eloquent than they, but no less fervent.

Josh’s mission, however, appears to give him no joy. It is one thing to spend a Saturday afternoon in what we consider meaningless activity. It is quite another to live a life of futility. Something deep in us insists that life has meaning, and the refusal of this basic instinct has the effect of throwing our minds and hearts out of kilter – of untuning, so to speak, the strings of life.

Here are two quotations, one reflecting a psychological approach to meaning, and the other a uniquely Christian insight:

As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy … through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.
Once an individual’s search for a meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives him the capability to cope with suffering.

Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy

Every Eucharist is a celebration of our trust that in Christ meaning will triumph in ways that we cannot guess or anticipate. Vaclav Havel, playwright and previous President of the Czech Republic, defined it thus: ‘Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.’”

Timothy Radcliffe, OP, What Is the Point of Being a Christian? (New York: Burns and Oates, 2006), 17.

For the enemy has pursued me,
crushing my life to the ground,
making me sit in darkness like those long dead.

Therefore my spirit faints within me;
my heart within me is appalled.

Answer me quickly, O Lord;
my spirit fails.
Do not hide your face from me,
or I shall be like those who go down to the Pit.

Let me hear of your steadfast love in the morning,
for in you I put my trust.

Teach me the way I should go,
for to you I lift up my soul.

(Psalm 143:3-4, 7-8)