SoulCravings: The Answer is the Question (or the other way around)
THERE IS PROOF OF GOD IN ALL THIS, BUT WE'VE BEEN looking in the wrong place. Before you can find God in the answers, you have to find him in the questions.
Maybe the answers come from us, so we come up with a million of them. But the questions... there's something mysterious about the questions.
We all ask them;
we all have them;
and no matter where we come from
or what time in history we have lived,
the questions are always the same.
As important as the answers might be,
what's even more revealing is that we even have
questions: ?????????????????????????????????????????????????
Why do we need to know?
What drives us to search for answers?
Where does the "ask" come from?
Every one of us is on a search for meaning.
We are all on a quest (ion).
The arrow that points the way looks not like this: -> but like
this: ?
All of us, no matter what conclusions we've come to, are driven by the same thing- WE HAVE TO FIND THE ANSWERS!
Everythin we experience, everything we learn, every bit of information we process, is being integrated by our brains, and we will not have peace of mind until we create some kind of cohesion.
Whatever your view of the Bible may be, whether you believe it is divinely inspired or the product of human effort, you would have to at least acknowledge that it, like all other religious texts, is a part of the grand story of humanity searching for meaning.
Every world religion, every philosophy, every belief system- from anthropology to astrology to sociology to psychology to mythology to science itself- is trying to propose a cohesive view of reality. They're all trying to make sense of life. We're all tyring to figure out who we are, why we're here, what this whole thing is about.
If you're sophisticated, you can see the flaws and fallacies of so many different belief systems. You might even look down with condescension at those who believe what you would consider simplistic answers to the complex problems in the world. We once were convinced that the world was flat; that if we danced, the rain would come; that the stars determined our fate in life.
We have outgrown so many fairy tales that we once believed were reality. Maybe it's an inherent flaw in the human species, but we are all predisposed to believe. We'll believe in just about anything. If they catch us young enough , we'll believe without consideration-
Santa Claus, cystals, tooth fairy, spirits, Easter bunny, demons, Ghosts, angels, vampires, Buddha, bogeymen, Allah, karma, Krishna, reincarnation, Jehovah, feng shui, Jesus
The list is endless.
While we may be able to systematically eliminate everything we believe that later we discover isn't real, we can't escape the very thing that's right in front of us. Every one of us, regardless of race or language or education or generation, regardless of all the variables possible to make us different, is still inclined to believe in something.
While we may disagree on what we believe in and we may argue violently about what is true, what we can't escape is that we are all on the same quest and our soul craving is to find something we can believe in.
Soul Cravings, A Exploration of the Human Spirit, Meaning, Entry 7
by Erwin Mcmanus
