Knowing Why [10'TU]

So I set the thing called "focus" and begin my little habit of writing at somewhat random for 10 minutes. One could say this has no point and one might be right. Why talk, why write, why think? Why ask why?

My beloved Bible College Dean, the late Rev. Dr. Edward Palm, once told me: "Don't get enmeshed in the why questions. If you do you'll wind up old and crotchety and unhappy." Something about that was right and Dr. Palm knew how to avoid the pit of asking too much "why?" I watched him age some and his joy became more evident and sweet.

I wonder why that was?

It is true, I think, we can ask why too much. And the answers seldom fully satisfy. Or at least they are elusive. They keep us running, and maybe that's why we like them. Asking why is a perpetual incitement to keep going, to know there is an answer around the bend. Or maybe a train on the other side of that light in the tunnel.

We're not sure we care as long as we find the answer. But it might kill us. That's a dour proposition.

I think maybe the ultimate why question is unknowable and leaves us with the only thing we can know, which is faith. Philosophers have this fancy word epistemology -- the science of knowing. This is curious for the very word "science" is about knowing.

But knowing is oversold. It promises more than it will ever deliver, and that is the modernist experiment -- and failure -- in a nutshell.

I'm in for faith over knowing. And someday, I believe, we will know why and we won't care. For our faith will have become sight and all the why's will dissolve into something more real than we ever thought possible.