Questioning

I’ve been reading essays by Iris Murdoch entitled, Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature. I criticized Murdoch’s philosophy in my last book (Many Rooms, Many Windows, available at Amazon.com). But this wider reading has given me an appreciation of her principled affirmation of foundational morality. 

Murdoch doesn’t believe in God. But she believes in a transcendent Goodness. She’s a modified Platonist. I found myself feeling very peaceful after reading several essays. I have spent my life searching for Certainty. Of course there is no absolute Certainty in this life. But it is slowly dawning on me that my very restlessness is a sign of a transcendent Rest (the Great Sabbath in the sky). 

Everyone lives by faith. Atheists live by faith in reason or science or some other value. Everyone lives by faith. We choose our faith. All over the world people have faith in some transcendent, eternal Reality.  Different religions give different names for this Reality. But in the end it is the same Thing. 

Humanity’s search for meaning and Certainty is itself a manifestation of a purpose in life. We have evolved to be a seeking, searching, questioning species. If there is a hunger, there must be food. An appetite implies that there is something to feed that appetite. The fact that the power behind evolution has created a species with self-consciousness--a species that asks questions about the Ultimate--points in the direction of an Ultimate behind of and ahead of the evolutionary process. Humans have a built in compass that points toward some mysterious North. That magnetic field which seems to draw us to Itself, I believe to be God.

Freud would say a belief in God is just a wish with no fulfillment. Others would say that belief in God is an illusion we choose to live with. But it seems to me that trust in a transcendent Reality is a reasonable and plausible decision that corresponds to the human experience in general. I am a seeking person. I am a questioning person. I believe that being a questioning person is a sign that there is an Answer. 

We are made as keys to fit the Lock. As Augustine said centuries ago, “O God, my heart is restless until it finds its rest in You.” Therefore, my endless search of Certainty is itself an expression of faith, and a sign that there is a Certainty somewhere. In our Christian Tradition we call that Certainty “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

My search for the Holy Grail will never end. The restlessness will be with me all my life. But the very restlessness itself is a pointer to that Transcendent Answer. Jesus is the Symbol of Certainty introducing itself to us. But he went away, which means that there is no certainty on this earth; life is ambiguous. But our hearts are restless until that time when we leave this earth and transcend the ambiguity. We call this ‘heaven.’ 

The Bible uses poetry and myth to describe heaven. That’s the best we can do. Whatever it is, it is the life of unambiguous Love and Meaning. The Question has an Answer. I can’t prove this to anyone. There is no proof. Everyone has faith in something.

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