The promise of an answer

(Religious content ahead.)

A little sad this evening, for reasons I'd rather not get into just now.

I know that some readers are going to disagree with me, but one of my bedrock personal beliefs is this: every life-changing event occurs for a reason. Sometimes the reasons are very easy to see, as when a particular choice leads inexorably to an associated consequence; more often, though, the reason for a particular event is obscure, even opaque to human experience. I think we would recognize at least some of these links if we were more aware of the myriad obscure events going on constantly all around us, but it's a blessing that we aren't -- having complete knowledge of such events, especially if we were unable to alter them, would drive us a little crazy. (Would you want to know, for instance, if Earth were in constant danger of colliding with meteoroids big enough to wipe out all life on the planet? Does it freak you out -- as it does Miss V -- that there are teeming masses of microscopic flora and fauna living on and in your body, even if you can't see or feel them and they don't cause you any grief? For that matter, if you could know right now with absolute certainty the moment and manner of your death, would you want to find out? Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.)

But there are times when our minds, designed so cleverly to discover, cogitate, order and solve, simply fail. We cannot see the reason behind a particular traumatic event, and we cry out for solutions. Why did Daddy leave? Why did she cheat on me when she promised to love me? Why did my sister get cancer? Why can't I just make these self-destructive feelings go away? Why is it that thousands of women terminate unwanted pregnancies every day, when I've tried for years to conceive just one child without success? Why can't he love me back? Why did she have to die? Why, why, why, why. Our lives are filled with such questions.

Because we cannot always see the reasons for things, it would be very easy to assume that there are no reasons for anything, that the world only functions due to the whims of blind chance and nothing more. But I don't believe that's true. If we really thought that, we would stop trying to make sense of reality and simply submit to fate. But it's not in our nature as human beings to stop questioning the nature of reality and our limited perceptions of it. If we were designed to ask questions and to figure things out, then I believe there must be answers to the questions we ask.

Religious faith, despite some rumors to the contrary, doesn't provide all the answers to life's questions. In some cases, the answers it does provide simply provoke additional questions, the biggie being one that's vexed mankind from the beginning: If God is real, and God is truly loving, why does He allow horrible things to happen? While there are several possible answers to this question, they are difficult to consider when one is in the midst of experiencing trauma and one simply wants the pain to go away.

But what faith does provide, more than ready answers in the here and now, is a promise -- that there will be answers when we are ready to understand them. In our scriptures there is an admonition from the Lord: "Behold, ye are little children and ye cannot bear all things now; ye must grow in grace and in the knowledge of the truth." That same Lord, when upon the earth, understood many more things than his fellow human beings -- but when the Spirit of God was withdrawn from him at his most acute hour of need, even he demonstrated that he did not understand the reasons for everything. His cry of "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" was a very human cry for an answer -- "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Yet even though he did not know the reason why, he continued to endure what he had to endure, because he believed in the purpose of his sacrifice and in the promise that he would eventually receive a full response to that question asked in despair.

I don't know why things happen the way they do. But I believe that everything happens for a reason, and I believe that when we have reached a stage of development where we are ready to understand it in all its complexity, and not before then, the full reason will be revealed. In the meantime, we have a duty to grow in grace and in the knowledge of the truth -- to use our twisty little brains to figure out as much as we can from our limited viewpoint, and to trust that grace will cover the rest.