|
People Want Answers
A "FIRESTARTER" Spiritual Essay by Rev.
Dr. Benjamin
Berinti, C.Pp.S.
People always
seem to want answers…or is it more accurate to say, in our times, people
demand answers? Every day on televised news hours, or on the
talking-head shows that purport to be “news” rather than entertainment, I catch
someone’s mouth angrily shouting into a microphone demanding that there
better be answers—answers from the President, answers from Donald
Rumsfeld, answers from the mayor, answers from the police, answers from the
school board. Even Catholics jump on the answer-train as parishioners demand
answers about various church-related scandals and concerns—answers from the
Pope, the local Bishop, the resident pastor.
Parents and
spouses are not immune either: Why did you do this? When are we going to finish
what we started? When am I going to be allowed to drive the car to school?
When are you going to pay more attention to our relationship? When are we going
to do something about your mother?
As the questions
rise up with intensity in our lives, and push us to the edges of our ability to
cope, the demand for answers from someone, somewhere, somehow become equally
intense.
For people of
faith, the demands for answers usually make their path all the way to God—as
they should. If God is “all in all,” then the most logical stopping
point for all our questing and questioning must be God. The pages of the
Judeo-Christian scriptures are loaded with examples of this unending pillorying
of God. Sometimes, God offers responses that seem to strengthen or soothe the
suppliants. Sometimes, one can almost imagine God heaving a thunderous sigh of
exasperation, revealing God’s utter frustration at the constancy of the demand
for answers. At other times, such as in the case of Job’s notorious struggles,
God simply concludes with the admonition (loosely translated): “I’m
God…you’re not! So don’t ask anymore!” Hardly soothing and satisfying!
It’s fairly easy
(and frequent) to be on the side of demanding the answers. I can readily recall
experiences in my own life when I never wearied of demanding answers, whether
from seminary formation directors, professors, or someone poor bloke behind the
counter of a Marshall’s store or the
manager of a Steak-n-Shake when I felt I wasn’t receiving the service and
attention I rightly deserved.
However, I have had (and continue to have)
more than my fair share of opportunities to be the target or whipping post for
the demand-for-answers from others. In my capacities as a parish pastor, an
interim school principal, as well as having served in administrative positions
at a college and university, there were many occasions for in-my-face (and lots
of behind-my-back) appeals for answers: Why is the Church doing this to me?
Who does that Bishop think he is? Why did you “give me” that grade? Why can’t
I blast my music when I feel like it? When are you going to wake up and fire
that principal or teacher? Why don’t you do something about those people
sticking bumble gum under the pews every week? The list goes on and on.
And I suspect,
many of you have been in similar situations, where you too have had to field a
barrage of answers-on-demand—and as is often the case, we fall short and cannot
find the answers. Or at least, much to the chagrin of our inquisitors, the
answers we do propose are woefully inadequate, too hard to swallow, or simply
not meaningful for their circumstances.
Out of love and
compassion, and a sense of leadership, it is difficult to come up on the
inadequate side of answers-on-demand. Standing before a hospital bed and
listening to the tearful pleas of a father who is about to lose his youngest
child to cancer, asking, “why is God doing this?” brings its own kind of
pain. Sharing a conversation with a female college student who feels called to
the ordained ministry and grills me on why the Church holds the position it does
about the ordination of women yields no palatable answers. Listening to the
heart-rending story of someone betrayed in their marital fidelity and his or her
piercing questions of “why did my spouse do this to me; what’s wrong with me;
now what am I going to do?” ushers in a heavy silence. Struggling with the
burning desire for answers-on-demand as we watch the horrible, debilitating and
demoralizing effects of being a nation at war seems to either frighten us into
silence (for fear we may be labeled “unpatriotic”) or turns us into
poster-children for the Defense Department.
Aside from these
large and heavy questions-seeking-satisfying-answers, there are the normal
demands for answers that arise in the course of our everyday obligations and
relationships. Many times, we even try to elude responsibility for the hard
work of figuring things out for ourselves, or making the painful decisions we
know we must make by forcing others to provide the answers that only we can
engender for ourselves. We want the therapist to figure out our marital
problems; we want our child’s teacher to answer her behavioral problems; we want
the police to instill morality in our neighbors; we want our priest to explain
the devastation of the sexual abuse of minors and the failure of church leaders
to deal openly and transparently with these crimes; we want answers from aging
parents as to why they didn’t love us adequately enough in our youth, now that
our life has become a struggle to love someone else fully and completely.
Quite often, we
shirk the hard work of figuring things out by placing inordinate pressure on
others to have the answers, in a sense, to “be the answer” for
us.” However, even Jesus did not succumb to his own disciples, or “the crowds”
when they squeezed him for definitive and soul-satisfying answers. Remember the
tracing-with-his-finger stall tactic? More often than not, at least in Matthew,
Mark and Luke, when posed with a particularly thorny question, Jesus takes an
indirect response by proposing a story! The parables, Jesus’ most frequently
used manner of teaching and illustration about life’s challenges and God’s
kingdom-vision of those challenges, end up provoking more questions than
answers. While John has Jesus definitively declare himself “The Way, the
Truth and the Life,” illuminating that “Way,” unearthing that “Truth,”
and enjoying that “Life” are not spelled out so easily and clearly on
every issue we face. Indeed, with the Lord’s promise to be with us always until
the end of the ages, we are not abandoned in our search for answers, but make no
mistake about it, Jesus leaves us with lots to figure out—in community, as well
as in our own hearts and minds.
Thomas Merton,
clearly the most celebrated Trappist monk and spiritual leader of the 20th
century, never considered himself a “master” of the spiritual life, although
countless people think of him in this way. Merton is best known for his
prolific production of personal journals—excruciatingly honest windows into the
depths of his soul. While much sought after as a spiritual “master,” Merton’s
journals always reveal his self-understanding to be that of a man of immense
poverty of spirit, rather than mastery of Spirit. While he offered his own
spiritual searches, struggles, and insights for others to brush up against, he
declared that he was “nobody’s answer”—not even his own (journal
entry June 17, 1966, as quoted in The Intimate Merton, Harper San
Francisco, 1999, p. xiii).
Whether as a
parent, spouse, priest, good friend, mentor, teacher, or guide, sometimes we
just come up against the hard truth that we cannot be someone else’s
answer—even when they want us to be, expect
us to be, demand that we be. Because of our love and compassion
for those who mean a great deal to us, this can be incredibly painful—and the
reverent silences, and tear-filled eyes, and loving embraces that we do offer in
lieu of “answers” may not seem adequate enough for someone in the midst
of struggle. But this is often all we can do.
Sometimes, we
just have to figure things out for ourselves…and live our way into the answers
we unfairly demand from others.
Index to
Spiritual Essays
Nativity Home Page
|
