Testimony 6
Cravings for the starlight from which we're made. Read what man has to work with when he only has his mortal hands.
Testimony 6:
The problem is the problem of man. Man innately creates meaning; we cannot help it, we immediately seek out a reason for things. Even in childhood “why?” echoes through the splashing bathtub and foam letters, through the sand-eating and through the sticky handholding. The why must become because by adulthood. Must. Or May Swenson is gonna get it.
Does it mean something that we crave meaning? We don’t see the trees in existential crisis; we don’t hear our pets in depressed ennui. We, man, we, human, we, self-conscious being—our minds are ordered for causal connections. Our obsession with fantasy fiction speaks to our longing that all this can make sense; that there’s a bigger picture going on that will help us understand our role on earth. Physical causality is one thing, but spiritual causality—that’s what we long for. This longing, is it itself proof enough that God made us with a plan, for a purpose? What is the purpose of creation? Creation doesn’t seem to have a point, other than being really cool. Is beauty, fearsome and terrible, purpose enough? And what does that say of us? Are we here just to be beautiful? Not Kate Moss beautiful, but beautiful from the impossibly different perspective of a being that exists beyond our own comprehension.
We crave food because we need it; we crave purpose because we need it. Does the fact that we crave God make God real, make purpose real? Yet, even in conceding purpose, do we concede a personal interactive God? I cannot say. I want to say yes to a God for whom care is in his very nature and yet I don’t want him to be responsible for the horrors of this world, so wouldn’t it just be easier to say he can’t care; we’re too small?
All I can return to is Jesus. A real goodness and a real evil, and my purpose, presumed or ordered, is to promote goodness and eradicate evil (and even if it’s made up, who is really going to regret a life of this?). And the only way I know how to promote good and reject evil is to become fluent in goodness. And, no, not all goods are good. I must practice light, seek light, for I can only promote that which I can first identify. So, my purpose is to learn what is good that I may make more of it in this world.
And no, this isn’t a nice ending to the impossible of knowing nothing.