Eternal Answers

There is some news that you never want to hear. Weighty news, news that doesn't have answers but leaves you questioning, "Why?" "Was there something that could have been done?" "Did we just not see it?"

*Sigh.

One of my brothers (a pastor) just found out that a high school student he knew decided life wasn't worth living anymore.
So the student ended it for himself.

In my personal opinion this is maybe the news that makes my heart feel the heaviest. I don't know how else to describe it. It just feels heavy.

One could drive themselves mad with trying to figure out the answers to the questions they have after something like this happens. Everyone wants to know "Why? How did it get this bad? Could we have prevented this? How did they feel so hopeless?"

Maybe this is a heavy reality because you don't ever get answers to those questions. Everything gets left unsaid.

This was on my mind as I was writing my Bible study for the girlies this week. I have decided to take them on a journey through the Old Testament because, as I told them, "I want you to love Jesus more than you love anything else. And Jesus says that the Old Testament is written about him."
You can find me in the camp of people who believe that if you don't know your Old Testament, you don't know God, so I start this little journey with great excitement and also....a great heaviness. There are a lot of really grimey, grodey stories in the Old Testament, and there are a lot of really heart-wrenching questions that get asked. But they have to get told and they have to be asked. Because we have to know how needed a ransom was, and we need to know the answers.

Not surprisingly I am starting right at the beginning: Genesis.

Besides the fact that it comes first, I think the main reason to start at the beginning of Genesis is because I find it interesting, for a number of reasons, but one in particular. Have you ever noticed that the first handful of chapters in Genesis answers the main questions all human beings ask?

Where did I come from?
Why am I here/Do I have a purpose?
Do I have value?
What went wrong?
Is there a standard to follow?
What happens when I die?

I find this interesting not because it tells the answers (for isn't that why we go to the Bible...because it has the only answers that actually work?), but that by telling the answers it is IMPLYING that we are asking the questions.

Right?

I mean, why else would a Writer begin his book with answers unless of course the questions had already been posed?

My first thought is "Why are there already questions?"
Amazingly enough, the Bible has that answer, too.
See, Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God has placed eternity into the hearts of mankind. Eternity. We know it, we feel it, and I will say that that is the reason why Genesis starts with answers, because only eternity would ask those questions.

Some of you might not think we experience our own eternity. I think you are wrong. I know I have quoted this same A Severe Mercy quote before, but I have to do it again, it's just so good and I think it makes this point brilliantly. "'Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures?’ Then, if we complain of time and take such joy in the seemingly timeless moment, what does that suggest? It suggests that we have not always been or will not always be purely temporal {mortal} creatures. It suggests that we were created for eternity. Not only are we harried by time, we seem unable, despite a thousand generations, even to get used to it. We are always amazed at it—how fast it goes, how slowly it goes how much of it is gone. Where, we cry, has the time gone? We aren’t adapted to it, not at home in it. If that is so, it may appear as a proof, or at least a powerful suggestion, that eternity exists and is our home."

See, eternity is in our hearts, and that's why we ask those eternal questions. Which, for the record, those ARE eternal questions; because how you answer them is what affects your eternity.

As I was going through Genesis with the girlies, showing them the answers to these questions, I was overwhelmed by how hopeless someone who is suicidal must feel. To literally think that the best thing they could do would be to "end it all." That that is the only way for a relief from the pain.
How does one get to that point, I kept saying over and over again to my self.

When finally it hit me: People who are hopeless have answered eternal questions with temporal answers. They have taken lies as truth. And it can't not alter their view of the world, of themself.

To take it a step further can I not even say that people's issues, the world's problems, etc. exist because people have answered those questions wrongly?
For example, look at just one question: Where did I come from?
What if you answer that by saying, "You are the product of a completely random process in a long string of random processes that have been happening, completely without conscious thoughts, for billions of years."

Or what about answering the "Why am I here?" question with, "Well there was an explosion a really long time ago that got the ball rolling. But now that you ARE here you really should follow your heart--so fulfill whatever purpose is in your heart."

I will not beat this issue with a dead horse; you know what I mean.
Really, then, the question becomes "How is everyone who believes this not totally hopeless?"

On a side note, the irony is just adorable that those people who do not believe in God, who do not believe that He created you, loved you, died for you, etc.---well, they have still answered the questions. Which means they ASKED those questions. ETERNAL questions, mind you. Where do they think the idea even came from?
You ask any atheist on the planet "Where did I come from?" and they will give you an answer.
It's not a good answer, but it's all they've got. Because they had to have an answer to their questions. Which goes to prove this whole "Eternity in your heart" thing all the more true. If human beings just "invented" God as an opium to relieve the pain of society's problems, nobody ever would have asked the question, because Nobody would have been there to prompt the question. Our minds wouldn't go there, our hearts wouldn't wonder.

But they do.

So very strongly.
Strong enough to make all people without excuse (Romans 1). Because we all have asked.

Maybe you are not suicidal. I pray not. (If you are, message me--there IS hope!) But what about all of those other issues you are dealing with, those small areas of hopelessness? Are they caused by you answering eternal questions with temporal answers?

Are you believing that maybe there is no purpose for you?
Do you believe that you are an accident?
Does death scare you?

Are lies your reality?

Wolfies, ask the questions. But know that your eternal heart's questions will only be satisfied by eternal answers.