Answers

I need answers.

I'm the kind of person who just needs to figure everything out - why I got this question wrong, why this person said this to me, how can I make that situation better.

It's a blessing and a curse. My scientific mind demands an explanation for anything unknown, yet those close to me have often cautioned me about being too inflexible and needing to learn to let things go.

Do we need to know the answers to everything? I recently reread one of my favorite childhood books, C. S. Lewis' The Horse and His Boy, and there is one particularly beautiful chapter (chapter 11) in which the novel's protagonist Shasta (the "boy") finally encounters the lion Aslan (Lewis' archetype for Christ):

"I was the Lion." And as Shasta gaped with open mouth and said nothing, the Voice continued. "I was the Lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the Lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the Lion who gave the Horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the Lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you."

"Then it was you who wounded Aravis?"

"It was I."

"But what for?"

 "Child," said the Voice, "I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own."

"Who are you?" asked Shasta.

"Myself," said the Voice, very deep and low so that the earth shook: and again "Myself", loud and clear and gay: and then the third time "Myself", whispered so softly you could hardly hear it, and yet it seemed to come from all round you as if the leaves rustled with it.

In this encounter, Shasta asks the Lion why He performed a certain action, and who He is, and Aslan responds to both questions very ambiguosly. But it is His first response that really gets me. CS Lewis really makes a good point here about our naturally inquisitive nature as humans and how sometimes, we just can't expect to know all the answers to everything.

The late Very Reverend Fr Thomas Hopko, in his 55 Lenten Maxims, spoke about this in the maxim for day 37:

Once and for all, we have to stop trying to figure things out. God can illumine our mind and give us insight into the nature of things, but we can't figure it out. We don't have the equipment to do it, and we should stop trying.

It's interesting how Fr Tom says "we don't have the equipment" to figure things out. I think if God had allowed our small human brains to possess the knowledge and answers to all the questions in the world, we wouldn't be able to handle it. Perhaps it's a blessing that some things are left unknown to us.

But even more importantly than that, I believe there IS an answer to all our questions. It's just not the answer we expect or are taught to seek in our society. The answer is Christ. Not anything else. Just Christ. Trust in Him and in His Word, trust that we don't always understand why things happen, but that we pray for the faith to accept it. Seeking Him and Him alone is the sole and consummate answer to all our needs and desires, and when we seek Him, and find Him, we find that all our questions disappear.

When I read the aforementioned novel, I can't help but think how the boy Shasta, in his fictional world of Narnia, echoes a question asked over 2000 years ago by someone in our own world, when he was also blessed with a life-changing encounter. He asked a question many people are still searching for the answer to, and Christ did not respond, because He Himself was the whole and consummate answer.

Of course, as always, I will leave you with what is perhaps my very favorite CS Lewis quote, and I think in this short quote he sums up everything I have been trying to say in this post:

"I know now, Lord, why You utter no answer. You are Yourself the answer. Before Your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?"