Why Deal with the "Big" Questions?

In the video I posted a link to yesterday, I was intrigued by one of the questions asked by a student during the Q&A time following the professors' presentations. 

Paraphrased, the question basically boiled down to: why should we as students deal with these big questions now?   Can't we just wait until we are settled down, working, married, raising children, etc.?

I actually was a bit disturbed by the profs' answer which basically boiled down to: you don't know when you are going to die.  Better get this stuff handled now.

While essentially their statement is true--we do not know how much time we indeed have on this earth, I personally would handle the question in a much different manner.  For the driving motive to then think on such matters revolves around fear.  Get this thinking done, or you might be gone tomorrow!  I'm not one who likes to use fear as the proper motivation.

To begin with, I would have gone after a major assumption made by the young woman--that she would eventually get "settled" into a job and family and suddenly find time to think about such matters.  This is a major, major assumption--one that I believe is a fallacy.  I do not know too many people who find much time once they begin careers and have children. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case.  Once a person graduates from college and begins working and then starts a family, time shrinks.  Work demands anywhere from 40-70 hours from a person per week.  Children suck down much of the rest of that time.  The desire to get away for any sort of down time means traveling on weekend getaways.  Of course, as children grow, then comes school, homework, extra-curricular activities, weekend sports, etc.  And after the kids move out, then comes time to volunteer at the things one is passionate about.  Then comes retirement, and if the indications I get from most retired folks, they are actually more busy after they retire than when they were working!  Time has a way of slipping away from us.

So, given that you may never find yourself "settled down", when is it time to think about the deep questions of life: why am I here?   What is my purpose?  Why do good?  What do I do when I cannot find answers?  What is the meaning of all of this?  What am I willing to give up to be successful?

Is being busy just a way of avoiding such questions?

I have heard at least one person say they had no desire to examine these questions.  This person was quite content to live an unexamined life.  But I don't sense this to be the case for many others.  There seems to be a general hunger for purpose, meaning, and authenticity at least in the U.S.  And from what I have read and seen, people are having a horrid time discovering such things.

And I wonder if it's because they are too busy?  I wonder if it's because there is tremendous pressure put on us to be moving, working, playing, shopping, engaged, connected, online, social networking, and what have you?  I wonder if we have lost our ability to contemplate and think, lured by a false sense of identity found through cyberspace and technology?

I do not believe one finds meaning, purpose, and authenticity in the cyber-world.  Nor do I believe it is found in staying busy.  Or work.  Or flying around from activity to activity.  Or in having fun and partying.  I believe it is found in allowing life's big questions to drive one to the ultimate source of reality--and I believe that ultimate source is the creator God revealed in the person of Jesus Christ.

Perhaps one reason people fear those big questions is that eventually they are forced to deal with Jesus, and He's unsettling.  He makes you confront your shortcomings, but He also gives you strength, purpose, meaning, and authenticity.  If you want to wait until you have time to finally discover such things, then be my guest; however, if you want those things now and the fulfillment they bring now, don't wait.  Take time to deal with the big questions. 

Unplugging

Last week, I went on vacation.  As I departed for my parents' home in Odem, TX, I posted the following to my Facebook status: Unplugging from FB for a week. Vacation time. For those who read my blog, it is set to automatically update the next few days automatically at 10 a.m.

I then proceeded to unplug.  I didn't check my Facebook account until this morning.  But I asked myself, "Why stop there?"  So, I vowed to myself to refuse to check any internet news websites for the entire week.  No Drudge.  No Fox News.  No CNN.  No MSNBC.  Nothing.  I would read the Corpus Christi Caller Times to get any news--and one simply cannot claim the CC Caller to be anything like a world class newspaper.

For the first few days, it was quite difficult to refrain from touching the Facebook App button on my phone.  Similarly for my Kindle Fire.  I avoided my mom and dad's computer, so connecting to the world wide web in that fashion was no problem.  But like a moth drawn to the flame, every time I saw it, the impulse was there--strong.

But as the week continued, the impulse grew less and less.  In fact, as the week drew to a close, I had a sense of dread when it came to returning to the land of cyberspace.  Not because I didn't like keeping up with friends and family, but because I would be sucked back into an addiction: the addiction of information.

Let me put it this way: in the course of a day before my vacation, I was used to reading hundreds of Facebook statuses per day, at least two or three dozen news stories, a hundred to two hundred headlines, and five to ten blogs a day.  That's a ton of information!!!  Almost too much.

And this is probably the lower end for some who spend much more time in the internet world.  Imagine if you added tweets and other social media formats!  It's a bit mind boggling to think about the mind numbing effect of so much information.  And honestly, that's about what I discovered such information to be--mind numbing.

What I mean to say is that this week, I discovered that when I imbibe all this information, it evokes all sorts of emotion: anger, sadness, happiness, elation, worry, fear, etc.  That emotion is like a rush of sorts.  It takes me from one feeling to another over and over and over again.  I came to see that I depended upon that emotional roller coaster.

And I didn't want to get back on.  And still don't.

Which is a bit problematic in a way.

For I still have more than a few college and seminary professors' words ringing in my ears--their paraphrasing of the great thinker and theologian Karl Barth:  The preacher should approach the world with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.

I get this all too well.

The theologian and pastor must know what is going on in the world around him or her.  He or she must be engaged with the issues of the day, but quite honestly, in this day and age, many "issues" aren't really "issues."  Many headlines make mountains out of mole hills.  Remember that tummy sickness that grabbed headlines a week or so ago?  Where hundreds were getting sick because of eating certain fruits and vegetables?  Hundreds of people.  Quite frightening, right?  

Well, not really.  If you calculate the odds of actually getting sick and compare them to the pure randomness of getting sick by food poisoning, then you would shrug your shoulders and say, "What's really the issue here?"

But we generally don't have time to unplug and think through things in such a fashion.  The 24/7 news cycle draws us from one crisis to another--from one story to another--from one emotion to another--without any time for reflection or thinking.

I used to check the Drudge Report 4 or 5 times a day because it is constantly updating.  Same with Fox News, CNN and MSNBC.  No more.  I used to jump on Facebook that many times at least in a day as well.  No more.  No more emotional roller coaster.  No more anxiety of needing to know what is going on the moment it happens.  I found something precious this past week.

Freedom.

Relaxation.

Time to think and reflect.

In this day and age, it is almost impossible to be fully unplugged from the world wide web of information and data, but this is one person who will be severely limiting it.