What's the point of trying?
Habakkuk
I’ve noticed that I only wonder about the “big questions” when something isn’t right in my life. You know, the big questions like “What’s the meaning of life?”, “What’s my purpose?”, and “Does God exist?”. These questions are only interesting when something is wrong. When I’m happy, surrounded by community, and doing something I love, these questions don’t occur to me. In those moments, it seems like a waste of time to wonder about the meaning of life. When things are going well, I’m living out the answers to these questions in real time.
When I realized this, it made me feel sorry for all the famous philosophers in history. For them to spend so many hours contemplating these big questions, they must not have had many good moments in their life. If philosophers are anything like me, they pondered the big questions because they were dealing with existential feelings of boredom, failure, or misery.
It now occurs to me that the same can be said of religion. People don’t seek religion because they’re “just curious”. People seek religion because there are real problems in their life that only religion can solve. Since most humans in history were religious, we can assume that most of them had deep problems. Problems that had no practical solutions. When practical solutions fail, religion and philosophy step in.
Seems that one thing most humans have in common is that we all go through periods of anguish that lead us to ask deep questions. The types of anguish might be different, but the questions seem to be the same.
Habakkuk describes problems I don’t have. He is mainly worried about violent, oppressive men with swords who want to kill innocent people to gain power. He writes about wicked men who “swallow up those more righteous than themselves” (1:13). This is a common theme in the Bible. Often, the protagonist is worried about enemies with deadly weapons coming to kill him.
Luckily, I don’t have that problem, and neither do most of us in rich countries like mine (Canada). Most of us are worried about paying the bills, or our mental health, or societal problems like climate change and inequality. These are different from the problems Habakkuk talks about. But can they have the same solution? Is it possible for all the different flavours of human anguish to lead to the same place?
It seems like people with all sorts of problems have turned to Christianity. I suppose the solution is complex, but one thing stands out in Habakkuk. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Habakkuk believes God is good. How can he believe God is good when evil men are always killing good men? Wouldn’t a good God step in to stop that? Why would God let this continue for so long?
Habakkuk asks these questions in his writing. And God promises to step in.
Is that the solution to all our problems? When all practical solutions fail, can we trust God will swoop in and fix everything? I’m inclined not to believe that. But maybe that’s my problem. Maybe I haven’t exhausted all practical solutions to my problems yet.
Or maybe that’s the wrong way to look at it. Maybe believing God is good is just another way of saying “don’t give up”. If God is evil, giving up is the logical thing to do. There would truly be no reason to keep going, because the creator of the universe is against you. Nothing you can do will succeed against that power.
But if God is good, there’s always a reason to keep going. Even if all seems lost. If God is good, all is never truly lost. We always admire those characters in movies who keep fighting even when everyone knows there’s no hope. I think we admire them for a reason. Nothing good can come from giving up on life and goodness.
The hard part is having faith. Habakkuk seemed to have lots of it, even though he wondered why God waited so long to step in. Many people probably thought he was being unreasonable to hope in God. When we find ourselves in despair, and we ask the big questions, this choice is always lurking in the background. Is there a reason to hope, or is there none? Do the big questions have answers, or is there no point in even asking them?