“My head is filled with questions and I can assure you no answer to any one of them has ever brought me one iota of happiness.” (Arthur Dent, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, 2005)
I have read more Christian books than any reasonable human should hope, expect, or dread to have read. I am well-studied in apologetics, Biblical theology, and theodicy. I am blessed with numbers of friends far beyond my own social graces who bear wisdom beyond their years. I possess an unusually keen gift for finding information on the web. I have no doubt that, were my real problem ever an actual question, I could find an answer to it.
No, my real problem is not a question, and there is no truism, lemma, proposition, evidence, observation, argument or proof that can address it. The answer I need is a new way – to think, to work, to labor, to suffer, to pray, to celebrate. The answer I need is a new truth – grounded and unassailable, not subject to my own tepid indecision and wandering interests. The answer I need is life afresh, because I can’t even hold death at bay as it eats away at everything in this world I thought I cherished.
I believe, emphatically, that Jesus Christ is “the way, the truth, and the life”. He is not merely the exemplar of a new kind of humanity (although he is truly that), not merely the correct response to a theological inquiry (although he is truly that), not merely the agent of my eventual bodily resurrection (although he is truly that). I believe, dogmatically, that Jesus Christ is the answer – not to my questions (foolish and ill-framed as they usually are), but to my actual need, the real problem and paradox of living a condemned man’s life amid this sin-decayed fraternity.
