Why?

We can ask the question, “Why?” about so many things. Everything, in fact, can have some type of why question attached or assigned to it. We can ask the question about everything from the mundane to the divine to the financial to the fantastic. The question can be asked of emotion and logic, of ridiculous to sober, of life and of death, and of anything we as human beings can dream up or imagine. In one sense, that is very exciting and can stimulate the mind to create new inventions, both for good and for bad purposes. In another sense, it can cause one to become overwhelmed and fall into a numbing depression from which they cannot emerge unscathed. I have a specific why question to ask today, though. Here goes.

Why, when relaying or thinking or listing reasons to justify a decision we’ve made, do we list our religious rationale last? Maybe it’s just me, but that which I hold fast to religiously usually ends up as almost an afterthought on lists of reasons why. Why is that? These are the principles that I strive to live by, yet they fall to the bottom of the list after things like state legal statutes, financial means, and rationalized exercises in creativity. Why doesn’t, “Violates covenants made with the Lord,” come up before, “Illegal under state law,” or “Price beyond that which I can afford,”? It struck me this morning as I made a list that my reasons listed last should have been listed first. I realized that I am very worldly, despite my attempts, however futile, to be Christ-centered and spiritually anchored. Again, we could make up a million why questions about that, but my thought is that, at least my spiritual and religious reasons showed up somewhere on that list. Even though they were the last ones listed, they were on the list, which I take to be a sign of hope that I can do better and I could be doing much worse. I’m not perfect, for sure, but I’m thinking in terms of my own values and beliefs, even if they are at the bottom of the list. At least they made the list! So, my point is that, while we could ask a lot of why questions, we might do better to be thankful for things as they come along. This is not to say that we should never ask those why questions, because that is how we progress in life, but we can also take the time to realize and appreciate that progress that has, sometimes without our knowledge, been made.