To the “God Question”

A student walks into my office for a conference. We are going to narrow down topics today and come up with research questions. This student has a lot of energy and I’m eager to meet with him. He also has a lot of Big Ideas that often need a lot of pruning.

He’s kind of buzzy when he comes in and pulls up a chair and says he’s taking a philosophy class right now and it’s really got him thinking. They are going over so much he just never knew. He’s really like to write his paper on the God Question.

I took a good number of philosophy courses. I’ve read Kant and Kierkegaard and Sartre. I read Plato and Aristotle. I dabbled in Descartes (don’t we all dabble in Descartes?) and I’m reaching to remember the God Question.

Is this a question one poses to God? A question that, if asked just the right way would reveal the meaning of life? Or is this something that Job would ask if he thought of it. Why me, Lord? 

Maybe it’s more about the type of God or which God is the real God? Is the God Question founded on the notion that all religions basically pray to the same God?

Given the number of God questions, I have to admit I don’t know what he means.

“You’ve never heard of the God question? The question is this: Is there a God?”

Ohhh. THE God Question.

That, I say, is an excellent question.

Surely this is not the first time in this young man’s life that he has wondered about the existence of God. We all have doubts even if they don’t come from someone else.

We have all wondered, late at night, why, if we pray so hard, does it seem like the answer is no.

We have all had to stop ourselves from begging.

We beg anyway. 

We practice gratitude and begin to see more and more of our life as blessings. We change all our prayers into prayers of thanksgiving and appreciation. Gradually, we feel the shift.

Still, we wonder. I’m sure this student has wondered.

Maybe no one ever said it out loud. Maybe he’s never read whole books filled with doubting and struggling to believe. Maybe he’s never seen another person wrestle so honestly.

He’s running his fingers through his hair the way people do when they are thinking deeply. He will go back to his roommates and if they are the kind of roommate we hope for in college, they will stay up all night debating this or that premise. They will travel with him through this existential crisis. They will go out for cheap coffee served in small mugs. They will not have answered The God Question.

But they will have asked it.