I Need to Know Why

As many of you know, I end my blog and most of my correspondence with “In Spirit, Truth and Playfulness.” This week I’m going to be a little heavy on the Truth and Spirit part. Some stuff has come up for a number of people in my life and there’s a difficult subject I need to write about.

For some friends and colleagues recent events have revolved around the need to know “why.” There are a number of situations that can come into our life. We are left in a state of confusion, anger or disbelief. The same can be said of historical events that we find horrific. We often want to know why we ended up with the outcome we or someone else experienced.

We want to know what we did to make him/her have an affair and leave the relationship. We want to know why a friend committed suicide when we thought they had everything going for them. We want someone to tell us why a newborn baby who gave such joy to her parents simply ceased to exist. The list goes on.

Do we always need to know why? What is behind our need for explanation? Some may think if we know why something happened we can avoid the same result in the future. That may be true, but often any answer to a “why” question still leaves us with a feeling of emptiness, unsatisfied that our query was sufficiently addressed.

The leaders and teachers in the New Thought movement didn’t have much use for looking at the past and dissecting our failures. Although Ernest Holmes called his Science of Mind philosophy “spiritual psychology” I don’t recall our history indicated he held out endless years of psychotherapy as a solution to better living. Today the answer in any New Thought religion is still prayer first before anything else.

It is our ego that seems to need to know the answer to the “why” question. Our ego is big on being in charge by figuring things out and somewhat lacking on faith. When my friend and mentor Rev. Sandhi Scott was asked how we can understand what Hitler did she responded by saying that she didn’t want to understand Hitler. To understand him, she explained, would in some way mean that she could conceive of such horrors. It was not something she wanted to entertain.

In many faiths the “why” questions have a simple and direct answer:  It’s either the devil’s doing or God’s will. This belief creates an atmosphere of hatred for a non-existent entity and confusion about a God who acts in ways that make no sense. New Thought takes a completely different approach.

When we take responsibility for our lives we open up the door not only to affect change where necessary, but also release ourselves from the bondage of being a victim. Having said that, do bad things happen to good people? Yes. Everyday. But taking what is before us, making the best out of a horrible situation and loving each other through the process of healing sure sounds a lot better to me than crying that God doesn’t love us or has forsaken us to Satan.

If you need to make sense of the senseless get some help. Call a prayer practitioner or minister to help you over the hump. Seek professional help from a licensed and trained therapist if you feel so inclined. But above all, love yourself through the process and surround yourself with others who care for you.

In Spirit, Truth and Playfulness,

Terry