Why? Finding the Truth
Bill Koch
Moving through our human lives begs for answers to the hard questions. What does life mean? Why am I here? Why is there pain? What is this inner angst? Is there a God? Why did God create me? How can I find what’s real?

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book excerpt

More than 40 years ago, John Lennon described his understanding of God. The former Beatle sang in one of his first solo albums: “God is a concept by which we measure our pain.” Pain is a large part of human life. It moves through us in different ways, tearing at parts of us we never realized existed. Pain explains us. It shows us who and what we are and what we possess. We often spend our lives battling this sensation or this deep scratching, trying to mask its stirrings with anything we can find — psychological and philosophical systems and an expanding array of physical and chemical agents. These worldly artifacts soothe and blanket those deep aches; the pain seems to vanish, temporarily. But that vague sense of agitation always seems to return — after the worldly fix wears away. We move from weekend to weekend, from paycheck to paycheck, from score to score, from one artificial stimulus to another, looking for that quintessential relief or the ideal entertainment. The sensations come and go, but in that bleakness, on that bottom line is where we live. We keep busy, or we stay very still, to avoid this life’s incessant chattering. On life’s strange periphery, we hear society’s outcasts, the preachers, demanding we repent. It’s an odd word. It drips with religiosity. It’s easy to say, those two syllables. But it means so much more than most of us are able to imagine. Repent means to change your mind — and changing your mind isn’t as simple as changing what you think or feel about something. It isn’t like changing your socks or your shirt. Repenting is making a change, a deep, violent change at our core. To repent is to make an impossible change at an impossible level in an impossible way. We really can’t repent. It’s an old word, steeped in dusty tradition, smelling of bad religion. The English repent lacks the punch and fury of its original meaning. And repenting is always for someone else — before salvation can come. It is rarely something we truly want to contemplate. But to repent — truly and deeply — is the most powerful spiritual experience a believer can undergo. To repent — completely, utterly and fully — is to pass through a door into a wondrous, glorious world. Repentance brings blessings and challenges. Repenting brings purpose into our lives. It ignites the fire in our lives and starts that deep engine of power, a power that can transform our environment in wild and wonderful ways. Individual repentance can transform lives around us — in unimaginable and unseen ways. Repentance is the powder keg that changes us and changes our world. But it is the last topic we want to discuss; we become uncomfortable at the thought of applying it to our lives. Repentance requires a deliberate and painful surgery that cuts deep into our psyches. James wrote: “The Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword.” The Word cuts in the same way as the scalpel slices through living tissue to get to disease. The blade opens flesh to remove tumors, growths and cancers. The Bible is a collection of stories and statements delivered to us as divine directives, as holy edicts. In the proper context, the words cut deep into our lives, through pain and prejudice, through opinion and notions. The Bible is eternal language, transcribed into our small English, intended to communicate ultimate truth. By itself, the Bible is meaningless; it is a collection of smaller books, of historical accounts, of warnings. It contains adages, proverbs, principles and songs for life. In most cases, it matters little what English translation is used. The Bible’s language matters very little. How it is conveyed is also unimportant. The truth it carries, behind that great linguistic wall, is what matters. In the cynic’s mind, the Bible makes little sense: It is a simpleton’s collection of seemingly contradictory tales and barbaric history. It is awash in blood, violence, sectarianism and bigotry. But beneath the Biblical characters’ unsavory and feverish adventures lie profound and unsettling truths that have reshaped the planet’s societal and intellectual landscapes, at a level so deep and transcendent most Earthly inhabitants fail to recognize its depth and grandeur. It is the hand of God, moving gently across the human mind, resurrecting human spirits and bringing cruelty to justice behind the black robe of death’s bitter cloak.