Stones Cry Out

In other words, my adjuration to you to ask questions is really a simple way of stating a more complex idea, which is that you should live an examined life. An examined life is one in which you don the habit of questioning what your values are and whether the things you do are serving your values. An examined life is necessary to lead a good life well lived. And that, a good life well lived, is the point, in my estimation, of living at all.

You will want to start with the question of whether you believe in God, and if so, which conception of God. Since you have grown up in our house, you have had ample (I hope!) exposure to the Christian revelation of God. I also hope that by this time you have committed your life to Christ. If you have, I should let you know that you will likely think about that, reconsider it, struggle with it, and wrestle with it for the rest of your life. Do not lose heart! This struggle makes you a stronger Christian. The more you examine your faith, the more you probe the truth of the Christian gospel and your own belief in that gospel, the stronger your faith will become. A person with a weak belief foundation fears wrestling with God; a person whose faith is strong need not fear such encounter. More about this perhaps later, as we are thinking about questions at the moment.

The questions do not end with your faith decision—the questions really only begin with faith. The next few questions you have to ask yourself, and keep asking yourself, are variants of the following: “What is my conception of the good life?” “What is my conception of living that good life well?” “What values form the core of such good life?” “What behaviors tend to lead toward such good life?” “What behaviors tend to lead away from such good life?”

These are exceptionally important questions. If you do believe in the Christian faith, then you will have some framework for answering, at least partially, at least some of these questions. The Bible, however, does not provide an exact blueprint for your life. It provides a few specifics and some general guideposts—it puts fences around the boundaries—but it does not otherwise direct the path.

Accordingly, you will want to start, if you have not already, asking yourself the above set of questions. You are eighteen; that is the time to start.

These questions, by the way, are not reducible to “what job will I have,” “whom will I marry,” “where will I live,” or “how much money will I make”. All of those questions follow the previous questions about a good life well lived, values and behaviors. Indeed, to the extent you can begin to map out a conception of what is a good life well lived, and what values and behaviors follow from that, the lesser questions that begin this paragraph really sort themselves out rather nicely (and at least one of them becomes irrelevant in any event).

If you begin to ask yourself (and continue to ask yourself, this process by its nature does not end) these questions, you will be in a much better position than many of your fellow Americans. Many Americans, full-grown adult Americans, do not bother to ask themselves any of these questions. It just never occurs to them. One does not need to wonder, then, why we have the number of neuroses, anxieties, bouts of depression, etc. in this country that we reportedly do. Asking and answering, however experimentally and temporarily, these questions in a lifelong process won’t always save you from experiencing such feelings, but will at least better equip you to deal with them.

Once these bigger questions are asked and answered, though, you get to go on to a new series of questions—at least if you are taking the previous questions seriously. Those types of questions will be addressed in my next entry.

Love,
Dad