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[HKHaugan]

Shakespeare’s famous line for Hamlet, ”To be or not to be, that is the question” gives us an opening to look at the way we arrive at how we see the world. Some say that life is a big question mark. Well, there’s nothing wrong with questioning. But for what purpose and in what context? There are three inevitabilities.

First, if you are out to gain some kind of emotional satisfaction in your ability to reason you will inevitably come to the realization that you always end up in yourself, not with answers, just frustrating speculation and guesswork.

Second, if you take the path of self-justification for your thinking and behavior you will inevitably isolate yourself from experiencing your built-in potential as a person.

Third, if you are looking to gain and be in control of every next moment you will inevitably cut yourself off relationally by seeking a safe haven with people who think the same way.

In other words if digging only within self is the context and self-fulfillment within is your purpose, questioning everything is a path that eventually ends up in an intellectual cul de sac. Every question becomes a circle that winds back into itself offering only a cycle of endless loss of self. What we find is that the mind is used to deny the mind, the heart finds its quandary in not feeling and the spirit is lost in self-denial. It is self-induced suffering. It is a self-isolating spiral into eternal aloneness, the second death. It is faith in not having faith, believing in not believing and trusting in not trusting.

Thus denial of an ultimate identifiable mind, heart and spirit outside the self is the real suffering. It is not until you have faith in someone outside yourself that the circle of self is broken. That is why to question only as an internal self-seeking process is ultimately facing the fact of aloneness and that unbelief is the real suffering. The very fact of our being a conscious self that reasons, feels and searches the invisible categories of our relational being pleads for a restored relationship with our initial Creator. We are made to individuate, be a conscious reasoning, trusting and faithful personal self among others with whom together we expand every facet of our being.

We were made to believe, to trust and to have faith. The only way to resolve the issue of questioning is to give it a context outside the self. Can the context we choose stand up to the rigors of challenge not only to the intellect but the heart and spirit as well? It is the context, the mindset, the worldview we use to filter experience that determines where we end up. To deny self in the context of the Creator is the ultimate sin, the closed door, the dark cave, the land of no return.

There are three immediate contexts we know, our physical, social and personal environment. Everyday presents challenges in each. Yet each can only find its resolution by thinking outside the box of self, thinking in the context of God as He has been revealed in Jesus. Jesus is the revelation of the perfect mind, heart and spirit lived by faith in His Father. Jesus accepted the Cross to rescue us from the ourselves, our abandonment of reason, feeling and spiritual lostness. In Him there is an endless discovery of our true selves as we were intended to be.

Faith is thinking, feeling believing outside the box of self, which Jesus did. His body was a temple in which His mind believed, His heart trusted and His Spirit obeyed the will of His Father in faith---even if it meant dying on the Cross. His Resurrection from the dead was His justification for faith in His Father, His Word and His Spirit.

“I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the Gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous shall live by faith” (Rom.1:16-17).”