I Answer Myself

If you've been tracking with my blogs, you've probably read the ones about doubt. I ask a lot of questions in them... or, rather, they stem from a lot of questions I've been asking...

I came across an essay that I wrote two years ago for one of my classes (Philosophy and Critical Thought). I read through it this morning.
In it... I answer myself...

It's a doozy, but if you're in the mood to think, here it is. I was thinking about editing it first, but decided against it--you get the sophomore-year me, unaltered and so full of certainty:


Jenna Barney
PHIL 3010

A Natural Longing to Know

Can I really know anything? I believe I can. However, there are so many questions when it comes to truth and knowledge that we as humans continually find ourselves searching for answers that are tangible, that are "real" in some sense of the word. But perhaps Ultimate Truth is not so tangible, maybe not in the here and now anyway. And it is that longing, the search itself, which has helped me become convinced of at least one thing: Humans are searching to know the One that has given them the capacity to know. It is this search and longing that I will focus on, for I know it can be a beginning to knowledge.

If a person existed who didn't long for anything or anyone, I would disagree that he or she was perfectly normal. Innately, that is what we do as humans—we long, we yearn, we think, or, at the very least, we imagine about things not immediately present or available to us. We sense that there is something more than what we have currently because that is the way it has always worked out…isn't it? After all, as Cornelius Plantinga Jr. notes, "What's remarkable is that [our] longings are unfulfillable…things may come to us…but something in us keeps saying 'not this' or 'still beyond.'" I believe that God, indeed, has made it this way. In fact, here is an example in which we see God exercising His reason, as an assistant to His love and a help to our faith and knowledge of Him. God created us for Himself, and in His love, created us with a yearning for Him. In realizing that that yearning can never be completely satisfied by any thing or person on this earth, it helps our faith in concluding that God must be the satisfier of this deep ache. Not always do people conclude this, but it can be known.

There is a German word, Sehnsucht, which Platinga Jr. also speaks of, and it is used to strongly describe our seeking or searching as humans. C.S. Lewis wrote about what is happening when we experience it: "We are seeking union with something from which we are separated." Therefore, in that separation, we look to something or someone that will make us feel connected to them, and we still know that we are separated…from something. We long to feel whole because we are missing a part, and we ache to feel full because we are never truly satisfied. Yet this is not a bad thing, for it keeps us in anticipation of what God has to offer, whether we realize it or not. And those things here on earth, which will pass away, are not bad either. God has actually blessed us with tastes of Himself, to be found in the beauty of a nostalgic green field or a healthy and love-filled relationship. He has shown us His absolutes in natural laws and revelations. Even as He has created man in His Image, so has He placed in man the communal and relational nature of His own Triune Self. For example, when we long for a union with another that may be what we acquire (and certainly are happy to). However, what comes through that union is what we are really looking for. We are deeply searching for the perfect union that lies behind it—that lies in the meaning of union, in the essence of union, in the union with God.

Knowing that we could not be satisfied until the "not this" and the "still beyond" becomes the "this" and "here" in Heaven, God does provide avenues through which His beauty and glory may be seen for now. Hope is what comes of this—a hope for the day when what our yearnings are pointing us toward will actually be completely realized for our souls. We are nostalgia-embracing creatures, to be sure, but we are that in order to keep the hope alive that perhaps it is possible to "climb back into" what our hearts deeply feel has been lost. Someday I believe we will. It is God's beauty behind those things and people that makes us long for them (maybe again). It is the beauty of their original design and purpose that we so long to see restored. At times, we look in the wrong places, but not necessarily for the wrong reasons.

...If a person existed that didn't long for anything or anyone, I would disagree that he or she was perfectly normal...

I would also doubt that they were telling the truth. For, there is a taste of God's beauty even in this phenomenon of human longing and the "sense of divinity" that our Creator has gifted us with. Paul provides a profound description of how God helps us yearn for His beauty when he writes, "But God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of man except the man's spirit within him? We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us." –1 Corinthians 2:10-11a, 12