Jacob M. Held
A Simple Answer
. . . and finally now, you’ve come to the end,
So I’ll answer the questions with which we beganned.
Do you remember what we first asked?
The questions, the queries, with which we were tasked?[1]
We mentioned the good life and suffering, pain.
We pondered o’er Marx and consumerist gain.
There was mention of knowledge and truth and diversity,
And just to confuddle us all, postmodernity.
Ethics, respect, and our old German friend.
That book was a monster! Would it ever end?
No.
Not ’til we covered yet even more ground.
Political questions often confound.
So we asked about justice and business and property,
Mentioning Rawls and thus doing so properly.
Not lastly or leastly, we talked about trees,
The Lorax and nature and our role in these.
Finally, it ended with talk of aesthetics
(that’s jargon for “art,” but we are academics).
That was a great start, as we noted back then
But more could be said, so we picked up our pens.
We penned you this book that you currently hold,
More of the same, with new truths to behold.
Yet, through every bit, as we puzzled and pondered,
we failed to address what is so often wondered;
through all of our writing and quoting and rhymes
we never once asked about God, the divine!
Since Seuss never dealt with a god or religion,
We can’t use his stories to think or envision
How he would’ve dealt with a topic like that,
A topic that everyone needs to have at.
To end, then, it’s God to which we will turn;
Theological questions, we’re seeking to learn.
What is a god, and why do we care?
What do we get from a being up there?
Is he up there, or down underneath?
Is he a he, or a she, or a sneetch?
Regardless, it’s God, or some divine being,
That gives many people their purpose, their meaning.
It’s God and our many religious traditions
that give our lives focus, that define our missions.
That’s why it matters, and why we should care
About whether there are any gods anywhere.
We should want to know, we should wonder out loud
And hope that just maybe some answers are found.
When thinkers or doubters or others inquire
Into the nature of God and aspire
To answer the mysteries of here and beyond,
There are certain questions that always abound.
Of course there’s the question “Does God exist?”
If there isn’t a God, we could stop or desist.
But assuming there is, or at least the potential,
Then other, more weighty conundrums unravel.
The problem of evil, now that’s a brain twister!
Ask Job, who lost everything (all but the blisters).
Some wrongs people do and so earn their penance,
But other bad happens, a natural occurrence:
Like earthquakes and fires, and cancers and floods.
If God is the best that ever there was,
Wouldn’t God stop this so we didn’t suffer?
Wouldn’t God care for us like our mother?
But nobody yet has found a solution
No answers to wash away doubts, no ablution.
Perhaps it’s a mystery, or all for the best,
Perhaps we’re too stupid, or bad things are tests.
And the deeper we dig, the more questions we find;
If God has a plan, is my life really mine?
Is all of this set, can I choose, am I free?
When God planned the world, did that include me?
If I am not free but must do what I must,
Then how can He judge me as good, bad, or bust?
And should I decide to live life as I’m told,
What book should I read? There’s too many to hold!
Should I read the Qur’an, the Bible, the Vedas,
The Torah, the I Ching, the Bhagavad Gita?
Whose God is the right God? (So many to choose from.)
So many options; yet no answers come.
Or, rather, they come but are run through with doubt;
God is one thing we know nothing about.
How can we know about gods far and distant,
About gods ever absent with proof nonexistent?
The revealed word of God, revelation and faith,
Words that when spoken in mouths leave bad tastes.
We seek the truth, but we want it with proof,
and God isn’t like that, He’s kind of aloof.
Faith does heavy lifting in this situation,
Belief leads to knowledge some saint had once mentioned.[2]
That’s all well and good when it helps you live well,
But some gods call for war, inquisitions, and still
We go on believing and fighting and kill
In the name of our god or our church or our creed.
Such gods preach division and avarice and greed.
Skeptics will focus on flaws and the bad;
They’ll claim we’ve been duped, screaming, “You’ve all been had!”
By priests or authorities seeking control,
That we need to shun faith for what we can “know.”
Yet the problem we’re in is one of design;
We can’t know a god; we can’t see the divine.
But we still seek our place in the cosmos above,
We still seek security, meaning, and love.
God gave us purpose; God gave us a place,
Religion a home, church our safe space.
Where does that leave us when all’s said and done?
No answers, more “whys,” which is where we’d begun!
Some questions loom large and are almost unmindable,
And answers seem distant and almost unfindable.
What kind of a god could answer our questions?
What possible answer could solve our perplexions?
Questions are many, and answers are rare;
Oh, people will talk, but so much is hot air.
We bumble and mumble and blunder about,
In many ways vapid, each full of doubt.
Yet an answer’s quite clear, we know what to do:
Treat others as equals, as you’d want to treat you.
There’s no trick to this life, no secret to find;
The answer’s quite simple—to all quandaries: Be Kind!
Too often in asking a difficult question
We’re caught up in details, seeking perfection.
We might ask for science, some numbers to square,
The questions before us and up in the air.
But science can’t save us; it talks about stuff,
Not about values, and goodness, and love.
We squibble and squabble, use jargon galore,
Losing sight of the reason the argument’s for.
Sure, we want answers, solutions are grand,
But life’s about people, and so we demand
An answer that even the “smartest” can find.
The answer is simple, it’s simply: Be Kind!
We’re wrapping up now; we’ve been talking of deities,
How a god or a goddess gives life its security,
A goal and a purpose, a structure for being,
A reason to live for, a life full of meaning.
Why are we here, what ought I to do?
For what can I hope, and how about you?[3]
From Socrates onward, there’s many suggestions,
You’ve read them all, or at least skimmed the best ones,
And still here we sit, asking big questions,
As if these curt answers could give resolutions.
But the world’s too big and fantastically wide;
Our brains are too small, so it can’t fit inside.
We’re bound to forever be stuck in a muddle:
we’ll ask, they’ll respond, we’ll get further rebuttals.
You see . . .
regardless of answers, regardless of whys
what we have is each other, forever, our lives
together, community, life among others,
sisters and brothers, friends, fathers and mothers.
It just doesn’t matter who’s smarter or “right”
Who won what argument, who won what fight.
The simplest answer for all humankind
Regardless of question is simply: Be Kind!
So read Seuss or Seneca, Plato or Kant,
Nietzsche or Hegel, or maybe not.
Study philosophy, politics, law;
Learn science and history, knowledge galore.
Never stop learning, don’t shut off your mind,
But always remember, the point is:
Be Kind![4]
See Dr. Seuss and Philosophy: Oh, the Thinks You Can Think! ed. Jacob M. Held (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011).
This is a reference to Saint Anselm, who famously said, “I do not understand so that I may believe; but I believe so that I may understand,” a position described as “faith seeking understanding.” See Anselm of Canterbury, “Proslogion,” in The Major Works including Monologion, Proslogion, and Why God Became Man, eds. Brian Davies and G. R. Evans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 87.
This is a reference to Kant’s famous three questions: What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope? See his Critique of Pure Reason, The Canon of Pure Reason, Section 2 (A805/B833).
In the interest of transparency, I should mention that this rhyme was inspired after my last viewing of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, where at the end of the film the meaning of life is declared to be the following: “Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”