A Frog in the Well

Would you…

look under the rug?

I was talking with a friend recently over dinner about life and the hard questions we face in life. One of the interesting stories he pointed out from his experiences went back to his old high school days. In my friend’s Religion and Politics class, the instructor began to open class discussion by pointing to her rug that was placed on top of her desk-apparently this teacher was also a hippie/retro character so her having a rug on top of her table was acceptable to the students. The question she asked the class was, “If you could lift up the rug and find out the ultimate truth…would you?”

In the context of our conversation we had established this central question to the existence of God. As expected, most people in the class opted to take the challenge head on by lifting up the hypothetical rug, but is this decision really as easy as it sounds?

The craving to know TRUTH (ultimate truth) drives us. It’s what people might be tempted as a part of the uniqueness as to what constitutes or defines humans. No one wants to live a lie, and no one wants to live a meaningless life. 

On the other hand, would we really want to bear the responsibility for knowing the truth? If this is hard to imagine, perhaps an illustration would make this clearer. Take for instance you had to tell your best friend that their mother died in a car accident. You know the truth, and telling the best friend seems like the RIGHT thing to do, but is it really? There’s many things to consider, but often times the ugly truth is something people have to come to terms with.

Coming back to the rug example, what if the truth of the matter is that there were no God? How would you conduct your life? What if the answer under the rug were that the was a God? How would that change your life?

There has to be an answer to this question. It’s either a yes or no, and whichever way you answer should radically change the purpose and meaning of your life. I know it has for me at least. If this question doesn’t seem interesting or relevant to you, I’d like to challenge you and ask why it doesn’t matter? Or what is more important?

Will we as humans go forward and seek to find Truth no matter how ugly…or conversely how beautiful it may be?

veritas vos liberabit

—
“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair. “
C.S Lewis