The God Squad /By Rabbi Marc Gellman
Does life have meaning?
Q: My father-in-law is in a nursing home, and after visiting him today I told my husband that life makes no sense to me. I’m skeptical when people talk about faith or life after death or reuniting with a loved one when we’re gone. What is real to me is seeing my father-inlaw wasting away, watching my own father suffer with Alzheimer’s, watching the people around me growing old and dying. These things make no sense to me.
What I can’t understand is why we’re here in the first place. I sometimes feel like we live our lives just to suffer and die and make our families suffer, too. Yes, there are good times in life, but there are so many bad times, struggles, emotions. My husband and I have both lived through cancer, but the roller- coaster ride our families had to endure was unfair and cruel.
We form loving bonds with our families and children, then lose them or they lose us. We bring children into the world to face so much hardship (wars, health issues, etc.). What’s the point? — D.
A: Meaning-of-life questions are not like questions about how to get to Cleveland or which Swiss cheese is the best. Your question refers to a mystery, while the Cleveland/ cheese questions pose problems. Problems have nothing to do with us, but relate instead to the world around us and outside of us. Mysteries are about us and about matters that can never be resolved with certainty or absolute clarity.
Problems go away when they’re solved. Mysteries remain with us our entire life. You know the difference between problems and mysteries already; I don’t need to teach you this. You know that questions like yours about the meaning of life, questions about why good people suffer, questions about whether there is justice for the wicked, questions about life after death, or why people fall in love, can’t be answered.
Your question about the meaning of life will never go away. The answer is a mystery and the response to that mystery is your choice. You must decide if life has meaning, and if you decide it does, then your life will change because of your choice.
If you decide that life has no meaning and that your father’s disease was just a symbol of the meaningless suffering that awaits us all until death ends everything, that choice will also change your life. The point is, neither choice can be refuted by the kind of certain evidence that solves problems and makes them go away.
Whatever choice you make, the mystery of life’s meaning will remain. Your choice is your life. I think this is what God meant when God set before us life and death and urged us to choose life that we might live. The choice to embrace meaning in the chaos of existence is the single most important reason why faith endures. God bless you in your choosing.
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Q: My son and future daughter-in- law (whose father is Jewish and mother is Christian) are planning a Catholic wedding Mass. The bride is taking Catholic education classes and intends to convert. Her father is uncomfortable at the thought of a Catholic wedding Mass rather than just a ceremony. He feels disrespected. We strongly prefer a Mass. Can you offer any insight to reconcile our differences? — M., Niagara Falls
A: The only preference that counts in a wedding is the preference of the bride and groom. I get hundreds of letters from parents who’ve forgotten this simple spiritual truth. This is the bride and groom’s wedding and the beginning of their family, and the most loving and respectful posture for parents is to do whatever they can to make the day loving and harmonious for the couple.
From your letter, it seems that your son and future daughter-inlaw have decided to have a Catholic Mass following the bride’s conversion to Catholicism. I applaud her decision to convert so the couple can raise their children in a home with a unified religious presence.
However, your letter offers an important lesson for the parents of all children who’ve converted to another faith: Sometimes you just have to let go of them and trust that their personal decision to walk up the mountain to God by another path will still get them to the same place. The father should not feel disrespected by the wedding Mass; he should feel like a sad but honored guest.
Send questions only to The God Squad, c/o Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY 14207, or e-mail them to godsquadquestion@aol.com .
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