Is there such a thing?

My wife and I have been on this spiritual and philosophical journey over the last month and it has really changed the way I look at the world. There is nothing, I think, more fascinating than truth. There more I search for it, the more I am realizing that there might not be an answer, at least not in the absolute sense. Let me explain...

The first thing that began to happen as we started this journey was a great degree of discomfort. This was due to the simple fact that I had begun to doubt what I had held in my heart to be the absolute truth for so long. I worried about how this doubt would change us and if the God that we believed in all these years was saddened to see us questioning. I even worried a little about what friends in the church would think. As I continued to question and search I found more and more that this questioning and doubting was a good thing. What better way to find absolute truth than to start by putting my own beliefs on trial. I have since come across several fascinating thoughts from rabbis, preachers, mathematicians, philosophers, scientists and artists, supporting the idea that doubt is a good thing. However, there was one condition that continued to pop up in words of these great minds. They all believed doubting was a good thing, so long as we never cease our search for truth. C.S. Lewis used the analogy of the hall with many rooms. The hall being the place where people searched and doubted until they were able to select the room which they believed held the truth. He even said those who have already found their room should be kind to those still in the hall. The key point to his argument however, was that it was not ok to just stay in the hall. It is imperative to always continue to search for the room which held the truth.

This line of thinking and research has led me to the conclusion that while uncomfortable, doubt is essential to finding truth.

That was the easy part. My next question was, what happens when you find your room? Do you just go in and learn all you can from everyone who is already there and dive deeper and deeper into this truth, never to hear from or ask about the other rooms again and never to speak to those in the hall other than to try to convince them to come to your room? That seems a little idiotic...

Why would we not want to continue to learn not only about our truth but about the truths that others believe in? To continue with C.S. Lewis's analogy, would it not be a good idea to occasionally visit the other rooms and learn about those truths as well? If the truth we chose is the absolute truth, learning about the others should only strengthen our faith in that truth. If we are wrong, wouldn't we want to know that and learn about what might be right? More important than visiting the other rooms, I think it is extremely valuable to spend time back in the hall as well. I think the best way to continue to learn and search for meaning and truth in life is to spend time with those who themselves are still searching. Their thoughts are much more objective than those in the rooms and they ask the questions that those in the rooms won't because they are less susceptible to the discomfort of doubt.

I struggled with this for weeks trying to understand how do I KNOW? Will I ever KNOW? Does anyone really KNOW? I found my answer Thursday night in the strangest of ways. I was watching Sports Center, which I almost never find time to watch anymore, and they were doing one of their artsy pieces talking about how the Tampa Bay Rays were so dang good this year. At the beginning of the piece they flashed a quote from Voltaire which hit me like a 2x4 to the cranium. "Doubt is uncomfortable,..." (OK I already knew that) "Certainty is ridiculous." Funny how when you really focus on something for weeks at a time trying to find an answer, the universe just tosses it into your daily life in a place where you least expected it. Talk about the law of attraction in action.

RIDICULOUS!! It is!! This is not to say that someone who has found their truth/room is wrong or is an idiot for believing it, it just means that NO ONE can be certain and to claim to be certain is RIDICULOUS! It is OK to believe something with every bone in your body and to pour your heart into it, but you have to acknowledge that it might not be ABSOLUTE truth. If we can acknowledge that simple fact we will never stop learning. And, we will only grow deeper in what we have come to believe is OUR truth.

To bring this full circle... While uncomfortable, doubt is essential to finding and strengthening OUR truth. If we are to truly live, we should never stop searching for it, however, in the same breath, we should never be certain of it.

Will we find ABSOLUTE truth? I think not, in fact I wonder, is there such a thing?