Knowing Why

What seems to make sense so often does not. We fear the brash hyper-focused leader who will surely become a warmongering tyrant once given power while we embrace those who promise universal peace, justice, and health. Surely one promising the elimination of suffering will do more for mankind than one tunnel-visioned on specific matters wholly irrelevant to our preferences or what we may perceive as our best interests.

Yet, history continually reveals that it is most often those offering broad appeals to solve universal human miseries like suffering and evil who, when given power, become tyrannical in eradicating opposition. Meanwhile, history equally reveals determined hyper-focused leaders as more effective at addressing a broader range of issues by focusing and accomplishing them one-by-one.

Perhaps the art of human problem-solving is best displayed when addressing each immediate ailment as thoroughly as possible rather than in playing God and pretending to have the capacity to end all social injustices, wars, homelessness, poverty, and disease.

How does any leader find such singular focus within a world prizing and expecting unlimited multi-tasking while being judged simultaneously on multiple fronts? Perhaps it’s by establishing one’s why before establishing one’s what and how. In today’s interconnected world, every action can be measured in unlimited ways. Though, it is in understanding why something holds one’s focus and why an action is being taken that purposeful measurements can be extracted from the unlimited measurements being offered.

Ironically, it is the single-mindedness of one who understands and stays loyal to his why that leads many to assert their own critical reasoning as to why he does what he does. Therein lies the soft underbelly of the most effective problem solvers. They may not be the best communicators of their why nor the best responders to their critics. Or perhaps their communication is simply misunderstood or overrun by an impatient world. This leaves such a leader vulnerable and perhaps isolated as he pursues what he has deemed to be for the greater good.

The goals of creating an unblemished utopia, perfect human race, or universal peace have never benefitted mankind. For those goals lie beyond the limitations of a world rife with the reality of sin. Only an atonement for sin can create a pathway to a world without its repercussions. In that statement lies the sole purpose of an eventual judgement of all of humanity. For the promised home awaiting those who have trusted our Savior establishes peace and love without pain, tears, nor grieving through the absence of sin. That absence is achieved not through moral superiority, behavioral modifications, or commitment, but through the one who removed our sin by hanging on a cross. Only those who have trusted him will enter such a world.

Jesus knew his why, when even his closest followers did not.

“From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” Matthew 16:21-23

Yet, those who love their sin still proclaim his judgement an absurd injustice while rejecting his paid invitation to the very world they claim to want.