Why?

At Lehigh, about forty years ago, there was a no doubt apocryphal story circulating about a philosophy professor at some university.

All semester, he hammered his students with very tough reading assignments and provoked them into defending any assertions they made in class.

The final was worth a heart-stopping 50% of the grade. After passing out the blue books for their answers, he wrote the test on the chalkboard.

"1. Why? (100 points)"

While most students wrote really worthy responses for which they received generous partial credit, only one student aced the test.

That student's answer?

"Because"

It was a neat story at the time but, in the forty or so years since I've dealt with many issues - as have all of us who are paying any sort of attention to life.

Why did a friend of mine, in apparently good health, pass out and drown in barely a foot of water on the canal trail?

Why do I (and others) have inexplicable issues - physical, mental, emotional - with which we've either been born or that developed from experiences so ancient that they are completely beyond recall and which can only be managed rather than healed?

Why does so much of suffering going on in the world, currently but really throughout all lives at all time in history, seem so senseless?

Even a Christian belief in providence doesn't make the question vanish, as the Book of Job attests.

The fact is, whereas "because" may not be a terribly satisfying answer to what philosophers call "limit questions," it IS a sufficient one for Christians, other religious folks, and the secular.