The Really Important Questions

The Really Important Questions

For a life to be worth living, it means you must know what the important questions/issues/themes are, you must ask those questions, you must find satisfying (and real) answers, and you must orient your life according to what you have learned.

Sometimes we refer to these questions as "worldview" questions… or the "existential" questions of life.

Here are a few of those questions, not listed in order or importance.

• What is the nature of reality?
• Is there a God?
• What kind of God is this God?
• Who am I?
• Is there something wrong with me? (it seems as if there is)
• How do I know what is wrong, describe it, understand it?
• How does what is wrong be made right?
• Why am I here?
• (or) What is my purpose?
• Who do I know what is right, true and good?
• How do I make decisions to choose what is right, true and good?
• How should I live my life?
• Do I have obligations to others?
• If so, what does that obligation look like?
• What, exactly, are the deep longings I have within?
• Am I in this alone? Or will there be others along the way?
• How do I become a healthy human being?
• How do I experience authentic relationships with others?
• How do I become a healthy, whole person?

I'm sure you realize that these questions are all deeply interconnected. They are questions that take on deeper, better answers as the insights generated from one question flow over to another question.

I'm sure you realize that these questions need a life time (if not longer) to be answered. Life is to be the asking, the seeking and the finding of wisdom concerning these questions.

I'm sure you realize that these questions will not be easily answered and that you will actually have some wrong, bad, harmful answers along the way.

Over the course of the last 35 years, I have embraced a broadly defined evangelical worldview as the way I generally answer these questions. I have strong Reformational nuances that further define that worldview. I have postmodern influences that are added into the worldview mix.

And in the last two years, I have found Ignatius to be an invaluable guide and conversation partner who helps me take so many of these questions much further… both individually and as an integrated whole.

Which is why I am an evangelical on the Ignatian way of proceeding. It is not the only thing I am, but it is now an essential part of who I am.

I have already mentioned this book, but when it is available late fall of 2010, The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life by James Martin will be a valuable guide for so many of these worldview questions. (p.s. A friend told me he believes it is now scheduled for a March 2010 release.)

In the meantime, if you want a very good guide, one of the best, i recommend to you -Spiritual Freedom by John English.

Brian K. Rice
Leadership ConneXtions International
www.lci.typepad.com