The Greatest Question of All

The Greatest Question of All

  In any conversation, I was taught, there are at least three parties: you, the other person, and the Lord.

  I recalled that lesson on a summer day in the small office when both the Reb and I wore shorts. My bare leg stuck with perspiration to the green leather chair, and I raised it with a small thwoch.
   The Reb was looking for a letter. He lifted a pad, then an envelope, then a newspaper. I knew he’d never find it. I think the mess in his office was almost a way of life now, a game that kept the world interesting. As I waited, I glanced at the file on the lower shelf, the one marked “God.” We still hadn’t opened it.
  “Ach,” he said, giving up.

  Can I ask you something?
   “Ask away, young scholar,” he crowed.
  How do you know God exists?
   He stopped. A smile crept across his face.
  “An excellent question.”
  He pressed his fingers into his chin.
  And the answer? I said.
  “First, make the case against Him.”

   Okay, I said, taking his challenge. How about this? We live in a world where your genes can be mapped, where your cells can be copied, where your face can be altered. Heck, with surgery, you can go from being a man to being a woman. We have science to tell us of the earth’s creation; rocket probes explore the universe. The sun is no longer a mystery. And the moon—which people used to worship? We brought some of it home in a pouch, right?
  “Go on,” he said.

   So why, in such a place, where the once-great mysteries have been solved, does anyone still believe in God or Jesus or Allah or a Supreme Being of any kind? Haven’t we outgrown it? Isn’t it like Pinocchio, the puppet? When he found he could move without his strings, did he still look the same way at Geppetto?
  The Reb tapped his fingers together.
  “That’s some speech.”
   You said make a case.
   “Ah.”

  He leaned in. “Now. My turn. Look, if you say that science will eventually prove there is no God, on that I must differ. No matter how small they take it back, to a tadpole, to an atom, there is always something they can’t explain, something that created it all at the end of the search.
  “And no matter how far they try to go the other way—to extend life, play around with the genes, clone this, clone that, live to one hundred and fifty—at some point, life is over. And then what happens? When life comes to an end?”
   I shrugged.
  “You see?”
   He leaned back. He smiled.
  “When you come to the end, that’s where God begins.”

Have a little faith - Mitch Albom