Forget the five W’s. consider the how

Posted by admin on Nov 9, 2010 in Academy | 0 comments

“Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’” (Isaiah 30:21)

Asking the right questions can be the difference between living a life of apathy and finding your voice. Our society is plagued by the wrong questions.

From a young age we are taught that there are six questions every intelligent person, especially the reporter asks: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. Unfortunately, not many of us are intelligent enough to genuinely focus on all six. It is a primary fault of the human condition to be trapped in finitude and therefore be restricted in our concentrations. Most of human kind focuses on one or two of these questions; most prevalently on the question of “what.”

In fact if you take an introspective look at your cognitive life you will realize that the vast majority of your internal dialogue is focused primarily on the five Ws. For example, the most prominent questions of an affluent culture are, “What do I want? When and where will it happen? Who will I do it with? And why should I do this or that?” It is a regularly levelled critique of our culture, however, that we rarely ask “how.” I would argue that this is inherently unchristian.

In Kierkegaard’s treatise on love, titled Works of Love, he argues that obedience is intrinsically connected to action. Love is a verb. The question of “how” is the bridge between intellect and action.

The implications of this way of thinking are profound. Most young single people are consumed with finding the person whom they will marry. A healthier question, both psychologically and relationally, would be, how am I going to be the kind of husband/wife I am commanded to be?

The most important reason for asking yourself how instead of the five Ws, is because it is the only one of the six questions that you have any power over. You were born into a time period you did not choose, to a family populated by individuals who you may not have wanted. One day you might find yourself in some kind of tragedy and ask why such an event occurred. In the end these questions will drive you to a hopeless fatalism or worse, apathy.

To live a life that is acceptable to God you must simply act. You must firmly engage the how with everything that is in you. The virtue of free choice is embodied in the ability to react to the outward environment, not to control it. As a race, humanity needs to open their hands and admit that our concern needs to be with how things are done.