Why Was I Even Born?

When you’ve hit the brick wall, the question may arise. Why was I even born? But over time, new depth may come through. A new birth may evolve.

I want you to imagine that you have a bungee cord tied around your waist. You are flying through the air, and that bungee chord is loose and free. You are alive, fully alive. It is scary but good. Life couldn’t be much better than this.

Then all of a sudden, the bungee chord tightens. You have reached the limit of its extension, and it pulls you back. But this time, the bungee cord pulls you back completely the same length in the opposite direction. There is no gravity to slow you down. You are heading directly for a brick wall.

You smash into it with the same force you had when flying in all happiness.

You’re broken, destroyed, and you ask the same question millions of people have asked before you even existed.

Why was I even born? 

It’s the extremes that hurt the most. From the highs of happiness to the lows of misery.

You sit crumbled below the wall of a dead-end street and wonder what this life is all about.

Why was I even born?

What’s the purpose of all this?

Where’s the logic, the reason, the knowing?

Worst still are the friends and family who supposedly come to your aid and ask further ‘Why’ questions. You don’t know why, fully. You can’t even offer any explanations though they demand you do.

So they draw their own conclusions and begin to shoot the dying body.

Why do we shoot our wounded?

Because we don’t like their story. It makes us uncomfortable, and life is meant to have order, peace, and harmony. Not ditch-dwelling dehumanization like a man beaten up and left to die on the side of the road.

Why was I even born?

That’s the question on the heart of the biblical character Job.

“Why didn’t I die at birth,
    my first breath out of the womb my last?

Why were there arms to rock me,
    and breasts for me to drink from?

I could be resting in peace right now,
    asleep forever, feeling no pain,
In the company of kings and statesmen
    in their royal ruins,
Or with princes resplendent
    in their gold and silver tombs.

Why wasn’t I stillborn and buried
    with all the babies who never saw light,
Where the wicked no longer trouble anyone
    and bone-weary people get a long-deserved rest?
Prisoners sleep undisturbed,
    never again to wake up to the bark of the guards.

The small and the great are equals in that place,
    and slaves are free from their masters. Job 3:11-19

That’s the question that hits us when we have known the extremes of completeness yet now sit in a dark hole of brokenness.

And God is silent

To make things worse, we feel God is absent from our cry. We wonder if God exists at all.

This is pain.

It may not be physical pain, simply anesthetized by some medication, but this is soul pain. Emotional pain can drive you to the point of wanting to end your life.

Pain that we dull with addictions. What’s your ‘go-to’ pain relief?

Why was I even born?

Was I born for some cosmic chess match, and am I the pawn to be kicked around from square to square?

Who is in charge here? Is God truly in control? Is God good? If God is good, then what is God good for?

We limp from day to day, scratching crumbs of hope from wherever we can find them.

Job may wish he had not been born, but neither will he take his own life. Thus pain is his only option. Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart. How to Read the Bible Book by Book

A companion

There is someone else in this dark hole. You are not alone, and it’s not someone to offer you false comfort.

Another biblical character moans from a dark corner of the ditch.

Yet I curse the day I was born!
    May no one celebrate the day of my birth. 

I curse the messenger who told my father,
    “Good news—you have a son!” 

Let him be destroyed like the cities of old
    that the Lord overthrew without mercy.

Terrify him all day long with battle shouts,
     because he did not kill me at birth. 

Oh, that I had died in my mother’s womb,
    that her body had been my grave! 

Why was I ever born?
    My entire life has been filled
    with trouble, sorrow, and shame. Jeremiah 20:14-18

It’s a dark hole, and dark holes can swallow you up so much so that the brain thinks that’s all there is. You are lost in the completeness of black.

You’re not alone

‘I want to sit with you. I offer no wisdom other than my presence.’

I wonder if that is what Jeremiah would say to Job. I wonder if this is what Job would say to Jeremiah.

Please, no trite answers. Don’t quote scriptures. Don’t add misery on top of pain. Just be there and hold me.

Job and Jeremiah went through this dark place and emerged changed from the inside out.

It’s a dark place, but there is a pinhole to be taken through.

Jesus described this as a narrow path. A crushing path that takes you between huge boulders where you have to shed every attachment that you have had to what you think life is meant to be like.

It’s a calvary walk with a man who carried a cross for his crucifixion. I wonder if Jesus thought, ‘Why was I born?’

He knew perfect complete life, yet Jesus chose to be born to die to live.

I think the depth of the question of ‘why was I ever born’ was laid heavy on his soul in the garden of Gethsemane. In his dark hole, he asks his closest friends to sit with him.

Then Jesus went with them to a garden called Gethsemane and told his disciples, “Stay here while I go over there and pray.” Taking along Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he plunged into an agonizing sorrow. Then he said, “This sorrow is crushing my life out. Stay here and keep vigil with me.” 

Going a little ahead, he fell on his face, praying, “My Father, if there is any way, get me out of this. But please, not what I want. You, what do you want?”

When he came back to his disciples, he found them sound asleep. He said to Peter, “Can’t you stick it out with me a single hour? Stay alert; be in prayer so you don’t wander into temptation without even knowing you’re in danger.

There is a part of you that is eager, ready for anything in God. But there’s another part that’s as lazy as an old dog sleeping by the fire.” Matthew 26:36-46 The Message

In the dark hole, I want someone to keep watch, vigil, and offer their simple presence against abandonment darkness.

The compost heap

Every garden needs a compost heap.

It’s where the unwanted and unneeded bits and pieces of garden life rot down and are transformed. Straw, sticks, grass, egg shells, and leaves, all go in there and break down under natural processes. Worms and bacteria. Heat and moisture. All combine and work to turn hard into soft.

I have a compost bin in my soul. Questions make up the core of it. The big and the little ‘why’s.’

They all go in there and break down into their raw elements. Then I think God takes the matured compost and grows tomatoes and lettuce to feed the world.

Something good eventually comes out of the puzzlement of the why.

The book of Job is a 42-chapter compost heap. Smelly, strange, puzzling, full of worms, but ultimately good.

Quotes to consider

• What I’ve learned is that not-knowing and, often, not even needing to know are deeper ways of knowing and deeper forms of compassion. Richard Rohr
• When we think we are absolutely right, we stop seeking new information. To be right is to be certain, and to be certain stops us from being curious. Curiosity and wonder are at the heart of all learning. John Bradshaw
• Trouble is inevitable.
  Endurance is necessary.
  Our high call from God is to trust Him and to trust His heart, a heart filled with love.
  Nothing can happen to us or in us that He cannot work together for our good. Dr. Larry Crabb
• God, I know you’re good, but what are you good for? Larry Crabb – Finding God Conversation
• It is the unrivaled wonder of the gospel of Jesus Christ that no other God has wounds. Os Guinness.
• A full search into our soul causes life to begin, not end. And then it’s as if we’ve never lived before. Dark nights may not go away, but they hold the promise of a bright morning. This world’s sunsets become another world’s sunrises. And joy comes into sight. Larry Crabb Soultalk
• The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God. Rob Bell

Barry Pearman

Photo by Tomas Kirvėla on Unsplash

Share on Facebook

Post on X

Follow us

Save