If Christ is the Answer, what is the question?

Original Lila Mattison (cropped by me)

In Large orange letters the sentence "Christ is the Answer" has been proclaimed to travelers on New York's route 17 for decades. Best I can determine a man named George Dobbs Kirk Jr. put up these words into the side of a hill in 1959, a year before his oldest son died a troubling death of unknown circumstances. The Calvary Baptist Church of Gibson, NY now maintains the sentence.

So, what is the question? It could be this one, "Where did we come from?" Christ as part of the Godhead was there when the world was created. I'm not a Deist. I don't believe God set the world in motion and sat back to see how it would all come out. King David marvels that God knew him as he was being knit together in his mother's womb. If the question is "Where did we come from?" Christ is the answer according to Christian teaching.

We don't ask that question. Most of us start with the fact that we exist. Blame our parents for the features we don't like and move on with life. So, does Christ answer a question we do ask? Well, what sorts of questions do we ask? Am I raising my kids right? How will I make it through this month's bills? Can I deal with my mother going into a nursing home? Will my car keep running long enough to save for another one? What do we have to make supper?

Christ's teachings can give direction for some of those questions. "Am I raising my kids right?" Jesus said, "Do to others as you would want them to do to you?" Am I communicating that lifestyle to my kids? Not only do they hear me harping, um proclaiming, uh saying the words, but do they see me living them?

How will I make it through this month's bills? Christ taught us to pray, "Please give us this day our daily bread." If you use "bread" in the 1960's sense of money, then Christ may have an answer to the question of this month's bills.

As a matter of fact, I can find answers to many questions in Jesus' teaching. The topics he expounded on are timeless. His answers are true today, as well as over 2000 years ago. Some clever person will likely point out that the sentence on the hill doesn't say, "Christ's teachings are the Answer." The words stand, "Christ is the Answer." What does that mean?

In Philippians 1:21 Paul sums up his life, "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain." Now we are getting at it. Paul is writing this letter to the first church of Europe in the very important Roman Colony of Philippi. This colony city was established by Augustus Caesar after his victory that unified the empire under he and his allies. Paul and Silas had preached the good news there and been thrown in jail for casting a demon out of a slave girl. The demon had been making money for the slave girl's owners. That night Paul and Silas were singing at midnight when an earthquake leveled the jail. No one was hurt or escaped. Paul had the chance to tell about Christ to the jailer. He committed himself to Christ and was baptized, along with his whole family.

Paul is writing to them from Rome. He has been a prisoner there for a long, undetermined period. As a result, he has been able to share the truth of Christ with his captors and many have come to trust the Christ for forgiveness and new life. It is from this experience that Paul wrote 'For me to live is Christ.'

No matter where Paul was he sought a way to make Christ known, jail, prison, marketplace, Europe, Asia, Palestine, wherever. He was so caught up in Christ that Christ summed up his life. Dying would only take him through the tomb to Christ, so that was gain. I would submit that those who live at that level of commitment find Christ is the answer to their lives. Going to jail for Jesus, "Good let's see how I can live for Christ there." Some said Paul was crazy, that his great learning had driven him insane. Many believe what Paul taught and lived regarding Christ, hence the sentence on the hill so many centuries later.

Maybe that sign is so hard to understand, because we have never met a Paul or his Christ.