WHY WE HAVE TO KNOW ABOUT MALAYSIA 370

Why does it matter?

Why must we find the wreckage?  Why the desperate search for the "ping"?  Why the insatiable passion for knowing what happened and where they are?

Who cares?  Why should we care?  Why do we care?

MORE THAN PREVENTION

Some might argue that we must know in order to prevent something like this from happening again.  "If for no other reason, we may be able to change the factors (be they mechanically physical or psychologically personal) that caused the flight to divert from its course and plunge into obscurity."

Really?  Survey human history (though the comprehensiveness of such a survey is virtually impossible) and ask yourself, does history suggest that we human beings can actually prevent such so-called tragic events?   When will the next Fort Hood-type shooting occur?  The next stabbing rampage?  Tomorrow's Fed-Ex-truck-bus-accident?  Do we actually believe we can prevent future tragedy?

Surely, it is good to try to avoid future tragedies, as much as we can.  But let's be frank about the overall prospects of success.  As long as humanity roams the planet, unwanted loss and sorrow will occur via human hands.  One philosopher well noted that "depravity is history's verifiable Biblical doctrine."

But even if we were able to discover all the causes of difficult events, and prevent some, prevention is surely not the main reason for the hunt for Flight 370.

MORE THAN INSTINCT

Others might argue that our humanity has evolved to the stage that it has become humanly instinctual to want to know "why" and "how" when those we relationally love are unexpectedly gone and lost.  To be sure, we don't know why this instinct has arisen in the unguided, billions-of-years-upward-rise from inorganic matter to organic matter to simple life forms to complex life forms (even writing this makes little sense at all…there is no evidence to suggest that this kind of rise actually happened or happens.  Sheer blind faith by those who are anti-intelligent design).

Still, some want to attribute this to instinct which has acquired a sense of bitter loss and causal curiosity.    So we do it because we are driven to, but we have no good reason for doing so.  "They're gone!  Get over it!  Who cares?  Five, ten, 50 years from now, it will be nothing but a long-buried news story in the annals of aviation history."

Atheists should reason this way, but they are not courageous enough to do so.  They know they and their framework will be seen for what their logic demands.  A system which requires that the meaningless machine grinds on without the parts of the machine really knowing anything of a "why."

No, neither future prevention nor not-understood instinct is why we search.

ETERNITY IS THE REASON
HONOR IS THE DESIRE
RESURRECTION IS THE HOPE

"God has made everything beautiful in its time.  Also, He has put eternity into man's heart, yes so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end" (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

Eternity in the heart of humanity, humanity made in the image of God.  The truth for why we search for those we love is because there is an eternal sense within the heart of man that longs for relationships to last forever.  A sense that they should; a sense that they could; a sense that they can.

We want to know where those of the human race--people who were and are loved by particular families and friends--are.  We want to continue to love them, to honor them, and to hope by virtue of the sense God has instilled in us that we can see them again, and they can see us again.

This is why, of course, the life, death, and resurrection of a history-changing man named Jesus is not just important, but essential to one's frame of thinking about life, death, and life again.  Without the hope of resurrection, people are overwhelmed by loss of those loved.  The end of those loved is unthinkable and unacceptable.  There must be more.  There ought to be a resolution, a better finish.

It is because we are made for eternity and relationships that last beyond the present limited of this crippled creation…that we must find #370.  Without God, without His Christ and the resurrection, we are just in a meaningless search that ultimately means nothing.   Our hearts tell us differently because God put an eternal "ping" inside.