Answers Don't Solve Anything

Answers don't solve anything.  An "answer" satisfies the conditions of some problem.  The "problem" of humanity is in the fact that we exist in a set of conditions for which we were not created--"answers," by virtual definition, are therefore insufficient for what we seek.

Providing answers that don't solve anything is intrinsic to the teachings of Jesus.  The Lord's Prayer is a distillation of non-answers.  The prayer begins with asking that our realm of existence be brought into conformance with God's idealized realm--something that is not going to happen.  Then we ask that our daily needs be met--something that is as like to happen to the most miserable of sinners (if such as the rain of heaven is key to our daily bread.)

Then we describe the answer we might provide--that we might forgive our fellows so as to merit our own forgiveness from God.  As a straightforward proposition, that is a laugh.  And finally we get to the one aspect of the prayer that bears upon our true predicament: the concluding fact that, by our imperfect nature, we have been cast into an alien realm--into a set of conditions for which (short of death) there is no answer.

Here at last we say, "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."  To ask to be spared temptation is not to ask for an answer to our predicament--it is to ask to be removed from that predicament.  It is to ask God to warp time and space, for the very time and space we occupy exists purely because we cannot resist temptation.  The concluding passage from the prayer is sometimes rendered such as, "do not put us to the test," and "deliver us from the evil one" (as though humanity might be translated back through time and space, and The Fall avoided) but still the upshot is the same: we are not asking for a rectified situation, but rather a new situation, and that request is made against fundamental aspects of what we believe we know about God.

Jesus knows what a preposterous thing we are asking, and in Matthew the very next words address exactly that matter:

And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves; For a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him?  And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are now with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee.  I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth. (11:5-8, KJV)

 And then Jesus says:

And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. (11:9)

There are no answers, because there are no grounds of commonality between our situation and God's, save those that God condescends to bestow from his sovereignty--a situation that itself illustrates the preposterous nature of any contention that answers have been provided for us.  The only answer we get is that the answer is to seek for answers.

Answers don't solve anything.