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Because I Said So

I never won an argument with my mother that I recall. At least, not while I was still in my teens or before. Looking back through the hazy window of time, my best guess is that the reason for this losing streak lies, not in the power of Mom’s logic and case-building, but simply in her power alone. She was mom, and by virtue of being mom she was the de facto winner of all our verbal conflicts.

Most of our debates began with me asking the universal childhood question. No, not, when are we going to get there?—the other one. The one that begins with why—which is then followed by either can’t I or do I have to. She didn’t resort to the argument-ender right away, of course. Where’s the sport in that? No, she would play me like a particularly stubborn fish struggling at the end of her line, reeling me in, then playing me back out; giving me a false sense of hope that this time—this time!—I was going to win. She would parry each of my debating thrusts with her own counter-argument, sometimes advancing her own position in a surprise offensive. Still, I might have occasionally won were it not for her native power, her ability to utter four (sometimes six) magic words that unfailingly ended the “discussion.”

Because I said so (Sometimes followed by, that’s why!) was mom’s nuclear option. I hated it whenever she resorted to it, even though I knew it was coming at some point. Eventually. Inevitably. You’d think I’d learn my lesson, but I really never did. I cannot count count how many arguments over the years were ended, with me on the losing end, by that simple statement. Implicit in the power of those words was the authority behind them. Sometimes she was explicit about it. I’m your mother, David. That authority was the source of the power in the Because I said so.

It only makes sense, I suppose. By asking mom to provide a reason for, to justify, her edicts, I was essentially asking her who she thought she was, wasn’t I? I was saying, in essence, that she needed to validate her position. Sometimes she would humor me, sometimes not, but most of the time the discussion eventually got around to her asserting her authority as mother. This is who I am, and you will yield because I said so.

It wasn’t until much later, when I was an adult with children of my own, that I recognized how much my mother’s statement of authority resembled God’s own self-revelation to Moses when Moses asks God what he should say whenever the enslaved Hebrews ask for the name of the God that sent him to deliver them. The reason for their request was simple. They wanted to assess the authority and power of Moses’s God to determine if he was worth following. So when Moses said, essentially, Who are you? Why should these people believe you?, God responds with the debate-ender:

I AM THAT I AM.

That statement of God’s can also (and some say should also) be read as:

I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE.

Or even:

I WILL CREATE WHAT I WILL CREATE.

That last translation is particularly intriguing in light of God’s promise to Abraham to make (create) of his descendants a great nation. Either way, all of these statements, these names for God, invoke a sense of ultimate inherent power. I am he who gives no justification for my actions, they seem to say. I am self-defined and self-contained. I am my own answer. I am the end of the discussion. The entire exodus from Egypt and journey across the desert was in a sense a training ground for God to teach his people the truth of that simple concept and for them to absorb the implications. To be sure, they were slow learners, constantly asking why, constantly challenging, constantly seeking to follow their own wisdom.

Not all that different from us today, is it? We want reasons and rationalities. We demand explanations and outlines. We develop theories and theologies, systems and sacraments, we study to know and become discouraged when we begin to realize how little we can ever truly know. And all the while God is still God, still the I AM, still BEING WHAT HE WILL BE and CREATING WHAT HE WILL CREATE. Like new lives, maybe, where only death had existed before. New hope in place of despair. Futures to replace pasts. And no good asking why he chose us to do this for. No point searching for a reason, because He is His own reason. Abraham was chosen because, well, because . . . GOD. I am sought out and redeemed because . . . GOD. We have a home being prepared for us, a future we could not claim for ourselves, a love we cannot fathom, a place at God’s side, because . . . GOD said so.

And that’s good enough for me.



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