The Asking Of Questions

 Another gorgeous, warm morning here and I'm in my cathedral of trees.

There is so much swirling in my thoughts these days.  People tell me to write, and yet the task seems daunting with so much to be said and processed.  I get overwhelmed.  I thought maybe writing this blog would help me sort things out, addressing the subjects in small chunks, trying out ideas in post-size portions.

We'll see.

I may be in a winter season, but I also am in a season of questions.  This much I know.  

I have a lot of questions and I'm old enough now to know they don't necessarily have answers.  But it's not actually answers I want.  I want simply to ask the questions.  I want to find the others who are asking the same questions and I want to discuss the questions, knowing we don't have answers, but exploring the questions and where they take us.

Society--as open-minded as it purports to be--doesn't really like questions, especially ones without clear answers.  People like to shut down the questions and they like to label the question-askers as annoying pot-stirrers.

In many Christian circles, too, questions are highly frowned upon.  This increasingly bothers me deeply.  It is small-minded, ignorant, and controlling.  We believe one thing about everything and we don't question it, and whatever the pastor or the denomination (their real almighty gods) says is true about the thing.

I am embracing this season of questions and I am throwing off all the hindrances to asking them.  People try to shut down questions as if it comes from a position of authority, but it's really just out of a place of fear:  they fear being wrong, they fear being embarrassed, they fear being less than, they fear being struck by God by a lightning bolt if they make the slightest misstep.

I refuse to operate out of that place of fear anymore, either mine or anyone else's.  I'm asking my questions.  Damnit.

Again, not because I want answers.  I've been around long enough to now know that there aren't many answers.  Most people are making guesses, even if they may be educated ones.  I don't need answers.  I need freedom to ask questions, even the ugly ones.  And if I'm honest, I'd also love it if other people would admit they don't know either...but I can't control other people.

A well-loved and well-meaning Christian woman who has a big following (both online and through published books) and who I have long appreciated has been posting in the last few days about suffering.  I rarely have problems with what she writes.  She has taught me much over the years about life by faith.  But her recent assertions have rubbed me wrong.

She essentially said not to ask why in suffering.  And it irked me.  I wanted to say, to scream, don't tell people what they can ask.  We can ask why if we want to.  David did. Job did.  What's so wrong about asking?  I'm not going to call her out publicly (ha! on a blog no one yet knows about!) any more than this; I will just be satisfied it was a good moment for me to realize that I can't tell people what to ask.  They can ask whatever they want.  I think questions take us on a journey; like the David Wilcox song says, they lead us "out of the question and into the mystery."  And I think it's a place we can't go if we're so scared hiding behind creeds and sermons and spiritual intimidation that we don't let ourselves question.

Also, there are as many questions in the Bible as there are assurances...but we always like to highlight the assurances over the questions.  They're both equally in there; one is not more holy than the other.

I am finishing up the book God In The Dark by Luci Shaw.  I have been slowly journeying through it in my slow mornings for a couple months now.  It's not a book to rush through, but also my brain is grief-addled and it's hard to read much these days. 

I have loved this book.  I don't know Luci Shaw well, but she's been a holy figure in my mind, especially due to the Wheaton (the new Jerusalem--heh) connections.  

And she just goes there, with the honest questions, over and over.  She tells her story how it happened and she doesn't hold back and it's so refreshing.  I am delighting in particular over this one passage from today's reading.  We're nearing the end of the book and it feels like she's sort of "coming around" as it were, faith-wise, like things are reviving in her heart (because we want every story to wrap up nicely).

But then this new chapter starts with what feels like an outburst almost and I JUST LOVE IT.  It's so honest and she just says it all, for me, for all of us, all the frustrations and all the ugly things about Christian subculture that we hold in--and this is 30 years ago, and it's all still entirely, frustratingly relevant.

Here is the glorious passage: 

"If doubt is a sin, I am a great sinner. I am cursed with questions, damned with doubts.

I wonder whether I have any right, in this state, to teach in a Christian college, minister in church, or write about 'adjusting to bereavement' for Christian magazines.  Except that my writing has the simple virtue of honesty.  I don't want to be a double-dealer, and I am sick to death of the layer of platitudes and petty formulas of evangelicalism.  What if the whole subculture of Christianity rises out of an artificial construct? Must I remain faithful to it just because the alternatives are too grim? I am repelled by anarchy, chaos, immorality, amorality, yet much of what seems to be bred in me by pietism is guilt, anxiety, and a nagging spiritual nausea."*

YES, THIS ALL OF THIS.  Thank you, Luci, for saying it all...you paved the way for people like me to ask questions without fearing we're cursed.

And then a lovely turn, she then reports on a meeting with her pastor--and how fortunate she is that she has such a pastor!  For not many would respond in this holy way:

"His response to me: Questioning, probing, is a part of your person. It is your gift to the church. Accept that this is who you are, what you are and stay close within the community of faith."

Imagine being a gift rather than a gadfly!  

My husband (I chose well when I married!) said a similar thing to me this morning as I wrestled with whether to bother writing at all: Be true to who you are.  Press on through the criticism.

So even in posting this, I embrace the challenge, to write what I'm truly thinking, feeling, living, and pushing on through all the voices of discouragement.

 

*Luci Shaw, God In The Dark, Part VII, chapter four, page 252