Loving the Questions

Do you have questions about God? About the Bible? Do you sometimes struggle with concepts such as sin and hell? Do you wonder at times how you’re supposed to live as a Christian? Do you wish you could sit down with Jesus for an hour one evening and ask all the questions you have?

You’re not alone. Jacob wrestled all night with a man (an angel? God himself?) and afterward the man said to Jacob, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” Jacob physically wrestled with the man, but it’s a great image for the way we sometimes struggle mentally and emotionally with God.

The whole book of Job is about Job asking why bad things happened to him. Job did have a sit down with God, and God’s answer? “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the world?” In other words, there are some things we just won’t know because we’re not God.

Paul said, “For we know only in part…now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.”

If we’re not going to know everything fully here on earth, what’s the point of asking? Well, the point is the asking. The struggle, the questioning, the seeking is the point. Rainer Maria Rilke said in his Letters to a Young Poet:

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves...do not seek the answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them and the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

In January, I’m going to preach a sermon series on the Questions of the Faith, questions about sin and hell and salvation. I do it with fear and trembling, first of all because people often expect pastors to have all the answers, and I don’t. I’ve been waiting for years to preach a sermon on heaven and hell, because I’m waiting until I have it all figured out. I don’t yet. So I’m not going to give you the answers, we’re going to live the questions together.

And the second reason I do this with fear and trembling is because many people think they have to agree with their pastor about everything. And you won’t. I can guarantee it. You might think that because I’ve studied theology and the Bible for three years in seminary, I should have all the answers. But if you read many of the Biblical commentaries, you’ll realize that very educated and wise people often reach different conclusions.

So I invite you to join me on the journey of asking our difficult faith questions, and allowing the Holy Spirit to lead us all. What are your biggest questions of faith?