Lately, I have been wondering whether or not I am good question asker. I am afraid of being someone who lives life with their head stuck in the sand, hoping problems will pass by without my knowing. There are many days when I feel numb to the hard questions that life poses or at least would pose if I would allow it to. It is, to me, troubling to be naive or unthoughtful. I don't want to follow Jesus unthinkingly (I'm not sure that is a word, but you get the point).
The reason is that an unexamined life seems to me to be an indefensible life. How can I answer questions posed to me by others if I have not thought about them on my own? How can I give reasons for anything; my values, convictions, opinions, my hopes, dreams etc. unless I have taken time to really consider them myself? If I am challenged on a particular piece of my worldview, how am I to respond unless I have taken time to examine my life, or made an effort to be a thoughtful follower of Jesus?
In my opinion, the answer is, I can't. Unexamined lives rely on pithy statements or cliches to get them through life's questions. Even if the statements and cliches are in some sense true, the truth of it is probably lost in my casual casting of it.
The challenge for me is the fear of what I will find. If I really start to grapple with life's hard questions, or the difficulties and obstacles to faith; what will I find? For me, the temptation to live a numb, unexamined life is fueled by a combination of a desire to be comfortable (that is probably code for lazy, I'll get back to you on that) and this fear or apprehension of what I will find if I explore these questions deeply. I have seen far too many people abandon principle at the hand of intellectual exploration, and so part of me is probably afraid of where I will find myself if I start to ask good questions.
I don't, however, think this releases me from this challenge of examining my life (by that I, of course, mean everything about my life). If I really trust that God is the God of the universe then he is probably unfazed by my feeble attempts at understanding. I am probably not going to stump him. If he promises to walk with us through the valley of the shadow of death, then he will probably walk with me through the valley of my curiosity too.
I have also learned that I have to have a healthy distrust of myself in this process as well. What I mean is, my logic has often proved illogical and my feelings have often betrayed reality. So, in that, it is entirely possible that answers to my curiosities lie outside the bounds of my oft stunted logic and regularly manic emotions. At the same time, those are the best discerning tools I have on my own. I guess faith is, in some way, the intersection of where my reasoning faculties end and the Spirit's voice begins. Perhaps that is what it looks like to lean on something other than my own understanding alone.
I think God would honor and welcome the earnest pursuit of knowing Him like that, I just hope I have the courage to ask about it sometime...
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1 comment:
Yet sometimes, even when we ask good questions, we still don't get clear answers. So I suppose there's a difference between the person who doesn't examine and relies on cliche, and the person who does examine and refuses cliche. Yet neither has the answer. Very thought provoking, post, Gus.
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