There are a lot of instances in life where honesty is (or should be) valued higher than feelings of offense or disagreement. It's a little late in the night for me to go into all of them, but I wanted to encourage one area. I've been taught by those who led me to Christ, and those who continue to guide me by the example of their own individual relationships with God, that it is okay to question Him. There are many times in life that merit honest questions. And I believe in the only God who is big enough to handle all of our questions, who doesn't get offended when we go to Him in all forms of emotion with our wonderings about Him. Other people might get offended by our questions (mostly because they aren't in a place where they can be honest enough about their own), but I don't think that if we are truly desiring an answer, if we are asking in humility instead of pride, that God/Jesus would turn us away for asking. We don't always get an answer, or the answers don't always come in the timing that we think we want or need, but that doesn't mean that we are wrong to ask.
I just started reading a book by Christopher J. H. Wright called "The God I Don't Understand," and in his introduction he does a really good job of showing the reader how they can find people questioning God in the Bible, the book that God has given us so that we might know Him. I thought I'd share the section in encouragement of those who do question, who have always wanted to question, but have been told it's not right or a myriad of other things that I don't believe are true.
"In Good Company
Then, as I went on thinking about the contours of my own lack of understanding in some of these areas, I found myself in reassuringly good company.
The Bible provides us with many examples of people who stood before God in confusing, grief, anxiety, or fear and addressed their questions to him. It would be well worth doing a comprehensive survey of all the questions we find in the Bible. Many are rhetorical, of course--merely a way of making a strong affirmation. But many of the questions in the Bible seem to arise out of a profound longing to understand the ways of God when he speaks or acts or when he declares his intention to do so, in ways that transcend our comprehension.
Abraham is bold enough to become the first person in the Bible to initiate a conversation with God by asking him questions, questions about the justice of his intentions regarding Sodom and Gomorrah. 'Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?' he asks (Genesis 18:25).
Sarah's question, locked in the reality of barrenness and muttered in bitter laughter, was addressed indirectly to God, even though ironically she did not know he was on the other side of the tent door, listening (Genesis 18:12).
Hagar may or may not have been talking to the God of the family that had just expelled her when she turned away in despair, 'I cannot watch the boy die' (Genesis 21:16), but it was that God who intervened to help her, as he had done before when Hagar became the first person in the Bible to give God a name--a remarkably perceptive and comforting one at that (Genesis 16:13).
Moses, more than once, questions God, sometimes about his intentions regarding the Israelites and sometimes about his own exclusions from the promised land--something that Moses seems never to have understood, nor have those who have reflected on that divine decision in all the centuries since (Deuteronomy 3:23-28).
Naomi, in the bitter grief of having buried her husband and two childless sons (a kind of triple widowhood), is a boiling conflict of emotions, as she trusts God and prays to him, yet accuses him of treating her like an enemy (Ruth 1:13b); she lays full responsibility for all the bitterness, emptiness, and affliction in her life on the Lord himself (Ruth 1:20-21).
David cannot fathom the generosity of God in relation to himself and his household and can only ask, 'Who am I?' (2 Samuel 7:18).
Elijah cannot understand how God could save life only later to destroy it, and he protests (successfully) against such inconsistency (1 Kings 17:30-21). Later he laments something similar in his own case (1 Kings 19:4, 10).
Job's whole book is a question hurled at God in the wake of his loss and suffering. God answers Job, but does he answer the question?
Jeremiah struggles to understand what God is saying through him when the words of other prophets and the external circumstances all point in the opposite direction. His anguish often takes the form of grieving and sometimes angry questions (Jeremiah 12:1-3, 15:15-18; 20:7-18).
Habakkuk cannot understand the sovereign justice of God in international affairs (Habakkuk 1:12-17). It does not stop him trusting God with teeth-gritting joy (Habakkuk 3:16-19).
The book of Psalms is full of anguished questions: 'Why?' 'When?' 'How long?' It would probably be possible to tackle most of the questions in this book through careful and creative exegesis of the book of Psalms alone. Here, above all, is the book of faith, trust, love, joy, praise, and hope--coexisting with a pervasive and painful deficit of understanding.
This is why it is a word from the Psalms that formed the most profound question at the most crucial moment in history--the cry of abandonment on the lips of Jesus as he entered into the depths of his suffering on the cross: 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' (Psalm 22:1; see Matthew 27:46). We must hear Jesus' question, and discern the answer, in the light of the whole rest of the psalm, as undoubtedly Jesus did. But it still remains a question that points us to the heart of the mystery of the atonement itself. To me it is a profoundly moving thought that the word that introduces our most tormenting questions--'Why...?'--was uttered by Jesus on the very cross that was God's answer to the question that the whole creation poses.
Then, another thing began to impinge on my consciousness. Have you noticed how many Christian hymns and songs express the most profound aspects of our faith through asking questions (where we can never give an adequate answer), or through openly affirming that there are things we cannot understand but nevertheless receive with joy and thanks?
And can it be, that I should gain
An interest in the Saviour's blood?
Died he for me, who caused His pain--
For me, who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love! How can it be
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
-Charles Wesley
'Tis mystery all! The Immortal dies:
Who can explore His strange design?
In vain the first-born seraph tries
To sound the depths of love divine.
-Charles Wesley
Why should I gain from his reward?
I cannot give an answer;
But this I know with all my heart
His wounds have paid my ransom.
-Stewart Townend
I cannot tell why he whom angels worship
Should set his love upon the sons of men,
Or why as shepherd he should seek the wanderers,
To bring them back, they know not how or when.
But this I know, that he was born of Mary
When Bethlehem's manger was his only home,
And the he lived at Nazareth and laboured;
And so the Saviour, Saviour of the world, has come.
-William Fullerton
I know not why God's wondrous grace to me he hath made known,
Nor why, with mercy, Christ in love redeemed me for his own.
But I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able
To keep that which I've committed unto him against that day.
-Daniel W. Whittle
Perhaps this is the special feature and gift of poetry, but it is also a profound recognition that faith seeks understanding, and faith builds on understanding where it is granted, but faith does not finally depend on understanding. This is not to say, of course, that faith is intrinsically irrational (quite the contrary), but that faith takes us into realms where explanation fails us -- for the present." pgs 19-22
- Christopher J. H. Wright
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