By Kayla
A few years ago, I had a close friend of mine question my faith in Christ. She was not raised in a Christian home and to her, Christianity was too much of a question mark to give it a chance. She posed the question to me, “How can you have so much faith in something you don’t know for sure is true?” It got me thinking about why things couldn’t’ just be more concrete. It seemed to me that unanswered questions that commonly arise from biblical analysis are nothing but a barrier to those who may otherwise have believed. In our society, we are so centered on answers. We want to know something is for sure before we invest our time, brainpower, or faith in it.
Some may see this as being a potential problem for the church. I think that many people have the same dilemma as my friend, there are just too many unanswered questions. So many of us wrestle with things like why did my loved one have to die? Why would an all-loving God subject innocent people to pain and suffering? What is Gods will for me? Does everyone go to heaven? These hard to answer questions are ones that pastors are commonly asked. This issue could easily be problematic for the church and has potential to interfere with ministry. However, I think that it can also be a blessing in disguise. Recently, I read a book called Jesus Mean and Wild by Mark Galli. The author posed the idea that unanswered questions are a crucial piece in our pursuit of God. They bring us into conversation with our brothers and sisters in Christ and the search for answers keeps us actively invested in the gospel. If the church can embrace these hard to answer questions and treat them as starting points for education and discussion, I have hope that it may make a difference for those who are on the cusp of accepting Jesus.
Great post. I think this is a bigger issue that needs to be dealt with as the importance of education and reason are becoming key markers in today’s culture. When you look at tody’s atheists, many of them argue that people shouldn’t believe unless they are certain of the truth and this is something people are buying into. you look at any debate the athiest always seems to start with questions that can’t be answered.
So what i think the church is going to have to end up doing is to attempt to refocus peoples hearts. If the church is able to create a community in which faith is a legitimate answer to certain questions then great things will result. But then again this is an issue that has been going on for ages and at times we will have to come up with our best guess at these difficult questions (even augustine was “convinced” into christianity because all of his questions were answered).
Just one thing……I had to laugh a little at your statement that “We want to know something is for sure before we invest our… faith in it”. I guess it just struck me as funny because the statement is self destructing. If you know something is “for sure”, then you can not have faith in it. However, when I thought about this further, I realized how exemplary that statement was. It demonstrates what I would call an American definition of faith. We will believe or have “faith” in what we know, or at least what we think we know; but very few Americans will take that step and believe in something that is truly unknown. True faith in America is rarer than gold.
More often than not, I find that the unanswered questions are false stumbling blocks. They many times are not actually what threatens people to follow Jesus but they serve as a good fall back.
But even the approach of “I need to have all these questions answered if I’m going to have faith” can only go so far. As one friend in my church community is always (a little too) eager to remind me-“people aren’t argued into loving Jesus.” I think many times it’s important for those of us to believe to own up to the fact that we have the same questions.
I came to this realization while listening to David Bazan’s Curse Your Branches album, an album which serves as his airing out his problems with Christianity as he officially declared himself an agnostic. What I discovered shocked me – I shared all the doubts that Bazan sang about on the album. And it’s led me to wonder if sometimes we need to help people understand that being a christian isn’t about having all of the philosophical answers but following Jesus in the peculiar way he has taught us to live.
I think this is an important question to think about, Kayla. I have had similar experiences with people not accepting Jesus because they have unanswered questions, and I think this has a lot to do with the culture we live in. We place such an emphasis on facts and need everything to be empirically proven, and when we can’t prove something we are hesitant to trust it. I love what you said though about this actually being an important part of faith. I don’t think I’d want a God that I could fully explain. When we are open to entering into these honest conversations with people, we begin to see how God is showing himself to us empirically in the world and also how great he is- beyond even our imagination.
-Laura
Hi Kayla,
You ask a great question, and it is a question that has become, what I believe to be, the great fulcrum of Church mission. On one side sits the world of academia, with their questions; on the other sits a broken world with their needs. The Church needs to return worthy of both of them. As a Military chaplain I am asked questions like this often, and I love to explore these with those who ask them. However, here is a trustworthy saying by John Maxwell…. “People don’t care how much you know unless they know how much you care.” Having answers is important, but have we earned the ability to share them by first meeting needs? If we focus on trying to answer questions without acknowledging the needs we fail; and if we focus solely on needs without being able to connect people to Christ, we fail. Jesus is the one who gives Grace, Shalom, and Salvation; missional living is removing the obstacles of needs in people’s lives so they can receive them. You are right that these questions are critical. They provide balance and the knowledge gained from the pursuit of knowing God completes the Church.