A Questionable Faith

“There are no bad questions.” My mother told me that when I was 7 years old. We were sitting at the kitchen table. I had just asked her “if someone were hypnotized to believe they were Superman, could they lift a building?”. I told her that someone at school had told me that was a stupid question, and my mother, rather than using the word “stupid,” gave me that advice. Since then I have been asking questions.

Back in the 1980s (which doesn’t seem that long ago to me, but it does to most of the world today), a friend had a bumper sticker on her car that said “QUESTION AUTHORITY.” Since she was a counselor, I asked her if that meant she was an authority on all questions. She patiently explained to me that we should constantly question those in authority, or at least those who loved being in authority. Which I have also been doing most of my life.

And sometimes being in positions of authority myself, I have been questioned by those around me.

For most of my life, I have been a minister. For 44 of my 70 years, I have administered the sacraments, ordered the life of the church (as much as it can be considered ordered), and led people in helping others both near and far. But mostly I have preached. My sermons have not always been that long, usually 18 to 22 minutes. But over 44 years, with an average of 52 sermons a year, that’s 2,288 sermons, lasting about 45,760 minutes (or 763 hours, or 32 days nonstop). It’s because of the “inevitable occurrence of the sabbath,” as preachers are wont to say. No matter what else this week has held, Sunday’s coming and I better have something to say. Looking out over my sermons from the past almost half-century, I acknowledge that I have asked more questions than given answers.

I’m not in bad company.

Jesus himself asked 339 questions according to the gospel writers. He was asked 183. He answered only 3.

That’s how I dealt with most of the Scriptures I used, both the Hebrew Scriptures (what many call the Old Testament, though my Jewish friends would beg to differ), and the Christian Scriptures (what many call the New Testament). I read the Scriptures and asked “Should you really desire people to take babies and dash their heads against the rocks, even those of your enemy?” (Psalm 137:9) I read the words of Jesus and asked “Did he really call the woman who was begging him to heal her daughter a dog?” (Mark 7) I hear people say things like “God has everything under control,” and I ask “Did God control that drunk driver who hit and killed the man standing on the sidewalk at the corner of the church property? What kind of god would do that?”

And, as in so many things, I find I do not have the answers. So I just keep asking the questions.

Poet Rainer Maria Rilke is probably most well known for his advice: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now 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.” (Letters To A Young Poet)

And that’s what I’ve tried to do most of my life, live with the questions.

One faithful church member who had endured my sermons for a couple of years approached me one Sunday after worship. From our previous conversations, I knew he had a much stricter understanding of his faith, and was not comfortable with how I expressed mine. Still, we got along and talked, ate meals together, and tried to help our community whenever we could. But he was more than a little upset at some of the questions I had raised that day. He said, “You know, your faith is questionable.”

Turns out, he’s right.

(Note: From time to time I am going to post some of the questions I have dealt with, and my thoughts, if not answers, about them.)