Asking questions is one of my main ways of entering the world.
It irritates some and delights others.
I tend to thrive when exploring subjects that, upon the question 'but WHY' being asked, throw themselves wide open to exploration and discovery. This is why, I have concluded, I was rubbish at Chemistry at School - which, when you are learning a set of 'rules' in order to pass an exam, does not lend itself to the 'WHY' question in many existential ways.
At the start of February I had the joy of doing what I love, and get to do on a fairly frequent basis, which is joining a group of students, both Christian and of Other Faiths or 'No' Faith, to talk and ponder and explore the vastness of God. The main questions that were coming up were questions about the nature of God and the nature of what it means to be in relationship with God.
Now, I have a fairly strong grasp on what I 'believe', for the most part - I am an evangelical after all (!) and it is somewhat expected to have 'answers' in order that you do not stray into the wilderness of 'woolly liberal thinking'. Ha! And so, as someone who loves to study and question amidst this world of needing clarification, I have amassed quite 'well formed and neat' answers for many questions about the Word of God and the nature of the Kingdom, and how that plays out in the here & now.
However there come moments for me, as I suspect there do for all of us, when a question is asked that blows wide open your well constructed and thought through framework for understanding something that you previously thought you had a handle on.
Meeting with these young people and asking questions of each other, of Scripture, and of God, I realised that I didn't really know why I thought what I thought about ideas of Hell and Judgement. I knew where my 'arguments' came from, the things I had studied, the conversations I had previously had about them, the various schools of theological thought and dogma behind them, and the fact that these well thought through answers satisfied the evangelical blood-lust of the fact that 'we are right and they are wrong'. But, I didn't really know anymore why I'd chosen to hold on to those particular reasonings above any others, and my well thought through answers didn't seem to hold much water any more, as I held them up to the light of scripture they became even more weak and vapid.
This meant a period of reflection and study and questioning with friends. A healthy and accountable pursuit whenever confronted with a shifting perspective.
And then a certain 'Rob Bell' brought out a book called 'Love Wins - Heaven, Hell and the Fate of everyone who ever lived', which has caused all kinds of controversy in the Conservative Evangelical world (although, in my opinion, it's really not very controversial at all - many people have been saying the same things in different and similar ways for eons).
This threw many of the questions I had been wrestling with into a wider light, and spawned many many blog posts throughout the Christian Blogosphere - some of which were interesting in terms of holding up my previously acquired set of 'answers' up to the light and learning from others' perspectives.
This morning I was looking at an old friends blog (who shall remain nameless) and read, for the first time, his brief initial analysis of Rob Bell's thoughts. I read down to the 'comments' section (because you know how Christians love a good argument), and found that one of the friends with whom I'd had one of the long conversations about my wrestling over these issues had alluded to our conversation in his comment (keeping me anonymous like the good friend he is) in order to illustrate that these issues need to be thought about and mulled over.
The response to his comment by another commenter made me literally laugh out loud, spitting my tea over my laptop. The next commenter said: 'On a further issue, and leaving aside the fact that a weak view of hell generally relates to a weak view of God's sovereignty ( stemming from a desire that "it'll all turn out right in the end") it does concern me that an ordained Pastor has such a weak grasp of core doctrines that the questions of schoolchildren are enough to shake her biblical roots.'
Ha! In your face mister - I'm NOT ordained!
Leaving that aside, and my huge issues with his conclusions, and the fact that the commenter probably never expected that the subject of the comment would read his post or indeed Blog about it herself, I am saddened by the sentiment in the reply.
Not because I am personally offended by the comment - far from it, he does not know me, I do not know him, and I'm sure that we could sit down and have a nice cup of tea and a civilised discussion about the whole thing - but I am saddened at the general sentiment that in order to be 'Kosher' we need to have all of our answers sorted out all the time, with definitive text book points from which to 'win our side of the argument.' Or indeed that the process of holding our systems of thought up for further examination is an immature act.
I agree that, as a teacher of Gods people and a 'Shepherd of the flock', I do need to have a good grasp of what our commenter calls 'core doctrines', and indeed that it would be irresponsible of me to not have sound understanding of Gods word from which to encourage people to explore the amazing truths that are contained within it.
But, surely, there needs to be room for new learning, for new questions to be asked, to be open to the fact that our previous 'readings' may be one dimensional and lacking in deeper understandings that reveal the beating heart of God beneath them? In my opinion this does not make me a liberal, it does not make me 'wishy washy' on my understanding of scripture, or indicate that I do not take the word of God seriously. On the contrary I find that to wrestle with scripture, to go beyond the pat answers that have been handed down to us, is to treat Gods Word with UTMOST respect and seriousness, with the desire to really know Gods heart and treat His Word as what He desires us to - a Lamp to our Feet. This is not abandoning Orthodoxy, merely searching for True Orthodoxy.
And so, yes, in response to you Mr Commenter, I am open to the 'Questions of Schoolchildren' shaking my 'biblical roots', because, quite frankly, they were exceptional questions that blew wide open my wrestling and shone a light into areas of my understanding that were formulaic. I do not believe that this makes me any less of a Pastor or Teacher or Leader. Quite the opposite.
I am not above or beyond learning from people who are younger than me in both age and experience - in fact, in my long experience of 'doing life' with teenagers on a daily basis, they have been some of my best teachers - and I resent, on behalf of all the insightful teenage theologians that I know, your belief that they have nothing of value to teach me.
I want to ask questions, I want to keep on learning, I want to move from shallow second hand understanding into the depths of the amazing heart of Scripture.
Do you?
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