Asking questions is part of the Christian life. Asking questions, risking the difficulty of where they lead us, helps us to say with the great Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky, "I believe in Christ and confess him not like some child; my hosanna has passed through an enormous furnace of doubt." + Lore Ferguson Wilbert, A Curious Faith
With Red Skies, The God in the Garden, Living Under Water, and Run with the Horses being the books I have recommended to others most this year so far, now Lore Ferguson Wilbert's A Curious Faith: The Questions God Asks, We Ask, and We Wish Someone Would Ask Us has quickly joined their ranks. Lore (along with Seth Haines in the introduction) begins this beautiful book with this consideration:
God is not only unafraid of questions, but he asks them, too: "Where are you?" "Where are you going?" "What is your name?"
And when Christ walked among us — the man who was in "very nature God" — he came asking questions:"Do you want to be well?" "Who do you say I am?" "Why have you forsaken me?"
It should be no surprise, then, that the patriarchs, prophets, and great saints of the church have posed their own questions: "Why was I born?" "Where are you?" "Why do you hide from me, Lord?"
I believe there's a reason so many questions are lobbed around Scripture, from God to his people, from his people to God, from people to people, and in the New Testament from Jesus to people, people to Jesus, and Jesus to his Father. The Bible is a permission slip for those with questions. All these questions aren't just pointing to answers. They're also saying it's okay to ask questions.
We're invited to ask questions, too. And we're invited to continue to learn how to listen closely and pay attention to what's being asked and answered (one of our focuses during our fall B.L.E.S.S. series with the Emmaus City community).
Living Curiously, Listening Curiously, Loving Curiously
As I've shared in previous posts here and here, wonder and curiosity have been key themes for me this year that I've been returning to again and again in the midst of learning to listen well and wrestling with God. I find myself often pondering the late great Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel's powerful quote,
“Never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder, and He gave it to me.”
And the other quote that has come to mind most in 2022 has been Alice in Wonderland when all she can do when she looks around is say, "Curiouser and curiouser."
So I had to smile when I saw how Lore organized A Curious Faith. There are 3 sections with specific questions in Scripture providing the titles for each chapter (here's a link to a free preview of Chapters 3 and 4). Below are the 3 section headlines along with a few questions from some of my favorite chapters, followed by an excerpt from Chapter 8: What Are You Doing Here? (1 Kings 19):
1 | Questions God Asks Us: Living Curiously
Chapter 8: What are you doing here? (1 Kings 19)
Chapter 10: Will you correct Me? (Job 40)
Chapter 11: Whom shall I send? (Isaiah 6)
2 | Questions We Ask God: Listening Curiously
Chapter 17: Why do You hide from me? (Psalm 44)
Chapter 18: How long, Lord? (Psalm 13)
Chapter 20: Why do You make me look at injustice? (Habakkuk 1)
3 | Questions We Wish Someone Would Ask Us: Loving Curiously
Chapter 21: What are you looking for? (John 1)
Chapter 22: Do you want to be well? (John 5)
Chapter 26: Do you believe I am able to do this? (Matthew 9)
A Curious Faith Chapter 8: What Are You Doing Here? (1 Kings 19)
The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. + Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
One of my favorite scenes in all of Scripture is the one in which Elijah runs from the prophets of Baal. First he finds a bush to hide under for a nap and some food — proof that when things are going wrong, most of us just need a nap and some dinner. Then he travels forty days and nights to Mount Horeb (Sinai), the site of the burning bush and where the Ten Commandments were given to Moses. It's a place where God seems to show up with some regularity, and I have to believe that Elijah went there because the nap and food weren't enough. He needed an encounter with God.
Up on the mount, Elijah is hiding in a cave, and the Lord comes to him and asks, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" (1 Kings 19:9). His answer is what I love. I imagine him taking deep breath, filling his lungs with enough air for the run-on defense he's about to offer: "I've been zealous for you, Lord. Your people have rejected your word, torn down your altars, killed your mouthpiece leaders, and I'm the only one left and they're trying to kill me" (19:10, adapted).
Bargaining with God and Then Tracing Your Doubt to Its Root
Have you ever bargained with God by appealing to your morality? I mean, have you ever just stood there in all your righteousness, being right and indignant and defensive, with your laundry list of good deeds and all the ways you're better than everyone else or all the ways you think God has overlooked your righteousness and rightness and being right? Just really puffed yourself up with all the things you would do if you were God? All the ways you'd enact justice and show mercy and make a point to all the people walking around getting it wrong?
My doubts can usually be traced back to a moment when I perceived injustice toward me, a space where I felt God didn't do the best he could have, or where God's people failed to love as they ought, or love me as I wish they did. My doubts always arise when something goes wrong. The kind of wrong a nap and food just can't fix. The kind of wrong that fills my lungs with sour and hot air, prompting me to make a defense to God for all the ways I know better than he does. And therein my doubts come creeping.
When I start to believe that I know better or bigger than God, that I am the last paradigm of righteousness or truth or justice or love left in the world, those beliefs begin to eat into my good and true beliefs about God. My good and true beliefs are swallowed up in whole chunks so fast that they begin to swallow me up too.
Doubt is in vogue these days, and it has been for a while. What can we know, I mean, what is truth really and who is the final arbiter of it? These are the sorts of existential philosophizing questions we ask because maybe we're afraid of the fact that God is the final arbiter of truth and the definition of it and the one who doles it out generously to all who ask. And then we're left with a choice. We can just stay in doubt forever, never coming to a place of trust, or we can visit it once a year, like me, or we can take the route Elijah took: in the face of doubt, remind God just how great we really are.
What God Is Asking When He Says, "What Are You Doing Here?"
I think many of us may look at this moment in Elijah's life, his answer to God's question, and want to laugh at how prideful he's being. But I think the truth is that he is afraid. Deep down, I think Elijah is terrified.
The answer Elijah gives to God's question, "What are you doing here?" is less proof of how great Elijah is and more fear that God isn't as great as this prophet had believed him to be.
In his answer, Elijah's asking, "Did you see all that, God? Were you even there? Are you even aware of what's going on in the world you created? Did you see me trying my best? Do you know how afraid I am that I'm banking my life on something that seems to be falling apart? Can I trust you? Are you trustworthy? Are you going to make everything right again? ... "
When God asks, "What are you doing here?" he's asking, "What made you so desperate you'd come here to this holy place where I show up to mighty men of God and do great works?"
And I think Elijah is saying, "I'm terrified you aren't real and don't care, and I didn't know where else to go. But, God, I need you to show me you're real."
And then God does. He shows up, not in the earthquake, the wind, or the fire but in that famous whisper, still, small voice that asks, "What are you doing here?" And God is with Elijah in his listening and his response.
Imagine this scene with me: Elijah, bent, broken, all the air pushed out of him, his cloak pulled over his lowered head, standing outside the shelter on this holy mount. "I've been zealous for you, Lord, God Almighty." I have been, he thinks, tears filling his eyes. "Your people have rejected your word," he says, thinking, but I've staked my life on it being true. Please, God, be true. "They've torn down your altars," which is why I've come to this holy place. It's the only one left. I don't know where else to go. "They've killed your mouthpiece leaders. I'm the only one left and they're trying to kill me" (1 Kings 19:11-14, adapted) and I'm terrified. I'm afraid. I'm scared. I think I'm going to die. ... It's not that I doubt you, God, it's that I doubt me.
It's not that I doubt you, God; I doubt me. It's that I know where my answers get me. I know where my doubts have taken me. I know where my fears lead me and where my failures leave me. I'm afraid they could lead and leave me to death. I'm afraid of death.
What are you doing here?
Why did you read these words today?
What are the questions you have about God?
Your doubts? Your fears? Your what-ifs?
What question are you afraid to voice to him?
What are you afraid he's going to ask you?
What are you doing here?
Take a deep breath and say it. Say it right out loud. Who cares if you sound prideful and arrogant? Don't you want a God with enough love to give to the prideful and arrogant too? Who cares if you sound pitiful and weak? Don't you wish for a God who hears the lowly?
Whatever you answer to that question, God wants to meet you in it. God created you curious because he wants to be found. Sometimes he's there with bread and water and shade for sleep. Sometimes he's there at the mouth of your hideouts. Sometimes he's there in a quiet presence.
The point is he's there. He was always there. He never left Elijah. He wasn't ignorant of the torn altars and murdered prophets. He was right there with his children as they desecrated his temples. His presence wasn't limited to the top of the holy mount.
"Go back the way you came," he says to Elijah.
I've still got work to do, and I want you down there doing it with me.
Here are links to other recent City Notes (CN) books:
A Time To Heal (Shalom); Red Skies; Story of God in a Sanitation Truck; The Artistry of What's Next; Seeds of Hope in the Rain & the Dark; The Church is the Most Corrupt Institution on Earth; Wrestling with God in Doubt; Taste Grace in World of Seculosity; I've Seen What Hope Can Do; Baptism as the Way of Life; The Cross and Peacemaking Presence; Pray As You Can; Knowing and Naming True Friends; Gifted Saintly Identity; Listening Closely & Paying Attention
With presence, peace, and many prayerful blessings,
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