Stephanie Williams OBrien - Stay Curious: How Questions and Doubts Can Save Your Faith

Without disruptions in life, where would we be?

Sarah Gadon

I couldnt pray, I couldnt worship.

I couldnt sit through another Bible study where another persons pain or joy was met with responses right out of the religious section of a greeting-card display.

God has everything in control.

When God closes a door, he opens a window.

God took your loved one because he needed another angel.

I just couldnt do it. My own questions and doubts had brought me to a place where I could no longer go through the motions. I hadnt anticipated how hard it would be to trust God as I watched my dad take his last breath my senior year of high school. I didnt realize how hard it would be to encounter so many new ideas and perspectives when I went off to college. I couldnt believe that I was only in my twenties and already facing chronic pain from sports injuries and unexplained headaches. I was filled with questions that overwhelmed me on a daily basis:

How do I pray to a God who seems distant?

What do the ancient stories in the Bible have to do with my life today?

How do I deal with the reality that my beliefs have shifted?

What do I do about no longer feeling at home in the faith community I was raised in?

Why do politics seem to dictate the expressions of faith I see around me?

What does God think of my friends who are good people but dont follow Jesus?

How can I be a part of a group that has so many people who seem to do the opposite of what Jesus stood for but still do it in his name?

How do I trust a Being who allows hatred, violence, and injustice to exist in our world?

How do I process the anger I have toward what I see happening in the world?

What do I do about the contempt I am beginning to feel for other Christians who seem to not care for the poor or about racism or the marginalized? Were they reading the same Bible I felt obligated to read most of my life?

What if the God I thought I believed in doesnt exist at all?

I was stuck. The questions I had, and the inability of my community to hold them, made me feel like I was standing in quicksand up to my waist.

This is the story of how I managed to get free from the quicksand, one inch at a time. How I stopped looking at questions and doubts as holding me back, and how I stepped into a life where questions led to new experiences and discoveries. This is the story about how I reclaimed curiosity and chose a life of passionate uncertainty. About how I began to embrace questions and doubtsand how it saved my faith.

I emerged from the quicksand with a deeper understanding of myself and those around me. I learned more than I ever thought I could about life and the pursuit of meaning and purpose. I was set free to live into a more vibrant understanding of God and what it means to be a person who truly follows Jesus. This is the story of how I decided to stay curious and why Ill never go back to a life without questions.

This isnt just my story, this is our story. We are created to be curiousto wonder, to discover, to question, and yes, to doubt. Curiosity is a key part of what it means to be human. We have the cognitive ability to think beyond our immediate surroundings. Its what separates us from the other mammals on the planet. We each get to choose whether to embrace curiosity or ignore and suppress it.

For many of us who grew up in religious environments, our surroundings have thrust us toward the latter. The curiosity we were born with, and engaged with easily in our childhood, is snuffed out by the expectations placed upon us as we come of age. As we step into the constructs formed by the cultures around us, our curiosity is squelched.

As a Christian growing up in the church in North America, Ive noticed that these constructs are impressed upon us at an early age. My childhood experience with church culture was highly structured, and I was encouraged to memorize answers, not ask questions. The adults in my life shared with me their understanding of what it meant to be a Jesus followerand I know they meant well. But as I entered adulthood, the suppression of my inquisitiveness had taken a significant toll on my ability to ask questions about God, faith, and the church. I had been stripped of my curiosity.

Perhaps you feel like you are wandering, confused by what seems like a wildernesslike you are stuck in the same quicksand I was. You might feel like the faith system youd come to trust is now more like a fortress trapping you inside. Maybe youre reading this, and the first thing you notice is the lack of questions you have about your faith. Curiosity and wonder could bring a new and meaningful dynamic to your life of faith. It may mean the important decision to choose curiosity over comfort.

It is time for all of us to embrace curiosity and disrupt the status quo. Disruption often has negative connotationssomeone disrupted a meeting, or the Wi-Fi is out and it disrupted our screen time. However, disruption has significant benefits. Without disruption in the transportation industry, wed only have horse-drawn carriages. Without disruption to the communication and technology world, wed still be rewinding answering machines and video tapes from Blockbuster. Sometimes, we must choose to let our life be disrupted, or we will never grow or be set free.

I sat down to coffee with a friend and mentor of mine recently. Rod is one of my curiosity heroes. He asks questions with such passion and integrity that I envy the words as soon as they come out of his mouth. His favorite questions to ask usually start with Help me understand... and then he expresses something hes noticed about my life or actions. Rods incredible ability to understand people has helped me discover new things about myself.

How did you become such a curious person? I asked him. He explained that he had a lot to overcome before he was able to live a life of curiosity.

I grew up in a home in the Bible Belt. The motto in our family was we believe in believing and that was that, Rod told me. But, even as a child, he sensed there had to be something more, so he pushed through the environment of well-meaning pastor types and dug deeper into the inquiries rather than running from them.