Jeremy Steele - All the Best Questions!: And Some Answers, Too

The following pages are full of some of the absolute best questions I have ever heard. They come from real-life teens from all different places, and I am going to do my best to offer you a basic answer for each one. But I have to tell you, I could be wrong. Some of the questions (such as How do we know God exists?) have been asked for hundreds or thousands of years. Some of the greatest minds in history have tried their best to come up with the answer, yet the questions still remain.

You know what that means? It means that my answers might not be the right answers. But thats okay because that is part of the fun of learning and exploring Christianity. As you have questions and listen to answers, you are forming your own beliefs. You are deciding what things accurately describe your world and what things come up short. I honestly hope there are a couple of chapters here that you read and say, Nope, this guy has it all wrong. I hope that because it means that you are actively engaging with your faith.

Heres the catch. If you disagree, dont just say you dont think its right. Decide why you dont think its right. Then, do some good research. I mean real researchnot googling until you find someone who agrees with you. Talk to adults you know and trust. Talk to your pastors, ask for other good books, and build an argument against me. You have no idea how happy it would make me!

Ill be excited because I believe that good answers should do two things: help you reimagine your world, and make you think of more questions. A lot of the questions in this book are big, heady questions about the nature of God and the universe and awesome things like that. Those questions are good, but the problem is that most of the time our answers stay out of our everyday life. They stick to talking about the universe and never quite make it all the way back to our bedroom. That is why each answer in this book begins with a story from my life as a teen. I hope my stories will help you to see how these questions and their answers connect with real life.

Then, at the end of each chapter, I did my best to come up with a couple other questions to get you started because good answers make you think of more questions. I wrote a few that came to my mind when I wrote this book, but weve also left space for you to write a couple more. My questions at the end dont have answers because I want you to go find answers. Again, I want you to talk to the people around you, open the Bible, and begin to come up with your own answers.

I hope this book does more than offer you some answers. I hope it sparks your imagination to reach beyond these pages and discover whole worlds of ideas. I hope these words help you find new paths and discover new things about God so that you are transformed and empowered to live a life of love and faithfulness.

The concrete was cold on my back as I lay on the floor of the planetarium. Youd think that if they were going to bring a ton of kids on a field trip and ask them to lie down to watch a video on the ceiling, they would at least put some rugs or cushions on the floor!

It didnt matter, though, because as soon as the video started, I was so drawn into it that I no longer thought about the cold floor. The video began with the night sky. Lying there looking up, I felt like I was outside at night, camping somewhere. Everywhere I looked, stars were all I could see. As the narrator started talking about constellations, each one glowed in the sky as he named it.

Then he began to talk about the universe. We started to fly through the night sky, seeing all kinds of amazing sightsfrom the planets in our solar system to other galaxies to beautiful nebulae where stars were being made to the empty blackness of everything in between. I was entranced.

After the tour of our universe, a picture of a famous scientist, Edwin Hubble, appeared as if floating in the sky. The narrator told how Hubble had made a discovery that implied that the universe was expanding, and then was proved right by another scientist. As the narrator described the beginning of the universe, the video showed everything going in reverse, on and on until the universe had shrunk down to what looked like one star. Then the narrator said this was the beginning. Everything began from an infinitely dense, infinitely hot speck that exploded in a big bang. He said that everything had come from that. After a little more explanation, the presentation was over, and I was stunned.

This video caused my very first deep question about Christianity. Its explanation for how the universe began seemed so different from what my Sunday school teachers had said that it felt like both couldnt be true. I wasnt sure what to do, and for some reason I thought that if I said anything about it, something bad would happen. Either I would get in trouble for questioning God or it would mean I wasnt really a Christian. And in the back of my mind, I was afraid that having these kinds of questions made God mad at me. So, I kept my question to myself.

Dont get me wrongI wanted an answer. But I didnt ask anyone for help. Instead I tried to find answers on my own in articles and books at the library. Eventually I found an answer about God and the universe that made sense, but I hadnt found an answer to the bigger question: Is it okay to have doubts and questions about Christianity?

Before we go any further, let me say this clearly: it is absolutely okay for you to have doubts and questions about God, Jesus, Christianity, and anything else. There is nothing wrong or sinful about questions or doubts. In fact, I believe that questions and doubts are a mark of a healthy spiritual life.

Wait, what? Its healthy to have questions and doubts? Yep! Having questions and doubts means you are engaging at a deep level with your faith. It means you are using your brain to really consider things, and thats one of the best things you can do for your faith! And look, if God isnt big enough to stand up to questions, then we have real problems.

Now, let me be completely honest with you. I have been a Christian since basically forever. I studied Christianity in college and graduate school. I have written several books on the subject and have been a professional minister for longer than you have been alive (unless youre a parent or pastor or youth leader reading this). And guess what?

I have doubts and questions about my faith. Im not talking little questions that dont really matter. I mean, I have big ones. If having questions means you arent a good Christian, then Im sunk.