Questions- A God bigger than a book

I remember when I was in elementary school my teachers would encourage and reward the kids who asked questions. My peers always seemed to have the best questions. Questions like, “what does 3X squared plus 5 equal?” or “what is the gravitational pull of our solar system?” I always envied the smiles my teachers gave as my classmates asked these questions. I tried to ask questions too, but mine never seemed to result in that same smile. My questions were more like, “when is recess?” and “how many times am I allowed to use the bathroom in one day?”

There is a guy at my church named Joel who is the elder of our High School group. Joel is one of the coolest guys I have ever met. Every now and then Joel will fill in for our college pastor and lead a Bible study for college students. I, like many others, get really excited when Joel leads these Bible Studies. One of the most amazing things about Joel is that he hardly ever gives you any answers. He just asks really good questions.

I grew up in a church where the Bible was referred to as the ultimate answer book to life. This was exciting to me because I knew that if I had any problem in life, I could get a direct answer from God by just searching out what He said in the Bible. This excitement, however, quickly started to disappear when I graduated high school and found myself befriending more people who chose to not follow Christ. My excitement started to diminish because my new friends had some really good questions, and when I went to look for the answer in the Bible, I found nothing.

My friends wanted to know why Christians hated homosexuals, why we supported war, why we seemed to have such little regard for our environment crisis, and what scientific evidence we had to support the theory of creation.

No matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find very good answers to these questions. The things I learned in Sunday school didn’t seem to answer their questions in its entirety. My whole life, I had answers to these questions that worked great for me and my Christian friends, but as soon as I tried to answer these questions to my non-believing friends, I felt like an idiot. I said my answers with such little confidence. I didn’t believe what I was saying so how could I convince them to believe it?

For the first time in my life, my Sunday school answers didn’t work. Not only did they not work, but they felt ignorant. And that made me upset. My friends weren’t trying to put me in a corner, forcing me to defend my faith. They sincerely just wanted to know my heart behind these issues. But here I was, feeling like I was trying to sell them a product that I had never bought myself.

The truth is that I was scared of homosexuals because I was led to believe that they were the enemy, not image-bearers of God himself. I was taught that whatever the Republican Party said was true and of God, even if it meant going into a war at the cost of thousands of lives. I was taught that this earth was just a temporary home for our eternal souls and that our focus should not be on taking care of the planet God gave us.

I started to have questions of my own.

What did I really believe?

Why did I believe it? And “What was Jesus really all about?”

I read through the first book of the Bible recently hoping to discover some of the answers to these questions. When I finished, I had more questions then when I started. I started to wonder if this book wasn’t meant to answer all our questions about God, but rather, to thrust us into the mystery of God. I mean, I don’t read the Bible and think:

“Oh, that’s who God is!”

I read the Bible and think, “Holy crap! God is way bigger, way more mysterious than I originally imagined Him being!”

I wonder if the writers of the Bible were more focused on showing us how big, how amazing, and how mysterious this God we serve is, than giving us all of the answers.

I mean, what if the Bible really was the “answers-to-all” book? What if it did completely describe God in every way possible?

I don’t want to serve a God who we can write a book about. I don’t want to serve a God who can be contained in a couple thousand pages. The God of the Universe, the God who created this whole thing…. That kind of God can’t be written about in one book. That kind of God needs an eternity to reveal to us who He really is.

The Bible is an amazing book. I believe every word of it is inspired by God and is profitable to all people. I believe it is the most amazing book we have on this earth. But the Bible is not God. God is God. The Bible only gives us a glimpse of this amazing God we choose to serve.

I want to serve a God who is bigger than my questions. I want to serve a God who doesn’t get afraid when I ask some really tough questions and raise serious issues.

As Christians, may we not be people who seek to have all the answers. The more answers we have about God, the more skeptical people get. The more skeptical I get. May we be a community of people who point others toward the mystery of Christ. May we acknowledge that we don’t have all the answers, but that we serve a God who draws us to Himself through awe and wonder. Let us not only ask questions, but let us enjoy not having all the answers to an all-mysterious, all-powerful, all-wonderful, and all-knowing God.