Church is for answers, not questions!

I have a confession to make. Secretly, deep down, in a very dark place, I am a fan of Desperate Housewives!! Now I’m out of the closet, I need to regain some dignity by making a few pious comments on this week’s episode.

Lynette, mother of five, who has survived cancer and a tornado, decides she wants to go to church. She watches her neighbours leave for church on a Sunday morning, and realises that she has a lot to be thankful for, as well as a lot of unanswered questions. So, for the first time in her life she goes to church. Unfortunately, when she gets there, she discovers that church is not a place for asking questions. Watch the clip of her visit to church here.

The punchline comes in the next scene, though, when her church-going friend, Bree, informs Lynette that she should not ask questions in church because, “church isn't a place for questions, it's a place for answers." Church, she explains, is a time to listen and eventually, if you have any questions, they will be answered by listening.

At this point, Schof rang me (much more stimulating than Desperate Housewives, of course), so I have no idea how it ended, but it really struck a chord with me because I’ve been going to church most of my life and for most of that time I’ve been desperate for the church to answer my questions, but it was never interested in them. It never seemed to be a group of people asking and investigating the divine, but a group intent on telling everyone their answers. (Is that too harsh?) I’m not trying to say that there is value in indecision. Constant prevaricating can certainly stop us putting our beliefs into practice. It seems quite reasonable that we land on some convictions that prompt action. But, these convictions are always held to with a light touch, aware that we are dealing with questions of God and life – questions that cannot be empirically tested. Isn’t that what faith is all about. It just seems to me that God, by his very nature is mysterious, beyond us, someone we enquire into, not one we essentially can ever have sewn up.

I’ve always felt a bit like Lynette – like a square peg in a round hole – like I’d completely got the wrong idea about what church was about - asking questions no one wanted broached, let alone answered. In fact, had I declared myself a non-Christian I think people would have given me more time, but a Christian is in. His journey has stopped and he now has the answers, not the questions.

Of course, I realise that it is highly threatening for some people that their faith is being questioned. I realise I’m not as sympathetic about this as maybe I should be – psychologically many do not have confidence (faith?) that their beliefs will still hold together after intense probing. Faith (that conviction about things we cannot be certain about) is replaced by certainty.

Anyway, this isn’t a moan. I am personally reconciled to what church is. This is more of a thanks to all you bloggers out there for providing me a context for the first time in my life where I can ask questions and get things wrong and retract things and no one is defensive that their faith is under threat.

Shift yo ass

So Abraham was credited with righteousness - for what - for shifting his ass in trust.

It's all about do be do be do be do (not just thinkycorrecty!). A call for us to shift ass into something for Gods sake - that's faith you know! Here is the first recorded text message fresh from the latest archaeological data dig -

Questions are like Doors

A few of my friends are asking some pretty big questions right now. I am too and I remember the fear that can accompany those questions. A couple of years ago I read a great article in Thirdway magazine by Richard Rohr on 'questions' and I guess that it must have been bumbling round my head recently as I wrote this last week to get my thoughts out and make use of them. I'll enclose a link to an abridged version of R Rohr's article below because its great.

Questions are like doors

Answers are like walls – you need them but not too many. Questions are like doors.

Questions allow us to explore, to journey and to come back home with a story. And when we return, like from a trip to India, we find that we have changed and ‘home’ has changed

This is better than just building walls because, although they offer a deal of security, they also tend to isolate us and bind us to a specific time and place. In time you will forget about a wall and not even notice it in the everydayness of living. Doors, like in a wending Medina street, will always intrigue and invite and when the time is right you will step through from today into what tomorrow could be. Doors/Questions allow us to experience the wardrobe of Narnia.

Jesus asked lots of questions, about 307. In other words he opened lots of doors for people. Interestingly he answered very few, just 3 of the 187 he was himself asked, usually just rephrasing the question back to the questioner.

So it is not a massive leap to conclude that Questions are not just ok but good, even necessary in our journey of spiritual formation. We also see a pattern for why, when people question God, they often get a question back (e.g. Job ‘did you do this, can you even grasp that’, Paul’s question in Romans who’s answer is ‘who are you the pot to question the potter’

If you determine to create a door not a wall and if you dare step through that door and encounter God in honesty then you may not get an answer but you will be invited to commune with God, to travel with him, to bare his silence and discern a still small voice. Most importantly you will come back with a story of your journey and like any journey experience it is something you will then carry with you, it is something that will change you and the way you see the world, the other and your travelling companion God himself (often in unanticipated ways). This story that you now carry can also be reflected upon later, interpreted by hindsight and shared with others. It has the power to be transformative both now and it the future.

There is another genius to creating more doors than walls. Doors can be reused. It is amazing that a journey taken in one's teens can be retraced in adult life only to be a surprisingly different experience. New features of a landscape zoom into focus, subtleties of colour, complexities and tensions of interdependence are more keenly appreciated, simple joy or stillness and comfort are more readily felt. This is because, as we step through a door, we take our self with us and this dynamic discerning self allows us a myriad of experiences. So if you have a question, a door, you can go again through the same space and amazingly return with a new and different story that makes sense of life afresh.

It seems that in the walk of faith God calls us to walk through his doors not permanently brick them up. He calls us to risk living and growing, not to hole up and just get ready to die. He calls us to cry out, to seek, to seek him and his image, truth and grace in the world and to actively discover and participate in these things. To return again and again and see what new thing he has to reveal, to show, what new or ancient path he would have us walk or rediscover.

R Rohr Article - Discovering the Right Questions verses Having the Right Answers - http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dcdzfwdc_1dv6hj2mz

(pic is from my 2006 trip to Morocco)