The Questioning

One of the most often quoted verses in the Bible appears in Psalms 119: “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” The idea here is that God’s Word would be able to illuminate a follower’s choices and directions in life, helping to bring such a person into the “light” of God’s Truth.

This verse assures us that God’s Word won’t steer us wrong, so it becomes vitally important to read, study, memorize, and try to grapple with the complexities found on those crisp, gilded pages.

I have read the Bible straight through at least six times in my life. This does not include all of the many sermons I have listened to over my life, the devotionals of which I have been a part, or the little “Daily Bread” booklets that we used to read each morning at the breakfast table when I was a child. In short, I have spent a lot of time in the company of God’s Word.

This makes me no expert, though, and the more I engage with it lately, the less certain I am of the interpretations with which I was raised.

I was speaking with a minister lately who seemed to admit that the Bible and its interpretations can take many directions sometimes. He told me what he believed certain verses were saying, but it was always couched with the statement, “I believe.” In other words, he could only speak to me out of what he felt the Bible was saying—a subjective, ultimately, perspective.

I was in search of Truth. The minister and I had many email exchanges, which prompted me to say at one point:

You ask: “What do you feel is right? What do you sense God telling you?” This is a catch-22, it seems, as you mentioned, right? Overall, I do feel right in my relationship with God. But, am I only deluding myself? Where is my objective correlative, if that cannot be God’s Living Word?

As I stated in a previous email and as you stated again—how are we ever to be certain that what we feel is God’s direction and not Satan’s temptation? When our prayers seem answered, is it truly God? If, even as born-again Christians, who pray and seek God’s truth, we can still be “deceived” by errant “voices,” then it seems like the deck is stacked against us. We can never truly be certain that what we feel and experience is from God.

The minister offered me no reply on this point. So, it seems, we have to go back to the Bible for proof of what God is trying to say to us.

Okay.

Another minister I spoke with told me about bibliolotry—that means turning the Bible itself into a kind of idol. So, maybe the Bible cannot always have certain answers we seek. After all, there have been hundreds, thousands of translations, various interpretations, historic understandings that have condoned such things as slavery, etc.

The Bible, this minister said, has been used by each culture and era to justify its own belief systems of the day. As such, it can be and has been dreadfully misused.

The first minister, when asked about the social question of marriage equality, told me that God made male and female to come together and form a perfect union, a new creation, two halves who unify to become a “complete” whole.

I found this so very interesting because the Bible also tells of King David whose love for Jonathan (Saul’s son) was so profound and powerful, he is prompted to declare:

“I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; you were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women.”

Some people say these two men were friends, close friends; others claim they were even lovers. One thing is absolutely clear, David, who was married with many wives and concubines, finds his most “perfect” love with Jonathan. Shouldn’t that not be? If a man and a woman marry and this has been God’s grand design since back in Eden, then shouldn’t that be the most profound form of love a human being can experience?

Let’s also talk about divorce. One thing that is condemned in the Bible, very clearly, is adultery—in fact, it even scores a place in the Ten Commandments. When he is tested by some religious leaders of the day about divorce, Jesus says that people shouldn’t do it unless there has been an instance of adultery. And, if a person marries someone who is divorced, then adultery has been committed.

Adulterers, we are told by Paul, will not gain entry into Heaven:

“Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”

So, why aren’t there cries for a divorce amendment?

One of my friends who studies Judaism says that questioning is an important aspect of understanding a given text. And, this is what we did in my many, many literature classes. Perhaps it is through our questioning that Truth actually emerges.

I believe that God is omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. We have been given a collection of writings by various men written thousands of years ago—an ancient text now. Not impossible to accept from a timeless God. What are a thousand years to Him, though it means, often, quite a bit to us.

The mere fact that we still read the Bible and practice Christianity seems a clear indication of something worthy of notice and understanding.

But, here is what it all feels like in summary: The Bible can be misused and twisted, almost always filtered through our own culturally limited lenses. We can pray but have no guarantee that our answers are truly from God. We clearly cannot trust our own feelings, since we are “of the flesh” and swayed by the temptations of sin.

Where can we find truth?

In the end, I believe we find truth in the questioning. We are thinking creatures, who should use the intellect we have been given, and that means asking hard questions and avoiding the pat, simplistic answers that, oftentimes, cannot be fully supported by logic.

Questioning is necessary. We ask our parents questions, seek guidance and counsel from those around us when it comes to decisions about what car to buy, how to finance a house, what electric company to use—so, why shouldn’t we question our God?

If God is a living God and the Bible is the “Living Word,” then it is with real, day-to-day questions that truth can be found.