Questions versus Answers (What Makes for Healthy Religious Faith?)
One Friday they are rained out and cannot enter their imaginative
world. Jess complains about Saturday’s chores and church on Sunday. Leslie asks
Jess if she can come to church with him. Jess feels certain Leslie will hate
church, but he takes her along anyway.
On the ride home in the back of the truck Leslie, who had
never been to church before, says, “That whole Jesus thing is really
interesting isn’t it? . . . It’s really kind of a beautiful story.” May Belle,
Jess’ younger sister, interjects, “It ain’t beautiful. It’s scary! Nailing
holes right through somebody’s hand.”
Jess retorts, ‘May Belle’s right. It’s because we're all vile
sinners that God made Jesus die.” Leslie questions that part of the story, “You
really think that’s true?” “It’s in the Bible,” Jess replies. Leslie, in a
puzzled and questioning tone says, “You have to believe it, but you hate it. I
don’t have to believe it, and I think it’s beautiful.” May Belle jumps in, “You
gotta believe the Bible, Leslie.” “Why?” asks Leslie. “Cause if you don’t
believe in the Bible, God’ll damn you to hell when you die.”
Leslie is shocked by such a dreadful image of God. She asks
May Belle for her source, but May Belle can’t come up with chapter and verse.
May Belle turns to Jess, who can’t quote the Scripture either, but knows that
it is somewhere in the Bible. “Well,” Leslie comments, “I don’t think so. I
seriously do not think God goes around damning people to hell. He’s too busy
running all this” (Leslie raises her arms to include the sky, trees, and the
whole creation).
This creative little girl calls into question Jess and May
Belle’s exclusive and mean-spirited version of the Christian story that paints
God in not so pretty colors. Leslie saw “the whole Jesus thing” with a
different set of eyes than that of Jess and May Belle.
In the above scene, I see Leslie functioning as a personification
of the kind of religious faith that is more about asking the right questions
than finding the right answers. Right answers are certainly important in
mathematics, medicine, engineering, and other similar endeavors, but not so
much in religion. A dynamic, transformative relationship with God raises far
more questions than answers. And far too often, for those whose concern is with
right answers, a bad answer will generally take precedence over no answer.
Popular author and minister Philip Gulley says that when he
was nineteen, he went into a Bible book store and bought a book titled, “God’s
Answer for Everything.” The book worked well for about a week, then a friend he
worked with was killed in a terrible accident. The book’s explanation of heaven
didn’t include his friend. Nor did the minister who preached his friend’s
funeral, but the minister did say that Gulley could go to heaven if he believed
and did what he told him to believe and do. Gulley says, “That was my first
inkling that religion disliked questions so much, it would prefer bad answers
over no answers.”
Healthy religion welcomes the questions and is content to
live with the questions. If healthy religion is sitting on a park bench, and a
lively question walks up and sits down, healthy religion is content to let that
question sit there and talk all it wants. Healthy religion does not try to
silence the question or send the question off to hook up with the first good-looking
answer that walks by (thanks to Gulley for this analogy).
In fact, healthy religion enjoys having the question around,
because it stimulates thought, evokes constructive spiritual experiences, and
moves those who entertain it into a wider and deeper faith. Good questions
expand our vision and our understanding of what is true and real.
In the movie, The
Truman Show, Truman Burbank (played by Jim Carrey) lives in an artificially
contrived world. The entire town is dedicated to a continually running TV show
about Truman’s life, and everyone except Truman knows this. But then Truman begins to intuit that there must be “more” and
tries to break free from his small world. The powers that be do their best to
keep him confined, closed in, locked down, for the pleasure of their viewing
audience and all the amenities that affords the people in power. Eventually,
however, Truman faces his fears, pushes the limits, and escapes into the larger
world of reality to the demise of the Truman show.
Answer-based faith tries to keep us enclosed in its little
world much the way the dominant powers sought to contain Truman; it’s about
control, certainty, and predictability. Healthy religious faith opens us to
mystery and inspires us to push against the limits of our particular faith tradition
in order to explore the largeness and vastness that is the Divine.
Franciscan priest Richard Rohr likes to distinguish between
moralism and mysticism. Moralism is about saying pledges, earning badges,
enforcing purity laws, believing dogmatic certainties, and running endlessly on
a treadmill of meritocracy that distributes rewards and punishments based on
one’s performance. Mysticism (the experience of communion with Ultimate
Reality) is about discovering who you already are—a beloved daughter and son of
God, and falling in love with a Lover whose grace is inexhaustible and whose love
knows no bounds. The honest pursuit of truth rooted in wise questions (not
right answers) almost always leads to mysticism.
A focus on correct information and right answers fosters
pride and exclusiveness, claiming God’s blessing for one’s own group or
community. Whereas an emphasis on good questions tends to nurture a larger
sense of belonging that inevitably ignites and fans a greater humility,
inclusivity, and compassion.
What do you think God prefers? Right answers, which quite
naturally lead to dogmatism, moralism, exceptionalism, and elitism. Or wise
questions, which evoke wonder, mystery, compassion, and a wider belonging and a
deeper connection to the Really Real.
Comments
Post a Comment