Well I'm either 6 days early in preparing this post or a day late. I prefer the early notion but when you are a procrastinator that waits for the proper nudge to get direction for these particular blog entries then it's probably closer to the latter. Regardless this one is going to take some extra time and may get fairly lengthy.
Answers: we have been asked to find them since since we began school and in all actuality since we were babies when our parents would read to us from the big board books with pictures of animals, colors and shapes and ask us what they were. We have pretty much been hardwired since birth with the need to find the answers. This is unfortunate in some ways and can even be a detriment in many circumstances. But as we get a little older our seeking answers turns to asking questions....if you're a parent you pretty much know exactly when that starts and it slowly drives you insane. The worst part is it doesn't just start out as practical need to know questions; everything becomes a question. Eventually it evolves to real questions about real difficult matters but then as we get older it comes full circle and we tend to go back to the searching for answers.
What started my thought process on this matter is that I'm reading the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan and a section caught my attention about how we continue to question God. Generally these questions are the self centered questions that start with "Why" and end with "Me". I could list all of these types of questions but it'd go on for quite some time and we are all familiar enough with our own that we can take a guess at everyone else's self doubt/work questions are. A lot of very serious questions get asked about how God can allow certain things to happen. Or how He can allow there to be such vast poverty and famine, or so many divorces and broken families and how can He let there be so many orphans. But in all seriousness God should be asking us these very same questions. These situations are not a product of God but of us and I would hope this would hit home to some people and convict them to want to make a difference one life at a time where ever they can.
We've also been watching Louie Giglio's Passion Talk Series in our family small group at church and Louie had a line that was very relevant to this in regards to Christianity as a whole. He said Christianity can not be boiled down to simple answers. Generally these big questions can't be answered without asking another question to which there is no simple answer. I've watched the series before but I'm picking up new things and maybe I'll have our high school youth group watch them because they are quite good.
To top things off I had the opportunity this past weekend (in one of those just so happened to be moments) to talk to Jason Ostrander from Simply Youth Ministry at the Ignite Youth Leadership Conference who wrote a book called 99 Questions Jesus Asked which focuses on 99 of the 300 documented questions Jesus asked in the Bible. I started this blog post well before I knew I was going to this last break out session. Mainly because I didn't know I was going to it until 15 minutes before hand when I crossed off the using drama and acting class to develop ministry with students; which I think everyone else did too because it was packed. I had already been to a couple other sessions that tied right into some of the questions I'd been having lately so it was a great validation of what I've been thinking about in writing this post and that it wasn't something I forced and that God was behind it. When you look at the questions Jesus asked He focused on questioning the questioner with direct and generally life wrecking questions of his own that are still relevant today.
But when we truly think about it.....what is more important? The Question, the process of finding a possible answer or the Answer itself? It could just be a matter of perspective but most likely it depends on the circumstance. We all have questions, there is no getting around it, but who you go to or how you go about trying to find or work out an answer maybe the most important decision you make. Because when you really take the time to look at the big picture and you are honest with yourself about it; the most important things in this world are not the answers but the truths. The questions and answers may change but God's truths remain the same. I always tell my youth groups that you will eventually get the answers that you seek but by the time you do the questions won't matter anymore because you'll be in the presence of God and you'll be a little busy with your new "job"....worshiping.
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