Chapter 2 Risky Curiosity

* Risk, as we have seen, is indispensble to any significant life, nowhere more clearly than in the life of the spirit. The goal of faith is not to create a set of immutable, rationalized, precisely defined and defendable beliefs to preserve forever. It is to recover a relationship with God.

* For littel children, what is most important is the act of questioning itself because children's questions are more than a request for information. Their questions are an act of affection, of communion, and of trusting.

* In a welcoming environment where questions are safe, children are infected with curiosity - a fascination with truth, an unrelenting hunger to know and be known, to capture and be captured, to touch and be touched. When these children finally fall asleep at night, they are secure in the knowledge that the one who loves them is bigger than all their questions. They can sleep deeply, knowing they are safe in the arms of the Keeper of their questions.

* Our world is populated with domesticated growups who would rather settle for safe, predictable answers instead of wild, unpredictable mystery. Faith has been reduced to a comfortable system of beliefs about God instead of an uncomfortable encounter with God. Childlike faith understands that God is as capable of destorying us He is of saving us. Risky curiosity breaks from the safety and comfort of a tame faith and ventures into the terrifying presence of a "not so tame" God.

* When children ask questions, they are not afraid to interrupt, irritate, or interrogate until someone responds. Children are born with a natural curiosity and built-in daring. It doesn't take long before our culture explains to them the "inappropriateness" of curiosity in the "real" world, and their naive courage is intimidated out of them.

* Curiosity requires courage. You must be willing to ask questions even when they threaten everyone around you. Faith is more than believing; it is an act of courage, a bold grasping of God's truth. Faith is a wrestling match with God, an intense struggle with truth in an attempt to squeeze every bit of knowledge out of it. Curiosity is the shape of our hunger for God. We question God without apology, we march into the presence of God bringing our armfuls of questions - without fear - because God is not afraid of them. People are afraid. Institutions are afraid. But God is not.
Children are possessed with certain inalienable rights, and one of them is the right to ask questions anytime and anywhere. We have these same rights because we are the children of God. Let us ask our questions boldly, courageously, like a little child.

* People who ask questions isolate themselves. ... Our questions may chase everyone else away, but they attract Jesus. We may be stuck with our questions, but we are also stuck with Jesus. If our questions leave us alone with Jesus, then lonely isn't a bad place to be.

* Parents must help children discern the important questions, the life-giving questions. Christianity must do the same. Alan Jones says that priests "are not so much people with answers as ones who guard the important questions and keep them alive." The church exists to guard the important questions! keep them alive! When the questions are kept alive, our souls have a chance of staying alive. The church should be full of Christians who seek questions rather than answers, mystery instead of solutions, wonder instead of explanations.

* The ancient church fathers used to talk freely of "unknowing." it was their contention that the end of knowledge had much to teach us. They believed we could learn as much about God in what we didn't know as in what we did know. Our inability to answer all the questions became an opportunity to learn more about God. When our intellect fell short, our souls connected with the reality of God. There, in our unknowing, God showed up unexpectedly.

* ... because I no longer "understood" prayer, I was able to sense God's presence in a way that I had never experienced before. Childlike faith is a faith that longs for God and seeks Him wherever He may be - even in the place of no answers.

* Give me a Jesus who meets me in the rushing, crashing waters of my questions. Let me stand precariously close to the dark and menacing skies of doubt, so I can hear the fierce and gentle loving voice of my Jesus who drowns out my fears and stands just beyond my questions with open arms.