Honest questions

The fine roast ham.

Susie’s mum is a very good cook. She makes a particularly fine roast ham using a family recipe that begins, unusually, by cutting a section off both ends of the meat.
One day Susie was helping her mum to make dinner, and her mum was showing how to cook roast ham. As Sylvia carefully trimmed the ends off the ham with a big knife, Susie asked, “Mummy, why are you doing that?”.
“Because that’s the way my mother always does it” said her mum. But it got her wondering – why did her mother start that way?
A few days later they were at granny’s house and Susie’s mum asked “When you make the special roast ham, why do you start by chopping the ends off the meat?”
“Because that’s the way my mother taught me” came the response.
Susie’s mum knew she had to get to the bottom of this. She picked up the phone and called Great Gran, a very old lady by now.
“Tell me Gran, when you used to make your roast ham, why did you always start by cutting the ends off?” The old woman paused for a moment in recollection. “Because I didn’t have a big enough pan” she replied.

We have a tendency to faithfully copy the actions of others without question, especially when we are young. And this ability to copy and remember how is in fact the reason we humans are so good at learning.

Many of the things we do in our faith are because we copy someone else.
Why do people sometimes put their hands up when they are worshipping?
Why do we sometimes put our hand on someone’s shoulder or head when praying for them?
Why is it this book (the Bible) that we treat as special?

I want to encourage you to think about things to do with your Christian faith. And ask – why do we do it that way? Why do we believe that?

These are the kind of questions that will help you when your colleagues at work, friends at school or college ask you questions like “Why do you believe in God? Why do you follow the Christian faith?”

Four things

As we pass round the handout you will see that I am going to talk about four things

Causes and triggers of honest questions and doubts
Whether it’s OK to have honest questions and doubts
Getting honest answers to our honest questions
Helping others with honest questions

1. What causes or triggers honest questions and doubts?

We are taught to be sceptical. Critical analysis is the method taught in schools for many subjects, far more than when I was young. Constant media scepticism of everything – the Jeremy Paxman effect, and indeed EA games – challenge everything. I have a habit of scepticism. When I hear a story of healing or answered prayer, I want a second opinion, I want to find records that prove it one way or another. Virtually every answered prayer seems to have another possible explanation, and I always wonder if that is what happened. I’m glad that in the Vineyard we do not set unrealistic expectations about what faith may achieve. People do not always get healed when we pray for them. Christians are not exempt from poverty, relationship crisis, sickness and death
Science may challenge the existence of God – Richard Dawkins has just published The God Delusion. I’ve got a copy, but not read it yet. The reviews say it is more of a rant than an argument, but he is influential. Almost every natural history programme, and many science programmes come across as against faith. One teenager said to me that it was like she had to have two brains in her head, one for writing biology essays about evolution and another for use on Sundays. So Tom Cameron and I decided to work on that with the young people last term.
Psychology challenges our spiritual experience. When I see the illusionist Derren Brown on TV apparently converting people and doing things similar to words of knowledge it makes me puzzle over the things we do in church. Is faith a “trick of the mind”?
Moral issues. Many of us wrestle with honest questions about for example embryo research, homosexuality? Why does our behaviour matter to God? Of course sometimes we are justifying our own behaviour, but nonetheless the questions are real. And as we discovered last week at the Vine, the answers are not simple, and there is usually a pastoral dimension to these questions.
We live in increasingly close quarters with other religions – are they all just made up? There are apparent similarities, so why is Jesus unique.
Climate of tolerance and political correctness in public life, effectively denying that there is any intrinsic truth.
Mental health. Many of us have experienced depression or other mental health issues – and these can be a trigger for honest questions like Who am I?, Do I really matter?, Is religion a delusion?
Suffering – disasters, people getting ill and dying. This is Kylie recovering from breast cancer. Statistically one third of us will have some kind of cancer during our lifetime. Does God care? Why does he allow suffering?
Studying the Bible can trigger honest questions. For example there are apparent discrepancies between the gospels Who went to Jesus tomb first? Where did he ascend from? – Did you not notice the gospels say different things? Why not? If these are important things, how come we never noticed or thought to check? As Tom Peters said “If you are not confused, you’re not paying attention”. We need to work hard on our understanding of the Bible.
Ridicule – trying to stand up for your belief in creation in a Physics or Biology lesson at school can be very challenging for a teenager. Teachers and other pupils ridicule our beliefs as primitive. The media mocks Christian faith. Ridicule is a poisonous barb that can embarrass us into doubt – sustaining faith is an effort.
Church can cause us to question. Many of you have experienced great discomfort in a church situation, as I have in a previous church. Painful church crises do happen, leadership can sometimes become unhealthy, abuse has occurred. How can faith be so good if church is so bad for people at times? Is it hypocrisy. Our culture has a general suspicion of organised religion, and sometimes it is justified.

2. It’s OK to have honest questions and doubts

Questioning is often associated with doubt and is sometimes thought to be rebellious or unfaithful. Indeed the Catholic encyclopaedia says that “doubt is equivalent to total rejection of faith”. I don't agree. Saying that is like Job's friends in the Bible. They reacted to his doubts with shock and dismay. “Stop feeling that way! Shame on you for having such scandalous thoughts” they said in effect. But God, who had his differences with Job, nonetheless held up Job, not his friends, as the hero.
And so I actually agree with another Catholic, St Augustine who said “Doubt is but another element of faith.”

God made our minds.

“Unthinking faith is a curious offering to be made to the creator of the human mind.” John A Hutchinson
Jesus tells us to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart soul MIND and strength.” Mark 12:30
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." Galileo Galilei

Some Christians seem to think that faith means believing something in spite of evidence to the contrary. The more irrational our beliefs are the more spiritual they are.

"Faith is when you believe something which you know ain't true." (Mark Twain)
“Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast” The queen in “Alice Through the Looking glass”

But that is not Christian faith. God transcends our ability to understand, but faith is not irrational or anti-intellectual. Through Isaiah, God declares to Israel, "Come let us reason together says the Lord" (Isaiah 1:18). Reasoning is part of Christian faith.
God made our minds … and God encourages us to be enquirers

God encourages us to be enquirers

Honest questions are part of seeking God. God reveals himself, but it is not like the physical sciences where we can measure and predict and use simple scientific methods. It’s a relationship – how can you prove that? God communicates in words – but words are flexible. We have to seek Him, we have to seek wisdom, and that means asking questions.

You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. Jer 29:13
God rewards those who earnestly seek him. Heb 11:5
Great are the works of the Lord, they are studied by all who delight in him. Ps 111

God wants us to think like adults

Stop thinking like children. In your thinking be adults. 1 Cor 14:20
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 1 Cor 13:11.

Part of growing up is leaving behind the assumptions of childhood (and maybe Sunday school) that we never examined. Piaget, a psychologist, says adolescents begin to think differently they move from 'concrete thinking' to an ability to think 'abstractly'. Children can draw God. Adults can conceptualize God as omnipresent Spirit... The way a child thinks and an adult should think are quite different. The challenge for 'grown-ups' is to shed childish concepts while remaining 'childlike' in the way we trust God.

Most Christians have their beliefs communicated to them when they are children – I certainly did – most significantly when I was about nine in a group that started to teach about Jesus and what it really meant to follow him. But in matters of faith, some Christians never grow beyond childhood. Are you just a Christian because your parents were? What many see as faith may actually be just force of habit; or stubbornness; or family pride; or intellectual laziness; or childishness; or gullibility; or the effects of being brainwashed. The problem comes when faith is kept separate from thinking, whereas God wants every part of a Christian, including your mind.

Many Christian parents are afraid to allow their children to re-examine their faith. But it will happen anyway. The challenge is unrelenting. I remember being caught completely by surprise by the first multi-faith assembly when Sarah was 5. I thought I had ten years before I’d have to tackle questions like that with my children. If you have not re-examined the faith of your parents can I encourage you to start that process. It really matters.

God wants us to think like adults.

We are in good company

When we doubt and have honest questions we’re in good company. There are loads of people in the Bible like us.

The picture is the Incredulity of St Thomas by Carvaggio. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe” That was Thomas, one of Jesus’ closest friends. See how graciously Jesus responds to Doubting Thomas.
John the Baptist sent friends to ask Jesis “Are you the one who is to come or should we look for another?” But John baptised Jesus, you wouldn’t expect him to have these kinds of doubts – honest questions.
I could go on about Peter, Job, Elijah, King David, Moses. Entire books of the Bible such as Job, Ecclesiastes and Lamentations show beyond question that God understands the value of human doubt. But just one more story:
The father of the boy with demons said “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief”. I can identify with that. Jesus responded to that man, and Jesus responds to us today if that is our prayer.
Jesus was always keen to emphasise that he works with whatever tiny mustard seed of faith a person can muster. God appears far less threatened by doubt than we do.

We become stronger through facing the challenge

(I hate needles) When a person is inoculated against a disease such as smallpox, his bloodstream is infected with a small sample of the agent that actually causes the disease. You would think that this contradicts common sense! And yet, of course, it really doesn't; because the body is given a chance to recognize the bacteria and start manufacturing antibodies to fight them.
Why would we ever encourage doubt in a Christian's life? Because they will grow stronger and learn to fight it off.

But it can be unsettling

Having spoken so positively about honest questions and doubt in growing to maturity in faith I need to acknowledge that doubt may lead a person away from faith rather than towards it. Some people feel overwhelmed and paralysed by their doubts. Sometimes I have lain awake at night sweating. Resolving these questions is hard work and just about everything about doubt is unsettling.

The stakes are high – I’ve invested most of my life in this stuff
It can feel lonely to find ourselves doubting when everyone else seems content.
It can be very rough when lots of tough questions hit you at once. In my first year at university I was hit very hard by the challenges of an atheist on the next corridor in halls.
It’s unsettling to discover that sometimes our very best reasoning isn’t sufficient to resolve our doubts.
And sometimes the search for answers simply increases our uncertainty.
It’s unsettling to meet Christians who never seem to doubt.
And there are those who are unsettled instead by the fact we doubt things they consider settled.
Some people think questioning quenches the Spirit’s fire. To question something for them means seeking to undermine it, whereas to me I’m simply trying to understand it and find out more
And it’s unsettling when non-Christian friends hesitate to believe, and raise an endless stream of doubts instead.

So let’s be careful not to push other people prematurely into deep waters of questioning. They need to learn to swim. We all need to build our skills in getting honest answers to honest questions.

3. Getting honest answers to honest questions

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

In the beginning was the big bang

I read New Scientist and I read the Bible. Is one true and the other not? Or are both true. How can both be true?

The media thrusts challenges to our faith at us all the time. We cannot control doubt – it often creeps up on us uninvited. But we can learn to channel our honest questions and our doubts into something constructive.

And so the first step in seeking honest answers to honest questions is to

Admit our doubts exist. If your doubts are real it's stupid to pretend they're not there. They won't just run away. They'll continue to lurk in the shadows of your mind. I remember as a student deciding that I wasn’t going to paper over the cracks, as if to pretend these questions didn’t exist. These days I have a folder on my PC called “Thinking” and I type like a journal of the things that puzzle me. And helpful stuff I have found on the subject. Then when they crop up again, I can remember where I had got to last time I thought about it.
We also need to examine our doubts – work out what the question is. It is hard to do something about a vague feeling of doubt. I’ve also found it is not very useful to have black/white questions like “Is it creation or evolution” – A more constructive question is “Where did us humans come from” – which allows us to piece together a picture that includes a faith and science perspective. And it is worth articulating why it matters. On the creation topic, are we really significant in this universe and to God – it makes a big difference to my sense of self-worth. Are we really different from the animals? It affects morality.
Talk to God – who better to ask these questions to. You could pray something like this “I’m not sure that you are there or listening, please help me to find some way of making sense of all this”. I have found that the process of talking it over with God helps.
Next, seek evidence – We are told to in the Bible.

Jesus said “Believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.”
"After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive." Acts 1:3
Apollos vigorously refuted the Jews in public debate, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ." Acts 18:27-28

So look at scientific studies. Listen to personal accounts. Read the Bible. Pray for healing miracles. Read books. Listen to our church podcasts. Search the internet. Try to piece it together. Seek evidence.

Next I recommend discussing your questions and doubts. Don't fight your battles alone. Can we provide within our church and housegroups a haven of acceptance that carries us even when our faith wavers? We’ve always said in the Vineyard “Come as you are”. You do not have to come with fully-formed beliefs (or behaviour) as a ticket for admission. There are people around who'd be delighted to help you do battle with your doubts. Dennis is one of the people I talk to. And last night we had the second meeting of a new Thinking Aloud group. Next time, in a couple of weeks, Tom Cameron and I will be leading a session on Creation and Evolution (you’re welcome to come) but it brings me on to the next point
Set yourself a task to introduce a group session on the subject. For me, it takes at least a month to get ready on a real honest question. The beauty of this is that you don’t have to have all the answers, and the group can usually pick up from where your thinking has left off. Why not volunteer to your housegroup leader to introduce a session on one of your honest questions. Maybe work with someone else like I did with Tom.
On the next point, do you know the story where Jesus was talking to Simon Peter who was just about to deny him, wracked with doubts. He said “I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail; and when you have returned to Me, strengthen your brothers.'' Lk 22.31.32 We need to Pray for one another as we wrestle with doubts and questions. Jesus did it and so should we. People have prayed for me as I have struggled with doubts. And I hope that doing sessions like Thinking Aloud strengthens my brothers and sisters.
Take a piece at a time: I have parked quite a few things in the “not tackled yet” category or “tackled a long time ago but not properly re-examined” – for example I did a formal debate on abortion when I was 16 – I cringe remembering my cold logic – those of you who are in the medical profession won’t have the luxury of parking that one. I know I haven’t particularly looked at the second coming of Jesus – I’m thinking of doing that around Christmas this year as my Advent study and I’ve bought a book to help with that. Don’t bury issues that are actually live for you – your passion, or your work or if someone else close to you is wrestling with it, or if your children as one of those delightfully difficult questions, etc. But don’t feel you have to tackle everything at once.
I’ve come to realise that some things will never be crystal clear. The Bible says we see a poor reflection as in a mirror. (1 Cor 13). And so we need doctrinal humility. For example, we don’t know with great clarity what happens after death although we have many hints. Perhaps that point of view is unattainable to us. I’m so pleased that the Vineyard doesn’t have a party line on every detail of faith and practice. Have you noticed that we are willing to baptise infants or to dedicate them and do adult baptism. It is clear that we need to believe and be baptised. But either method and timing can be convincingly argued from the Scriptures. As Mr Rumsfeld would perhaps say – know what you don’t know.
Don’t be paralysed, continue step out in faith “do the stuff” even though you have questions. For example I will pray for healing when it is needed at the same time as wrestling with medical studies on the effectiveness of prayer. Sometimes it is in doing that we understand. If the question of suffering troubles you, get involved in relieving suffering. The path to honest answers is not just through thinking.

4. Helping other people with their honest questions

The final section is about how we help other people with their honest questions.

Who are these other people?

It could be children. Have you noticed in the Thinking aloud web forum.

Joseph (age 3) asks Where is heaven and is it far away?

Sarah (age 9) asks How could Methuselah live to 965 years old?

Kieran (age 15) has a great discussion with Erik (post doctoral researcher) on the hero-saviour theme in Jesus Superhero and various films

Or it could other Christian adults, unchurched colleagues and friends.

My suggestions are these:

Accept questions. Don’t be afraid of them – although sometimes they are used as a weapon to alienate or humiliate us and sometimes they are simply rebellious. Look for the honest questions. Don’t be shocked or signal that questions are inappropriate. Sadly many churches do. It is very easy to reject some kinds of questions, and it does not help the honest questioner.
Listen Hard. Try to understand the question and what’s behind it by active listening – getting clarification, understand what prompted the question. We must really hear the question being asked or the objection being raised. We must get inside the minds of those who are giving reasons for not following Christ. Each person is different, not matter how common some sceptical objections may be. Don’t reduce people to clichés.
Encourage the process. Help people to face their questions – Alpha has a great model – the small group leaders don’t answer the questions! Remember Jesus’ tenderness to Thomas and Peter
Challenge lazy thinking – like Jesus did on several occasions. “Why do you call me good?” he asked the rich young ruler. “Who touched me” he said to the woman with internal bleeding. Lazy thinking: Have you noticed that when something goes well people often say “There is a God” when they are highly relieved. Nice thought, but it isn’t really evidence that God exists? Other people say “I’m not religious but I’m sure there must be something there”. To help people get beyond their lazy thinking it’s worth asking why exactly must there be something there? About lazy thinking, Theodore Rubin said “There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking”
Respond to what you hear. Don’t answer a question not asked – it is too easy to show off our knowledge or to avoid the question by deflecting on to something else.
It’s a conversation not a lecture. One point at a time. Don’t feel you have to communicate an entire theology or put them right on everything. It is dialogue. I was talking to a colleague called G. who is in his 50s, and he said “It’s 25 years since I’ve spoken to anybody about faith – the last person was the priest who married me and he’s dead now.” You might think “Oh no, got to sock it to him in full”. But actually I believe my job was to get his interest going again. I’m sure G. watches what I say and do at work, and who knows what might come up when we are next away on business together.
Acknowledge the state of your own thinking. You might say “I don’t know”, don’t understand the question, long time since I’ve looked at it, or just talk about interesting stuff and stories that shaped your thinking. Do share your own thought processes and conclusions. No need to bluff.
Tell your story of your personal experience although there is a challenge to explain our Christian experience and interpret it. It is so easy for words to miscommunicate when we are trying to describe our encounter with God. It can so easily come across either trite, arrogant or just unintelligible. We can find ourselves exaggerating as if to boost God’s reputation. 2 Cor 4:2 reminds us to set forth the truth plainly.
Research on behalf of those who are less able (like children, or those without Internet) – then give them resources to help them think, rather than telling them what to think. This does challenge our time-availability.

Summary

In summary

We are constantly bombarded with stuff that makes us have honest questions about our faith
It’s OK to have honest questions and doubts. It is part of growing in faith
We need to find ways of seeking honest answers to honest questions
Part of our mission here on earth is to help other people with their honest questions about faith

Response

How can we respond today? Look at sections 3 and 4 on your sheet.

Perhaps as I’ve been talking you have identified an honest question or two that you need to work on. I suggest that you start by writing them down.
If you want to discuss a particular question then ask. Think about the forums we have – housegroup, thinking aloud, the website forum or somebody in the Vineyard that you respect.
As always we are available to pray for you, either for your own honest questions or as you try to engage with other people and their honest questions. Like the people whose names you attached to the prayer tree this morning.

David Wallace, 12/11/2006