ASK THE BIG, HARD QUESTIONS

I haven’t blogged in quite a while now. It’s not that I have been dealing with writer’s block. I’ve been thinking. And asking questions. I have read a few books and watched a few movies. I even watched a documentary about gay people. The last two weeks have been great for me. So I thought I should share with you something that has been gnawing on my heart lately.

Questions. Big, hard questions.

Have you ever realised that we all have some dearly held beliefs? Some of us are so attached to our world views so tightly that we would kill or die for them. Have you ever stopped and asked yourself, “What if I’ve believed wrong all my life?”

Some of us have grown up in church. We’ve been fed Christianity without questioning anything. Actually, the only questions we would ask would be so we could get the pastor’s opinion about a subject so we could know what to think about that subject. We were only allowed to ask the simple questions like, “Is it ok to go to church on Sunday?” “Is drinking a sin?”

Most of the questions we were allowed to ask only needed a simple answer of “Yes” or “No.”  And we were not supposed to ask “Why”

We cannot ask, “Why would a God of love send people to hell?” “Why is it only the pastor who is supposed to stand up there every Sunday?” “Why is homosexuality bad?”

Of course a few of us asked such bold questions. We were given instant, pre-packaged answers, which, when opposed, got us kicked out.

We asked, “Why can’t we go out to the nightclub?”

The pastor said, “It’s a sin.”

“Why is it a sin?”

“Because the Bible says so.”

“What if the Bible is wrong?”

You don’t want to know what happened afterwards.

But what if we are wrong? What if the pastor is wrong? What if the professors and philosophers are wrong? Can we swallow the fact that our world view could be wrong, that we could actually be practical atheists?

What if our idea of truth is shutting our mind from learning something new? What if we always quickly discount something because it doesn’t line up with our dearly-held beliefs, even without searching it out for validity?

Arthur Schopenhauer, a nineteenth-century German Philosopher said, “"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident."

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself whether your version of truth is actually wrong, and what you are ridiculing or violently opposing might actually be the truth?

Proverbs 18:17 says, “In a lawsuit the first to speak seems right, until someone comes forward and cross-examines.”

Here is some homework: Cross examine what you believe.

"The unexamined life is not worth living."—SOCRATES