When I was in college, I had a lot of questions about God and the Bible. “What about the people who’ve never heard of Jesus…will they go to heaven? How did the wife of Cain get to “the East”? How could people build a tower (Babel) that reached to the heavens?” On and on and on. What I realize now is that it’s healthy to have questions. For one thing, it means I’m engaged in the text. I’m actually reading the bible. I also realize that some of my questions existed because I just hadn’t studied enough. You know what I mean? Some of my questions had answers that I just needed to search for to locate. Others were those questions that I may never know the answer to until I get to heaven, like “God, why do men and women think so differently?”
At the beginning, I used to make stuff up. I was so scared of not seeming like I knew what I was talking about that I made Christianity sound stupid, and I contradicted myself many times. Then I learned how to say “I don’t know”. This was a game-changer.” -Joshua Greene
The statement above from my son is a part of our chapter “Be Honest About Your Questions” in the book we’re writing together called, College Prep for Christians. The thing about questions is they are evidence that we are at least thinking about the things above, about God, heaven, and eternal life. To think about those things and engage them as if they are real is an act of fortifying your faith. In Matthew 22 verse 37 we are encouraged to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” I love that last part, “…with all your mind,” because I am and have always been a thinker. I’m analytical. It comes natural for me to be engaged intellectually with the word of God. But sometimes I meditate on the scriptures in a very sensory, emotional way. Sometimes I just bask in the love of God recorded for us in the scriptures, like this one found in Romans, chapter eight “…neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the Love of God which is in Jesus Christ our Lord (verses 38-39). Meditating on the love scriptures may not answer my questions, but it increases my faith in the one who is able to answer all my questions, the one who is so big that in light of Him all my questions seem so small.
