So, I’ve begun the book I mentioned yesterday, The Sacredness of Questioning Everything by David Dark.

Can I just say he starts off with a bang…and I was hooked after the first page?  I hope Dark’s okay with me quoting long passages from the book.  You need to read this book if you’re continually wondering why it seems you’re the only person questioning God and everything surrounding Him.  Go, get it now.  Read it.  I’ve only begun the discussion on this one!

Listen to this.

“Dig, if you’re willing, this picture: a tiny town with a tight-knit community.  The people share joys and concerns, woes and gossip.  They keep a close and often affectionate watch on one another’s business.  They talk and talk and talk.

“What an outsider would notice within minutes of listening in on conversations are constant and slightly self-conscious references to ‘Uncle Ben.’  A beautiful sunset prompts a townsperson to say, ‘Isn’t Uncle Ben awesome?’  Good news brings out how thankful and overjoyed they feel toward Uncle Ben.  Even in tragedy, a local might say, in a slightly nervous fashion, ‘You know, it just goes to show how much we all need Uncle Ben.  I know–we all know–that Uncle Ben is good.’

“Uncle Ben is always on their minds.

“Even when the magnificence of Uncle Ben isn’t spoken of aloud, he’s somehow present in facial expressions and actions.  It’s the look of stopping a train of thought before it goes too far, of letting an uncompleted sentence trail off into awkward silence, of swiftly changing the subject.  It’s as if a conversation can go only so far.  People hardly ever look one another in the eye for long.

“At the beginning of each week there’s a meeting in the largest house in town.  Upon arriving, people get caught up in good fellowship and animated discussion of the week’s events, with conversations straining in the direction of Uncle Ben.  When a bell sounds, talk ceases.  Everyone moves to the staircase and descends into the basement.  Each person sits facing an enormous, rumbling furnace.  Seated close to the furnace door, as if he were a part of the furnace itself, is a giant man in black overalls.  His back is turned to them.

“They wait in silence.  In time the man turns around.  His face is angry, contorted.  He fixes a threatening stare of barely contained rage on each person, then roars, ‘Am I good?’

“To which they respond in unison, ‘Yes, Uncle Ben, you are good.’

“‘Am I worthy of praise?’

“‘You alone are worthy of our praise.’

“‘Do you love me more than anything?  More than anyone?’

“‘We love you and you alone, Uncle Ben.’

“‘You better love me, or I’m going to put you…in here’–he opens the furnace door to reveal a gaping darkness–‘forever.’

“Out of the darkness can be heard sounds of anguish and lament.  Then he closes the furnace door and turns his back to them.  They sit in silence.

“Finally, feeling reasonably assured that Uncle Ben has finished saying what he has to say, they leave.  They live their lives as best they can.  They try to think and speak truthfully and do well by one another.  They resume their talk of the wonders of Uncle Ben’s love in anticipation of the next week’s meeting.

“But they’re limited, in myriad ways, by fear.  Fear causes them to censor their own thoughts and words.  Fear prevents them from telling anyone of their inner anguish and fright.  Fear keeps them from recognizing in one another’s eyes their common desperation.  This fear is interwoven, subtly and sometimes not so subtly, in all of their relationships.

“End of story.

“I find this story both jarring and entirely familiar.  It captures some of my worst fears concerning the character of God.  And I suspect a good number of people live their lives haunted by a nightmare similar to this one.  Perhaps you entertain fears like these.  Perhaps Uncle Ben forms your image of the divine even now….”

This is the God I grew up with.  Or at least this is how I experienced Him.  How about you?

Next page:

“Having faith in this brand of God is akin to Orwell’s “double-think”–a disturbing mind trick by which we don’t let ourselves know what’s really going on in our minds for fear of what might follow.  We learn to deny what we think and feel.  The resulting mind-set is one of all fear all the time, a fear that can render us incapable of putting two and two together.  Never quite free to say what we see.”

Did you get that last sentence?  “Never quite free to say what we see.”

How scary is that?

Two pages in:

“I believe deliverance begins with questions.  It begins with people who love questions, people who live with questions and by questions, people who feel a deep joy when good questions are asked.  When we meet these people–some living, some through history and art–things begin to change.  Something is let loose.  When we’re exposed to the liveliness of holding everything up to the light of good questions–what I call “sacred questioning”–we discover that redemption is creeping into the way we think, believe, and see the world.  This re-deeming (re-valuing) of what we’ve made of our lives, a redemption that perhaps begins with the insertion of a question mark beside whatever feels final and absolute and beyond questioning, gives our souls a bit of elbow room, a space in which to breathe and imagine again, as if for the first time.”

So what do we do about this God thing?  I’ve often thought that God has gotten a bum rap, because of our limited minds, and had we grown up to know Him as a person who’s our friend, we might not have so many hang-ups as grownups.

I talked about this dilemma here (while we were in the Ukraine)–how to make God more real, how to make Him not-so-scary, especially to a child.  [This is a continual worry of mine.  I’ve not talked to Liliana about God yet.  I want to make sure she understands before I do.  And another part of me wants her to be able to ask her own questions, if she doesn’t understand, and this requires her to be a little older.]

Now, if you’ve quit believing in God, or never did, then this won’t be a problem for you.  But please, if you’ve always believed in God, because you were taught, way back when, that it is an appropriate and good thing to do, at least do your homework, and figure this HUGE question out for yourself.  Don’t accept it blindly.  And, of course, the answer might be different than you expect.

Does that scare you?  Or are you able to live in the questions?

[Post image: Questions by immrchris at stock.xchng]