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The UK Bible Students Website Christian Biblical Studies
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QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS
A Talk at
the Monday Club
By Lee
Bridges
All Scripture citations are to the NIV-UK unless otherwise
indicated
‘DADDY, WHY is the sea
blue?’
‘Well Sophie, could it be because it’s reflecting the
blue sky?’
A thoughtful silence.
‘But why is the sky blue,
Daddy?’
‘Well, there are no clouds today, are there? If the sky
is grey the sea looks grey as well.’
Another pause for thought, and Daddy waits.
‘Daddy, what if the sky was
yellow?’
Sitting for half an hour on a coastal train behind a patient Dad and his three-year-old daughter was a highly entertaining experience. We all know how children are constantly asking questions, sometimes awkward ones, but curiosity is natural in happy, healthy children.
They want to know, and it’s often the granddads and grandmas like some of us that are in the firing line.
And as we don’t always have all the answers, we find
ourselves echoing the puzzled protest: ‘but why?’
Curiosity is by no means limited to childhood. It is an essential element of learning, the driving force that fuels the conquering of problems, the finding of solutions, and the mastery of many branches of science and technology.
The great Albert Einstein said: ‘I
have no special talents I am only passionately
curious.’
There may of course be less altruistic motives in a
questioner’s mind, and curiosity may sometimes be seen as an over-inquisitive
interest in others’ affairs, an appetite that satisfies the need of the
gossip-monger. In others the persistent asking of questions may indicate a
challenge, a sceptical attitude as to others’ views or
motives.
Curious About
Something?
Was it partly curiosity that prompted Eve in the Garden
of Eden to listen to the crafty serpent’s suggestions? He used the questioning
method: ‘Did
God really say, “You must not eat from any tree in the garden”?’ (Genesis 3: 1).
What a can of worms that question opened up!
Yet the newly-created couple would surely have learned
to know and understand their environment by finding answers to their questions.
They would befriend the other living creatures around them and become familiar
with their habits. They would discover the great variety of textures and
flavours in their diet, and by exploring their world within the boundaries of
Eden they would gain some understanding of agriculture and horticulture,
observing the changing times and seasons, and perhaps inventing some form of
early calendar to record their experiences. And more than this ― they had a
Divine commission (Genesis 1: 28):
God blessed
them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and
subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every
living creature that moves on the ground.’
Since that day when their disobedience incurred the
divinely-prescribed penalty, man has been ‘subduing the earth’. Survival has
been a basic instinct, a battle against the thorns and thistles, by the sweat of
the brow and the aching of the joints.
By the way, how
are your onions doing this year?
Satan’s question to Eve was not prompted by a need for
information. It was a challenge, a clever nudge at the woman’s natural
curiosity, as if to say, ‘You don’t believe everything you hear, do you?’ This
was the first recorded enticement towards scepticism, and today, more than at
any time in history, the authority of God, and even His very existence, is
called into question and popularly dismissed.
Human authorities, even if elected by public sanction,
are also targeted, often justifiably so. This is usually the nature of such BBC
programme as ‘Question Time’ and ‘Any Questions?’ The sceptical attitude
prevails.
The Age of
Innocence
The enlightenment of this modern age, and in particular
the exposure of information that in our own youth was considered too delicate
for young ears, has reduced the ‘age of innocence’ to the very young. After
asking my Mammy where babies come from, I went searching under the gooseberry
bushes in granddad’s garden, but soon let the matter drop, no doubt sensing a
deception. Many of us were innocent in the sense of being ignorant of the facts
of life until well after the onset of puberty, when curiosity sent us asking for
answers. Today, an infant asking: ‘Mummy, where did I come from?’ usually gets a
straight answer: ‘You came out of Mummy’s tummy.’
Yes ― you’ve guessed the next question: ‘But Mummy, where was I before
that?’
The beautiful purity still seen in the very young is all
too fleeting. The disillusion and crudity of a sinful world touches all of us,
and what Satan had suggested to Eve would be a great advantage, became in
reality a bitter burden, borne by all humanity. Eating the forbidden fruit, he
said, would make them like God, knowing good and evil (Genesis
3: 1-6). We are more conscious of evil in our modern world than ever our
forebears were, saturated as we are with instant news, predominantly of trouble,
conflict, cruelty and disaster. But thank God that He permits us a vision of
innocence, of purity, of goodness, in the face of a little child, an example,
Jesus declared, to all who would enter His promised
Kingdom.
What About
Boredom?
Dorothy Parker, American poet and critic of the mid-20th
century, is reputed to have said that the cure for boredom is curiosity, and
that there is no cure for curiosity. Are you ever bored?
Now there’s a
risky question to ask as I look around for yawns or drooping eyelids!
Sometimes we
may find ourselves in company that is less than inspiring, where efforts to
arouse interest are met with a grunt. We probably all know somebody who loves to
be miserable, and gloominess has become almost a fashion. For a prime example of
world-weariness read Ecclesiastes chapters 1 and 2. It will either send you into
a temporary depression, or set you chuckling at the enormity of Solomon’s
disillusionment with life, and in particular his fear of the grim reaper.
We have a
welcome contrast in the confidence of another patriarch, even in his deepest
affliction: ‘If a man die, shall he
live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change
come’ (Job 14: 14, King James Version). Job answered his own
question. He knew, as we do, that a Redeemer would ― in due time ― call him forth from the
grave.
We don’t have
all the answers, but are we still
asking? Children naturally want to know what happens when somebody dies, and
even the non-religious
have an inbuilt reluctance to accept that death ends everything. The Apostle
Paul reminded the early Christians that ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him’ (1
Corinthians 2: 9). The prospect of having our eyes and ears opened to God’s
plans for our future surely takes some of the sting out of death. We awake in
the morning to a new, exciting adventure into
eternity.
No excuse then,
for being bored, uninterested, pessimistic. Didn’t Jesus say ‘be of good cheer;
I have overcome the world’?
May We Question the
Almighty?
Sophie’s Daddy
delighted in his daughter’s curiosity and treasured her simple trust. How can we
think that our loving Heavenly Father is less pleased at our own persistent
asking for answers? Our own sketchy grasp of God’s plan we owe largely to the
faithful prophets of the past: ‘Surely the Sovereign
LORD does
nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets’ (Amos 3: 7).
Had they questioned the Lord? Surely they had! And the answers they received are
recorded in what we refer to as ‘the word of God’. The Bible is not merely a
collection of moral instructions or words of comfort. It is the gift of a loving
Father who delights to answer your questions and mine, and says ‘Come now, let us reason together’ (Isaiah 1:
18).
It isn’t enough
to say: ‘God so loved the world; that’s all I need to know’, then sit and wait
for the evidence of that love. The evidence has to be sought out, Scripture,
reason and facts assembled and examined, and the ready appeal to the Lord must
be made. So we ask our Daddy ― What?
and Why? and When? and How?
Many who scorn
the Bible nevertheless set us an example of diligence in their search for truth.
Driven by some compulsive curiosity, they question everything ― and often come
up with the answers. Where answers are illusive, they continue probing, and many
in recent decades have been deeply engrossed in searching for evidence of life
beyond the confines of planet Earth.
What do you
think of that? As believers do we have an advantage here, knowing that there is life beyond the
Earth? But where? Within this universe? Or is there perhaps a parallel universe
invisible to human sight, where our Heavenly Father dwells along with all the
angelic beings? Lord, where are you?
Questions,
questions! We don‘t have all the answers, but we do have the assurance that
whatever is good and profitable for us to know our Heavenly Father will show it
to us, if only we will ask Him. Now I’ve just one more question ― to Martha on
the end of the back row:
Is that cup of
tea ready?
__________________________
Copyright
November 2009 ukbiblestudents.co.uk
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