Question, Answer?

One of the problems with how Christianity has been lived out over the past several generations is that people think that they can come to this religion as a place for answers. Which to the extent that Christianity is a religion makes sense, but if you step away from the institution and look at what it is really meant to be, and the teachings of Jesus, to come to the Christian faith for answers is absurd. Sure there are answers to the right questions in scriptures, but if we honestly look at those answers we find that they often lead to other questions, and if we are really honest we often find that our original question wasn’t what we really wanted to know anyway.

The Christian faith is about relationship. Our relationship with God, and our relationship with each other. Relationships seldom leave us with answers. Relationships are hard, messy, and complicated, because they deal with two different beings with different values, interests, and concerns. To find the common ground in relationships questions must be asked, and then more questions, and then some more. It is always a process of digging deeper, of finding out more, and eventually getting to the point once you have learned a lot about another you realize that there will always be more to learn and adapt to because just as you are not standing still in your life, neither is the other that you are in relationship with. It is a Truth that God never changes, however since he is in relationship with us and we are ever changing, the way that God relates to us as individuals, as well as the way that he is relating to our current place in history, means that God can be unchanging yet not static at the same time.

I find it interesting that Jesus almost always answered a question with another question, or a parable, but not usually an answer. Seriously, check it out. So why would he do that? Was he trying to be confusing? Did they not ask the right questions? I think that the answer is that this life isn’t about having all the answers; it is about going deeper with each other and our God. That comes from spending time being together, not from having a list of all the right answers to a bunch of questions that actually have very little importance.