Did You Ask a Good Question Today?

A friend once asked Isidor Rabi, a Nobel Prize winner in science, how he became a scientist. Rabi replied that every day after school his mother would talk to him about his school day. She wasn't so much interested in what he had learned that day, but she always inquired, "Did you ask a good question today?" Without a doubt, asking good questions helped Rabi succeed.

Questions are essential to science. They are also essential to life and to faith.

In one of his books, pastor Rob Bell writes, "Some communities don't permit open, honest inquiry about the things that matter most. Lots of people have voiced a concern, expressed a doubt, or raised a question, only to be told by their family, church, friends, or tribe: We don't discuss those things here."

"I believe the discussion itself is divine. Abraham does his best to bargain with God, most of the book of Job consists of arguments by Job and his friends about the deepest questions of human suffering, God is practically on trial in the book of Lamentations, and Jesus responds to almost every question he's asked with...a question."

What strikes me about that list — Abraham bargaining, Job arguing, Lamentations putting God on trial, Jesus answering with questions — is that none of it looks like tidy, comfortable religion. It looks like people who took God seriously enough to wrestle. And God, it seems, welcomes that.

May your family, your church, your friends be a community open to honest inquiry. May you ask good questions. And may you trust that God's Spirit is patient enough, and big enough, to meet you inside them.

Prayer: Eternal God, you are holy and you are mystery — and yet you are loving, and as near as our next breath. We confess that we don't always have the answers. We confess that sometimes we are afraid to even ask the questions. Give us the courage to bring our honest doubts and deepest wonderings to you. And grant us the grace and peace that surpasses understanding, even now. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.