Curious Faith

Ferguson Wilbert Lore

Description

God created us to be curious. We innately wonder about the world, one another, ourselves, and our Creator. But fear of the unknown, cultural taboos, technology, or even church leaders can smother our curiosity.Popular writer Lore Ferguson Wilbert has belonged to Christian communities that discouraged curiosity. The point of the Christian life was to have the right answers, and asking questions reflected a wavering faith. But Wilbert came to discover that the Bible is a permission slip to anyone who wants to ask questions.Reflecting her own theological trajectory toward a more contemplative, expansive faith, Wilbert invites readers to foster curiosity as a spiritual habit. This book explores questions God asks us, questions we ask God, and questions we ask each other. Christianity is not about knowing good answers, says Wilbert, but about asking good questions--ones that foster deeper intimacy with God and others.A Curious Faith invites readers to go beyond pat answers and embrace curiosity, rather than certainty, as a hallmark of authentic faith. Foreword by Seth Haines.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 02 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781493437573
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Endorsements
“There are two familiar temptations today: to fear questions and to idolize them. Lore Ferguson Wilbert has done neither in this gentle, honest, and wise book. Stepping into the beleaguered shoes of the prophets, the psalmists, and the perplexed disciples, Wilbert invites readers into the human experience of faith. Her words are a salve to those of us who wonder, who wait, who impatiently watch for the One who is—and is yet to come.”
— Jen Pollock Michel , author of A Habit Called Faith and Surprised by Paradox
“ A Curious Faith is a beautiful culmination of Lore’s ministry. For years she has invited readers to probe the depths of God—and to engage in self-reflection—with a courage that could only be Spirit-led. This book does not provide definitive answers on every musing but does offer a winsome theology of curiosity, of questioning, and of faith that the answers will come, by and by.”
— Jasmine L. Holmes , author of Carved in Ebony: Lessons from the Black Women Who Shape Us
“We need more writers like Lore Ferguson Wilbert, ones who gently guide us into the grooves of a well-worn faith, the kind acquainted with doubt. Her words invite us to spread our arms out wide beneath the canopy of curiosity, to take a walk along the curved pattern of the question mark, and to breathe in deep the mystery of God.”
— Emily P. Freeman, Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Next Right Thing
“In a world filled with people who think they have all the answers, we desperately need more individuals who know the importance of asking the right questions. Lore Ferguson Wilbert is just such a person. As Lore shows both through her life and in these pages, a strong faith doesn’t just allow questions; it demands them. A curious faith is a robust faith. This invitation to ask good questions will encourage and strengthen you—and your faith.”
— Karen Swallow Prior , Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary; author of On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books
Half Title Page
Also by Lore Ferguson Wilbert
Handle with Care: How Jesus Redeems the Power of Touch in Life and Ministry
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2022 by Lore Ferguson Wilbert
Published by Brazos Press
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.brazospress.com
Ebook edition created 2022
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-3757-3
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Published in association with The Bindery Agency, www.TheBinderyAgency.com.
Baker Publishing Group publications use paper produced from sustainable forestry practices and post-consumer waste whenever possible.
Dedication
To my Bean, for asking and listening and learning to ask some more
Epigraph
When I find myself hotly defending something, wherein I am, in fact, zealous, it is time for me to step back and examine whatever it is that has me so hot under the collar. Do I think it’s going to threaten my comfortable rut? Make me change and grow?—and growing always causes growing pains. Am I afraid to ask questions? Sometimes. But I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children’s books ask questions, and make the reader ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone’s universe.
—Madeleine L’Engle, Do I Dare Disturb the Universe
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
—Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Contents
Cover
Endorsements 1
Half Title Page 3
Also by Lore Ferguson Wilbert 4
Title Page 5
Copyright Page 6
Dedication 7
Epigraph 9
Foreword by Seth Haines 13
PART 1: Questions God Asks: Living Curiously 17
1. Live the Questions 19
2. Where Are You? Genesis 3 28
3. Who Told You That? Genesis 3 32
4. What Have You Done? Genesis 3 36
5. Where Are You Going? Genesis 16 40
6. What Is Your Name? Genesis 32 45
7. What Is in Your Hand? Exodus 4 50
8. What Are You Doing Here? 1 Kings 19 54
9. Where Were You When I Created All This? Job 38–39 59
10. Will You Correct Me? Job 40 64
11. Whom Shall I Send? Isaiah 6 69
12. Is It Right for You to Be Angry? Jonah 4 73
PART 2: Questions We Ask God: Listening Curiously 79
13. Why Was I Born? Jeremiah 20 81
14. Why So Downcast? Psalm 42 87
15. How Can I Be Right with You? Job 25 92
16. Where Are You? Isaiah 63 97
17. Why Do You Hide from Me? Psalm 44 104
18. How Long, Lord? Psalm 13 109
19. Where Can I Go? Psalm 139 113
20. Why Do You Make Me Look at Injustice? Habakkuk 1 118
PART 3 Questions We Wish Someone Would Ask Us: Loving Curiously 123
21. What Are You Looking For? John 1 125
22. Do You Want to Be Well? John 5 130
23. Where Is Your Faith? Luke 8 134
24. Who Condemns You? John 8 139
25. Are You Not Much More Valuable? Matthew 6 144
26. Do You Believe I Am Able to Do This? Matthew 9 150
27. Who Do You Say I Am? Matthew 16 155
28. Can You Wait with Me? Mark 14 161
29. Why Have You Forsaken Me? Mark 15 169
30. The Unasked Questions 171
31. Why Are You Crying and Who Are You Looking For? John 20 176
32. Do You Love Me? John 21 182
Acknowledgments 185
Notes 188
About the Author 192
Back Cover 193
Foreword
Seth Haines
In the back seat of an early ’80s Subaru, staring out the window at miles of Texas hardpan, I asked my mother, “Do you ever get hacked off at Adam and Eve?” These were my precise words— hacked off —and as far as I remember, my mother was so taken by my six-year-old linguistic play that she couldn’t manage an answer. She only laughed.
It was the first question I remember asking, a theological one at that, and it wouldn’t be the last. I asked my Episcopalian grandmother: “Why does your priest dress up in funny clothes?” and “Why do you drink wine during Communion?” and “Why do you recite all those complicated prayers each week?” I asked my other grandmother, the faithful Church of Christer: “Why doesn’t your church use instruments?” and “Why do you talk so much about baptism?” and “Why do you prefer grape juice to wine at Communion?” In late elementary school, I asked my Catholic school teachers: “Why do you pray to Mary instead of praying to Christ himself?” and “What was the deal with all the statues in the sanctuary?” and “Why should I pay a dollar to light a prayer candle?” and “What was a prayer candle, anyway?”
I was nothing if not a born theological questioner. But in a ninth-grade evangelical Sunday school class, I asked a question that was inexplicably off-limits: “How could we know there was a literal seven-day creation?”
Hear the record scratch, the needle skip. Hear the gasp before the silence. Feel the blood rising in my ears.
“The Bible says it, and you should believe it. There are some things we just don’t question.”
This, I think, was my first recollection of theological shame. In that windowless classroom, shame taught me that, in some Christian circles, certain questions are anathematized. That’s the day I decided to keep my questions to myself, reckoning that if I was a questioning Christian, I must not be a very good Christian at all.
As schoolchildren, we’re taught the only dumb question is a question left unasked. In Christian circles, though, we are often taught the opposite. There are ideologies we accept as a matter of course, dogmas we choke down, ways of being we don’t question. We are asked to live into holy-sounding tautologies: things are because they are. But when the pain of life comes knocking—and it will come knocking—we need a framework that goes beyond tautological living. We need a framework that allows for big, audacious, confrontational, unanswerable questions. I didn’t develop that framework until much later in life, but that is a different story for a different time.
We are made in the image of God, and as you’ll find in the pages of this book, God is not only unafraid of questions, but he asks them too. Where are you? Where are you going? What is your name? And when Christ walked among us—the man who was in “very nature God”—he came asking questions. Do you want to be well? Who do you say I am? Why have you forsaken me? It should be no surprise, then, that the patriarchs, prophets, and great saints of the church have posed their own questions. Why was I born? Where are you? Why do you hide from me, Lord? Simply put, to be made in the image of God means to have and hold enormous, unfathomable, existential questions. By this measure, Lore Ferguson Wilbert might be one of the most made-in-the-image-of-God people I know.
I’ve known Lore for nearly a decade. And if there’s one thing I can say about her, it’s this: curiosity is baked into her DNA. It’s this curiosity that led her from a more free-spirited faith to a Texas megachurch that had an answer to every question. It’s the same curiosity that led her out of that megachurch and into a wilderness of exploration. Curiosity led her into an exploration of church history, the mystery of liturgy, the practice of prayer, and a more eucharistic worldview. Curiosity has animated everything about her spiritual life, including the wri