The Courage To Stay Curious – Faithful Questioning

(Part 1)

This is Part 1 of a two-part series on faithful questioning. Next week, we’ll explore practical ways to question well and build communities that welcome curiosity.

When Questions Feel Dangerous

“Mom, was God drunk when he made me?”

I was distracted by the messy kitchen around us, cleaning up after a late dinner and hurrying the kids through the nighttime routine. The question stopped me mid-wipe of the counter.

“What?”

“Never mind.” She sulked off to her room, leaving me questioning if I heard my eleven-year-old correctly.

Later, after teeth were brushed and pajamas were on, she crawled into bed with the confidence of someone who had solved a complex problem during her bedtime routine.

“I think he was drunk,” she announced matter-of-factly. “Here’s how it happened. God was on the assembly line, and my name came along right when he saw this big red button that said cancer. He looked at that button and thought, ‘I wonder what would happen if I pushed that.’ And then he pushed it, and I was made.”

My soul shattered under her sudden theology.

This is my daughter who lost her eye to cancer at six months old. My daughter who has spent years asking questions about God, heaven, and why her body is different from other kids. My daughter who approaches faith the way she approaches science—with relentless curiosity and a demand for answers that make sense.

“Sweetie,” I managed, “the Bible says you were fearfully and wonderfully made.”

“Yes, but he showed up drunk that day.”

Her explanation brought her comfort because it answered the question that haunted her: Why me? A drunk God explained everything. It also left me theologically baffled and wrestling with how to honor her questions while guiding her toward truth.

But here’s what I’ve learned from years of my children’s unfiltered questions: when Christ said we were to have the faith of a child, it didn’t mean we were to believe blindly. It meant we were to approach the unknowable with awe and questions.

Looking back, I realize that moment taught me something I never learned in seminary: in many Christian spaces, curiosity is treated as the enemy of faith rather than its companion. Questions that feel dangerous are discouraged.

But here’s what I’ve learned from years of faithful questioning: we’ve gotten this exactly backward.

How the God of Scripture Welcomes Questions

When I read through Scripture, I’m struck by how many of our spiritual heroes were accomplished questioners. They weren’t quiet, submissive followers who accepted everything without inquiry. They were wrestlers, arguers, and persistent askers.

Jacob literally wrestled with God through the night, refusing to let go until he received a blessing. We celebrate this story as faith, not rebellion. Moses argued with God at the burning bush, offering excuse after excuse for why he wasn’t the right person. Abraham negotiated with God over Sodom and Gomorrah, pushing back on what seemed like divine injustice.

Sarah laughed at God’s promise. The text doesn’t condemn her laughter. It acknowledges the human response to the impossible and then shows God’s faithfulness anyway.

Jesus spent his entire ministry surrounded by disciples who asked constant questions. “Who is the greatest?” “Should we call down fire?” “What does this parable mean?” “Will you restore the kingdom now?” Instead of rebuking them for their curiosity, Jesus patiently taught them. He often answered their questions with better questions that led them deeper.

The pattern is clear. The God of Scripture is not threatened by human curiosity. He engages with it.

Faithful Questioning as Spiritual Practice

There’s a profound difference between questions that lead to cynicism and questions that lead to wonder. Cynical questions seek to tear down without building up. They’re motivated by hurt, anger, or a desire to justify walking away. Sacred questions arise from a desire to know God more deeply, to understand His ways more clearly, to follow Him more faithfully.

Sacred questions don’t start with “Why should I believe?” They start with wonder.

They don’t ask “Is God good?” assuming the answer is no. They ask “How is God good?” trusting that the answer, while complex, is ultimately yes.

This distinction matters because it shapes not only what we ask but how we approach the unknown. Sacred curiosity holds space for mystery while remaining committed to the relationship. It acknowledges that some questions may not have neat answers this side of heaven. And that’s okay.

The goal isn’t to solve God like a math problem. The goal is to know Him like a person. Real relationships always involve questions, discoveries, and occasional confusion. After all, if our own spouses leave us confused and bewildered at times, why would we think that the Creator of the Universe would fit into a tiny understandable box?

The Lie of Certainty

Somewhere along the way, many of us absorbed the lie that strong faith means having all the answers. We learned to confuse confidence with certainty, conviction with closed-mindedness. But what if the opposite is true?

What if the person who demands absolute certainty about every theological detail is actually demonstrating a small view of God rather than large faith?

Think about it. If God is truly infinite, eternal, and beyond our full comprehension, shouldn’t we expect to have questions? Shouldn’t mystery be part of the experience rather than a problem to solve?

The medieval mystics understood this. They spoke of “learned ignorance.” The wisdom that comes from recognizing the limits of human understanding when it comes to the divine. They saw questions not as failures of faith but as invitations into deeper communion with a God too magnificent to be fully grasped. (This contemplative tradition continues to offer rich wisdom for modern seekers wrestling with mystery and faith.)

When I stopped demanding that my faith provide me with easy answers to complex questions, something beautiful happened. I discovered that God was bigger, more mysterious, and more wonderful than I had ever imagined. My questions didn’t diminish Him. They revealed just how small my previous understanding had been.

Permission to Wonder

If you’ve been taught that questions reveal weak faith, I want to offer you a different perspective: your questions may be evidence that your faith is growing, not shrinking.

When my children were toddlers, they asked simple questions. “Why is the sky blue?” “Where do babies come from?” “Can I have a cookie?” As they’ve grown older, their questions have become more complex, more nuanced. They ask about justice, suffering, purpose, relationships. Their questions have deepened because their capacity for understanding has expanded.

The same is true spiritually. Simple faith asks simple questions. Maturing faith asks harder ones. When you find yourself wrestling with questions about God’s justice, the nature of salvation, the problem of suffering, or the interpretation of Scripture, you’re not backsliding. You’re growing up.

Your questions don’t disqualify you from faith community. They qualify you for deeper conversation, richer theology, and more authentic relationship with both God and others.

The courage to stay curious is actually the courage to keep believing that God is worth knowing, even when—especially when—knowing Him is more complex than we first realized.

Living in the Questions

I’ve learned that some of my deepest spiritual growth has happened not when I found answers, but when I learned to live faithfully in the questions. There’s a difference between having faith and having everything figured out.

My daughter still asks hard questions. She’s wondered if she’ll have two working eyes in heaven. She’s asked why God allows suffering. She’s questioned whether her scars make her broken. Each question has taught me something about the nature of faith and the character of God.

When she asked about her scars, I realized something profound: her question implied that she was broken, but when I look at her, I don’t see broken. I see beautiful. I see a testimony of resilience and grace. Her scars tell a story of survival, of medical miracles, of a family that walked through darkness together and came out stronger. (When healing doesn’t come the way we expect, we learn different lessons about God’s faithfulness.)

Our scars—physical, emotional, spiritual—tell our stories. They show both the world’s impact on our lives and our impact on the world. They don’t make us broken; they make us human.

Faith isn’t the absence of questions. It’s the decision to keep walking with God even when the path ahead isn’t completely clear. It’s trusting His character when His methods confuse us. It’s holding loosely to our interpretations while holding tightly to our relationship with Him.

This doesn’t mean we abandon the pursuit of truth or settle for wishy-washy relativism. It means we approach truth with humility, recognizing that our understanding is always partial, always growing, always in need of refinement. Sometimes this means questioning interpretations that have been used to justify harm rather than promote love.

It means we can say “I don’t know” without shame and “I’m still learning” without apology.

My children have taught me that when we slow down and listen to their questions, we begin to see the wonder all around us. Their curiosity isn’t a threat to faith—it’s an invitation into deeper understanding.

The Gift of Sacred Curiosity

Here’s what I’ve discovered in my own journey from fearful certainty to faithful curiosity. When we create space for questions, we create space for wonder. When we admit what we don’t know, we open ourselves to new discoveries. When we stop defending our theological positions as if they were perfect, we become available to the possibility that God might want to teach us something new.

This isn’t about compromising core Christian beliefs. It’s about holding them with open hands rather than clenched fists. It’s about being confident in God’s character while remaining humble about our complete understanding of His ways. It’s about moving beyond comfort to discover what authentic faith looks like when it’s not wrapped in cultural assumptions.

Some of the most mature Christians I know are also the most comfortable with questions. They’ve learned that certainty about God’s goodness doesn’t require certainty about every theological detail. They’ve discovered that faith and intellectual honesty can coexist beautifully. (Contemplative teachers like Richard Rohr have long championed this integration of mature faith and honest questioning.)

They’ve found the courage to stay curious.

This kind of faith requires stepping beyond comfort zones—moving from the safety of easy answers into the uncertain but sacred space of authentic spiritual growth. It’s what I call living in the margins, where real transformation happens.

What’s Next

Questions are sacred, but learning to ask them well is an art. How do we distinguish between healthy curiosity and destructive cynicism? How do we find communities that welcome our questions rather than silence them? How do we support others who are wrestling with their own faith questions?

Next week, we’ll explore the practical side of faithful questioning. We’ll talk about creating safe spaces for curiosity, building spiritual practices that honor both faith and inquiry, and finding our people in a world that often prefers easy answers to honest questions.

Until then, I want to leave you with this. Your questions are not evidence of weak faith. They might just be evidence that your faith is strong enough to handle the complexity of following an infinite God in a complicated world.

And that, I think, is something worth celebrating.

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What questions have you been afraid to ask? How has your relationship with curiosity and faith evolved over time? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Next week: Part 2 – Sacred Questions – A Practical Guide to Faithful Curiosity