As a professional educator, my greatest challenge in the classroom increasingly revolves around fostering what we call “active learning.” Humans are inherently curious, yet this curiosity appears dormant in many of my students—young people who seem content with sitting in front of a television or Xbox, passively consuming information as though life and my classroom were nothing more than a drive-thru window at a fast-food restaurant. This apathy compels me to climb on desks, shout lines from Julius Caesar, and offer extra credit as if it were a government bailout. I’ll try anything to get the first generation with an unprecedented wealth of knowledge at their fingertips to ask questions that cannot be answered at the push of a button. I’m increasingly perplexed by their access to a world of information that didn’t exist just a decade ago.
With ChatGPT and the ever-reliable Google, no question remains unanswered for more than a few moments in today’s world. Yet, paradoxically, this access seems to be stifling the imagination and curiosity of my students. Initially, I viewed this as just another hurdle in teaching, but I’ve become more disturbed as this trend seeps into the evangelical world. Perhaps we Christians feel the need to compete with the resources of the information age, to have all the answers at our disposal. Whatever led us down this path, it’s now evident that many of us are not only hesitant to ask tough questions, but we also actively discourage curiosity. Questions, doubts, and uncertainty are often portrayed as signs of spiritual weakness. We present our faith as the ultimate answer key, a spiritual version of Google.
Let me illustrate this with an email I received recently from an old high school friend. She was genuinely concerned about a particular Christian author she saw listed on my Facebook bookshelf, convinced that this author was a heretic undermining the very fabric of our faith. I asked her, “What concerns you about this author?”
Her response was telling: “If you are truly open to discovering what is true and what is not, then I would be happy to discuss this further with you.”
Ah, the Truth—no room for discovery, no room for questions, no room for doubt. What my friend was really saying was, “You are wrong, and when you’re ready to see things my way—the one true way of interpreting Scripture—then maybe we can talk.” It left me wondering if God is big enough to rescue me from reading this author.
I recently read a fascinating book titled The Truth War by John MacArthur, subtitled Fighting for Certainty in an Age of Deception. The rattlesnake on the cover was unsettling enough, but inside, I was further unnerved to find MacArthur consistently smearing church leaders he had dubbed “emergent” or “postmodern,” taking their words out of context and implying their association with “the enemy.” From the author’s perspective, he was defending biblical truth against false teachers and doctrinal saboteurs—something he apparently believes God needs help with these days. The book left me wondering if MacArthur ever sought to understand the context of the quotes he used or, better yet, if he ever sat down to have a conversation with one of the leaders he criticized—to take time for discovery, for questions, for curiosity.
This article is not a referendum on postmodernism or emergent thinking, nor is it an attack on fundamentalism. However, I believe the book’s title and the dialogue within it articulate a growing problem within the evangelical community. The Truth, as many interpret it, leaves no room for questions, no room for doubt, no room for curiosity—ultimately, no room for humanity. When wielded this way, the Truth becomes a sword, demanding intellectual submission in an area of life where God, in fact, invites us to dismantle our “Towers of Babel.”
How do we reconcile faith without questions, faith without doubt? How can our faith grow without curiosity? ChatGPT and Google won’t confirm the Resurrection for us. Brandishing the word “Truth” as an all-consuming fire that devours doubt and leaves no question unanswered is not faith. Whatever our approach to the Bible, we must recognize that God is big enough to handle our curiosity and our questions. In fact, God invites us to ask the tough questions. Sometimes, I wonder if God doesn’t feel like a frustrated teacher—climbing on desks, shouting through verses of Shakespeare, yearning for us to be curious.
The Psalmists, David, Solomon and Job approached God with tough questions, with anger bordering on disrespect, with heartfelt, pain-ridden anguish, and their faith grew as a result. Discouraging doubt, discouraging questions, offering a perfect formula as the answer to all our God-shaped questions does not reflect the immensity of the I AM. In fact, I believe it stunts our spiritual growth and confines God—yes, our Jesus—within a very unattractive and limited human-sized box.
The Crucified and Resurrected Jesus is bigger than your doubts; the Risen Lord is mightier than your questions. Jesus is unafraid of your curiosity. It’s okay—you should ask away.
