Christians have never been strangers to mystery, but somewhere along the way, many learned to fear it. Questions became liabilities, not invitations. We built faith like a fortress — thick walls of certainty meant to protect belief from the wildness of wonder. But the longer those walls stand, the less light gets in.
It’s strange, because the Bible itself is full of question-askers. Abraham presses God to reconsider His judgment. Job demands to know why the righteous suffer. Mary wonders aloud how the impossible could happen through her. Even Jesus, nailed to the cross, cries out, “Why have you forsaken me?” Scripture, at its heart, is a conversation between divine mystery and human curiosity.
Amanda Williams has spent more than a decade watching that conversation come back to life. As co-founder of She Reads Truth, she’s witnessed an unlikely trend — people rediscovering the Bible not as a rulebook, but as a conversation.
“We’ve seen this culture of curiosity develop,” she said. “People want to see what Scripture really says, not just what other people say about it.”
Williams doesn’t talk about Bible reading as a task to check off or a spiritual exercise to conquer. She talks about it like an invitation — something simple and sacred that’s always been there, even when religion made it feel like homework.
“The audacity of it still amazes me,” she said. “That God actually wants to be known, and that He gives us Scripture as a way of knowing Him. On my best days, that overshadows all the shoulds.”
That small shift — from duty to curiosity — changes everything. It frees people from performing faith and lets them participate in it.
“Curiosity is a gift,” Williams said. “But I think sometimes it feels threatening in the Church. We act like God’s afraid of questions. But I don’t think He is. The same way a parent wouldn’t be offended if their child asked why the family does something — you’d be glad they asked. You’d want to talk about it.”
Williams believes the modern church’s discomfort with questions has less to do with doctrine and more to do with control. Certainty feels safe. It’s measurable. It’s easy to teach.
Curiosity, on the other hand, can’t be managed. It might lead somewhere new—or somewhere that can’t be explained in a sermon. But that’s also where growth happens.
“I think doubt is a gift, too,” she said. “Because it’s a gateway into pressing in.”
Her words echo something ancient — what the mystics and prophets seemed to know instinctively: that a God who can’t be questioned isn’t much of a God at all. The faith that endures isn’t the kind that never wonders; it’s the kind that keeps wondering.
Williams has seen that wonder up close. She describes women — many of them lifelong churchgoers — who have quietly confessed they’ve never read the Bible on their own. They assumed it was too complex, too intimidating, too foreign.
“And we just tell them, ‘Guess what? It’s not. Let’s do it together,’” she said. “That’s my favorite part.”
When she talks about Bible engagement (a phrase she admits sounds clinical), she doesn’t mean reading plans or streaks of perfect devotion.
“If you open the Bible, you’re engaging with it,” she said. “That counts.”
For some, it’s a few verses before work. For others, it’s pages deep into the night. Either way, it’s enough to begin.
Williams compares it to hearing a song you’ve only ever read about.
“Someone can describe it, and you can even listen to it,” she said. “But when you experience it for yourself, it becomes yours.”
That moment — when Scripture stops being something someone else explains and starts being something you’ve encountered — is what she’s after.
Still, she admits curiosity is costly. It disrupts comfortable faith. It forces believers to sit with tension, to read the parts of Scripture that don’t make sense or feel unkind or seem unfair.
“If you’re trying to keep your encounter with Scripture clean and curated, that’s just not real,” she said. “The Bible doesn’t skip over the hard parts. God doesn’t look away from the darkest parts of humanity. Why should we?”
In other words, curiosity isn’t about collecting trivia or satisfying an intellectual itch. It’s about honesty. It’s about coming to the text as we are — confused, skeptical, hopeful — and believing God will meet us there.
“I don’t have to check my humanity at the door,” Williams said. “That’s who God designed me to be.”
To be curious is to love God enough to believe He can handle our uncertainty. To keep reading, even when the words don’t fit neatly into categories. To let the questions do their work, reshaping us into people who seek instead of settle.
The opposite of faith, it turns out, isn’t doubt. It’s indifference. And the cure for indifference might just be curiosity — a small spark of wonder that keeps the light in.
