“Why did God make popcorn, penguins, Moses, giraffes and everyone?” asked my four year old son, Knox. I thought, well that really covers the full extent of His creation doesn’t it? I responded with a terribly long pause. I was fortunate that he asked another question before I could respond to the first. “How can Jesus be in heaven and my heart at the same time?” Excited that I had a quick answer I replied, “because God is omnipresent buddy!” His wrinkled and tilted forehead let me know right away that I needed a thesaurus or a better preschool version to my answer. 

I was completely honored that he was bringing some real life questions about God but part of me was scared to death to get it wrong. Insecurities about my knowledge of the bible kept me from asking the very same questions in fear that I’d look dumb in front of others. 

I can remember early on when my wife, Erin, and I were dating. We were reading the bible together a lot – I highly recommended this for all couples but especially young folks! but I was fairly new to reading scripture. If my study bible didn’t have the answer, then I didn’t either! Questions would naturally come up and I’d think, Erin has been in church her whole life and I cannot look stupid because she probably knows the answer or meaning of this passage. Meanwhile she was thinking, I should probably know the answer or meaning to this passage because I’ve been in church my whole life. Neither one of us knew the answer or meaning but didn’t want to fess up and learn!

This is an important topic explored in the book Another Gospel wherein author Alisa Childers shares her research about questions and doubts. 

“Fuller Youth Institute (FYI) studied the spiritual progression of five hundred youth group graduates during their first three years of college. Kara Powell, FYI’s executive director, wrote that one of the main reasons Christian youth abandoned their faith after high school was because, at some point in their lives, they’d expressed doubts about what they’d been taught to believe. Instead of providing a safe place to process those uncertainties, well-meaning church leaders told them they shouldn’t even ask such questions in the first place. This led them to conclude that Christianity was a house of cards—the church couldn’t deal with their doubts, and neither could God.”

 Kara Powell, “Steve Jobs, Back to School, and Why Doubt Belongs in Your Youth Group Curriculum,” Christianity Today, September 2012 https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/september-web-only/steve-jobs-back-to-school-and-why-doubt-belongs-in-your.html

A different approach to our questions…

• Ask God. He isn’t afraid of our hard questions. 
• Ask your community. Don’t be afraid to ask a question even if you think you should already know the answer. 
• If you’re a Christian – don’t let insecurity about your biblical knowledge be a stumbling block to sharing Jesus with others, leading family or workplace devotions, etc. If you don’t know the answer, respond with, “you know, I don’t know but I’m willing to explore this with you. Let’s study this together.”
• If you’re not a Christian and have doubts about whether God even exists, that’s okay! Hey, email me [email protected]; I’d love to talk about it with you. You’re not alone when it comes to doubting and questions. You can definitely be a Christian with some doubts so email me about those too!

I sought the LORD, and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears. Psalm 34:4

Just fishing with my daddy, 

Ryan

Some more resources for you…

https://www.gotquestions.org/

https://www.instagram.com/jpokluda/ @jpokluda (Pastor JP does Friday Q&A every Friday on instagram)

Ask me Anything Podcast with Pastor J.D. Greear https://jdgreear.com/resources/ask-me-anything-podcast/

https://www.youtube.com/user/thebeatagp