I know. I’m a high school English teacher. Whether or not my students define it correctly on assessments, I know oxymorons, and despite the perceptions of the skeptical and the seeking and even the insistence of the saved, “Intellectual Christian” is not one of them.
From an early age, I loved to read. I would hide novels behind my textbooks as early as grade school, and it only worked because I was quiet, made excellent grades, and always put the book away if asked. As a teacher myself, I know now that every single one of my teachers knew what I was doing. I only thought that I was sneaky. No, they encouraged my reading, my hunger for stories and for knowledge (as long as I kept my grades high.) In education, we sometimes call this “enrichment.” If a gifted student is bored because they are not being challenged, they often become behavior problems. I amused myself quite well, and my teachers often recommended books for me to read or had me do reports on them for extra grades. I was a teacher’s dream—curious and eager to learn (and well-behaved), of course. I loved school for that reason—my teachers encouraged me to question.
I also grew up going to school on Sundays, but the atmosphere here was just a little different. I was encouraged to read and to learn. And I did! I read my children’s Bible cover to cover. As I grew older, I delved into every part of the Bible, relishing the comfort of the words of Christ, of the Psalms and Proverbs, but not shying from cryptic passages in the Old Testament nor some of Paul’s more troubling statements in his letters.
However, unlike at school, I was not encouraged to question at church. I was taught that only those that doubted asked questions, and if you had doubts, your faith was weak and suddenly, older people begin to hover and ask questions and call your parents after church. I started my journey with Jesus at the age of 10, and I wanted nothing more than to be a good follower. I was young; I looked up the older. They told me to stop questioning—to stop questioning the evolutionary theory I was being taught at school, first off. To stop questioning the violence of the Old Testament and the lack of female faces in front of the church. To stop questioning other faith-systems in the world. And after a few very troubling years in middle-school when science and friends from other faiths and my own unguided readings in the forgotten parts of Scripture attacked my psyche. Describing my inner turmoil would be the biggest mistake of a promising young Christian, a leader in her youth group. So I said nothing, leaking out only the rarest emotional question in the midst of invitation.
I reached what I viewed as peace after several years of spiritual agony. I had secretly read about other religions (such study had to be secret or put under the guise of evangelism), and I had concluded that nothing else in the world made sense except Jesus. Despite my leaning towards the poetic and artistic and the magical, even at a young age, I have always been analytical and logical to a fault. And if Jesus made sense, I didn’t need to figure out the rest of the world. And it was a genuine kind of peace. “To live is Christ, and to die is gain,” I often cited. I knew Jesus walked with me; no other question needed be answered more than that one, and that one had been answered with the most illogical and irrefutable certainty.
Throughout college, the peace I had found became attractive to my peers, who struggled with the doubts and questions. They came to me with questions, and I answered them as best as I knew how, always admitting that I didn’t always know the right answer or have the right verse. But not knowing didn’t bother me because I was confident in the one answer that mattered.
I kept learning, reading, praying, trusting.
In college, several things happened. Firstly, I began to work at a Christian camp during my summers, where I continue to frequent as much as possible. There I met mentors and friends who not only believed but questioned too. At the same time. From everything to music to sexuality to teaching…we questioned, talked, prayed. And no one thought less of anyone who wondered.
Second, I left this country and went deep into the jungles of Peru on mission. But instead of building houses or teaching children or anything tangible, I spent my days with other college missionaries teaching Bible stories. We recited stories that we memorized from Genesis and Exodus, and the villagers listened to Spanish and native translations over and over until they had the stories memorized, too. In this tiny village in the middle of nowhere, where all they had were bamboo huts with mud floors and the chicken and rice and fruit they grew themselves. The preacher was paralyzed because he slipped on a wet rock in a river landed on his back. For days, he was fine, but one day, he fell the ground and never walked again. He had no wheelchair. But yet, all any one of these people wanted from me was for me to repeat the story of Moses receiving the ten commandments over and over so that they could tell it to their children.
Lastly, in college, I made several close friends in college—smart, funny, loving, respectable friends—with alternate sexual orientation. I was raised in a conservative Baptist tradition; these friends shaped my beliefs unstoppably. Some had a true desire to seek God, even know Jesus specifically, but the worst hurts of their lives had been inflicted upon them by Christians. And they were afraid that I would be the same, make the same judgment as the ones before me. That they expected and dreaded this reaction from me was one of the most heartbreaking moments in my life, and it continues to haunt me. Because I called myself a follower of Jesus, they expected me to abandon them, condemn them, hate them. But because I follow Jesus and believe God is love, I absolutely could not hate or condemn my friends, fellow people with feelings and hurts and priceless intrinsic value.
These three moments occurred when I was pursuing knowledge and training to be a teacher, learning and learning and teaching unless I was asleep. And I could no longer keep my questions swallowed. Certainly, my absolute and continued certainty in the existence of God, the reality of Jesus, and the presence of the Spirit were more than enough to give me peace, to keep me content. Jesus is more than enough for me.
For me. There, as Shakespeare would say, is the rub.
Working at camp and going to Peru and knowing my friends were hurting finally showed me why I still wanted to question, even though my faith was enough for me.
I am not alone.
It is not enough that I can simply be satisfied that I, though I, despite my love for learning, will never know all that God knows while I live on this earth. Elsewhere, other Christians are asking questions, the same questions, and like I didn’t as a teenager, have no one to talk to about them.
It is not enough that I can read the Bible in the safety and comfort of my middle-class American existence with little knowledge or concern for the rest of the world. There is a paralyzed pastor in a tiny, impoverished village in Peru who has no Bible in his language and no wheelchair with which to work and minister to his village and feed his family. But yet, all he asks for, with more bravery than I have seen in my life, is for us to pray for the village to embrace the Scriptures when the stories are retold around a fire or a meal.
It is not enough that I can date and marry and create a family in love and happiness with only the most trifling interrogation from my male relatives. There are others in the world struggling with their sexuality being attacked by the church in the name of God. What we believe about alternate sexuality becomes irrelevant if we stand by and watch (or participate!) in the cruel and unjust dehumanization of our brothers and sisters whether it is for their sexuality or race or ideology or gender.
Perhaps I would be happier if I didn’t ask questions. I wouldn’t be up late at night writing blogs and personal essays or reading when I should be asleep. I wouldn’t face judgment or concern from friends and family in the church if I did not question. I could keep hold of that fragile peace I found as a teenager in knowing that if Christ walked with me, nothing else could shake it. Nothing else mattered. That is just as absolutely true as it is wrong.
But, if I never question, I will never learn. If I never learn, I will never teach. I must do these two things; it is at the core of who I am as an intellectual, as a human being with frailties and passions. I will question. But I know one thing for certain.
Because Jesus walks with me, everything matters.
