The God who loves questions
One cannot possess God. Whoever thinks he possesses the truth, in fact he does nothing of the kind.
The Gospel gives us joy, true joy; faith makes the faces of believers shine, Pope Francis writes in a new foreword to a book by Timothy Radcliffe and Lukasz Popko.
Jesus was always asking questions. One of the first sentences he uttered, according to St John’s gospel, was itself a question: “What are you looking for?” This was addressed to two of the disciples of John the Baptist who followed Jesus. In St Luke’s gospel, the first question of Jesus was addressed to his parents, Joseph and Mary: “Why were you searching for me?” And on the Cross at the end of his earthly life, appealing to the deep compassion of God, he turned to his Father with a question: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And again, risen from the dead, Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene with a further direct question: “Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?”
Jesus loved asking questions. He liked to enter into dialogue with the men and women of his time who crowded around this strange rabbi who spoke of God and of planting the seeds of God’s Kingdom and the treasure hidden in a field and of banquets which were rich feasts. All those who listened to Jesus understood that his questions were not just rhetorical. No, they were a call directly to his listeners as a means of breaking into the depths of their hearts. An attempt to pierce the shield of their egos in order that the balsam of love could penetrate. In Questioning God (Bloomsbury), Timothy Radcliffe and Lukasz Popko look closely at 18 of the questions which God puts to men and women in the Bible. The questions are human, and they address a variety of people, so that they may turn to God and to Jesus. The question is a human gesture, indeed it is ultra-human: it makes apparent the desire to know, to understand each one of us, in our inner selves, not to content ourselves with the present, but to go further, to reach out, to enter deeply into the argument. He who poses questions is not satisfied. He is animated by a restlessness which shines and represents an energy, a vitality. Slovenly hearts do not ask questions.
Those who know all the answers do not ask questions with no specific purpose. They think they have the truth in their pockets, as if they had a pen waiting ready to be used. The Blessed Pierre Claverie, a bishop in Algeria assassinated in 1996, a Dominican friar like the authors of this book, and a martyr for his love and desire for dialogue with his Muslim brethren, loved to repeat this phrase: “I believe. I believe in one God. But I never pretend to possess God, not through Jesus, who reveals him to me, or even through the dogmas of my faith. One does not possess God. Whoever thinks that he possesses the truth, in fact does nothing of the kind.” Here, then, we see the nature of our search, of our innermost desire, this longing to ask questions, to ask questions of other people. We know that philosophy arose from the big questions of our existence. “Who am I?” “Why is there something and not nothing?” “From whence do I come?” “In which direction is my life leading?”
This is precisely why Christianity is closest to those who ask questions, because, if you still do not understand, God works through questions. He really does. In fact I think he prefers questions to answers. Because while answers are closed, in a sense, questions are open. A poet once wrote, “God is a comma and not a full stop.” The comma points to something else, advances the discussion, leaves the way open for further discussion. A full stop brings discussion to an end, it closes the dialogue. Yes, God is a comma, a lover of questions. Above all, Questioning God points to the validity of our questions. There are questions in the Bible that are truly beautiful, provocative and unsettling. God searches for Adam: “Where are you?” The Most High asks Cain, “Where is your brother?” Mary asks the angel, “How can this be?” Jesus says to his friends, “Who do you say that I am?” Jesus says to Peter, “Do you love me more than these others?” We see once again that asking questions signifies a certain openness, an openness to welcoming something that is in truth transcendent.
Just answering questions is to be locked into our vision of life and of events. Timothy Radcliffe and Lukasz Popko examine the passages in the Bible that consider the quality and sincerity of our questioning. Some ask questions like a child speaking to its parents, placing themselves in a position to really listen to their interlocutor, for they know that they themselves do not have all the answers. Others ask questions out of spite, relying on their reputation, trying to trip up the interlocutor. They betray themselves. This is why Radcliffe and Popko sift out the questions in the Bible which are insincere – the opposite of what they should be. The Word of God is a great teacher because, argues St Paul, it is a sword with two edges and reveals the truth in the heart. And along the way it reveals our inmost selves. The Word is thus always to the point. God, in the Bible, talks not just to the men and women of this time, of the time in which the Bible was written. No, God speaks to us today as urgently as ever. He speaks to our restless hearts, if we can only learn to listen to him.
The questions which Radcliffe and Popko analyse in these pages are the very questions which we need to discuss today. They shake us to the depths in our digitalised society, because these are the questions which everyone who has not been anaesthetised must seize upon for their lives, for their very being. “What point have I reached in my life so far?” “How have I treated my brothers and sisters of the human race?” “How can God enter my life now?” “For me myself, who is Jesus?” “This man who called himself God, and who gave his life for me, why does this Jesus matter to me?” The Word of God still speaks to us through questions. But not only through questions. As Questioning God demonstrates, every authentically human word is in fact infused with the Divine Word. The German Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner wrote that “any author, in so far as he or she is infused with the call of God’s grace, will thereby be a Christian.” Timothy Radcliffe and Lukasz Popko make this point abundantly clear; the richness of their references to literature, to poetry, to films, points to an abundance of expression which enriches the understanding of our faith. This makes us understand better the strength of German theology. This shows that when it is truly human, when it is based on an authentic understanding of the essence of our humanity, artistic expression becomes a theophany, because it grasps the essence which opens us up to divine grace, and the ability to communicate the mystery.
Like on a starry night or in a storm, when our hearts cannot but give praise to God, or when confronted with a Bach sonata or a page of Dostoyevsky. In this way we know for sure that the world is good and that our life has a real purpose. This is the power of the human imagination: to put ourselves in touch with the divine.
A final point. Questioning God is infused with humour. I think this should make us doubly grateful to its authors. Humour is very near to grace. Humour and lightness of touch are sweet, rejoice the heart and give us hope. Those who find humour difficult to cope with, do not really love other people. Humour makes us more generous and keeps things in perspective. “Blessed are those who know how to laugh at themselves, because they will never be bored!” At the same time, humour shows us that Christianity is never something lugubrious or heavy, it is not backward-looking or disheartening. Faith makes the faces of believers shine. The Gospel gives us joy, true joy. Those who believe are happy and content, they do not look as if they are at a funeral. They are people full of joy and it shows in their face. In Questioning God, Timothy Radcliffe and Lukasz Popko give us three basic points. We believers must remain restless. We must always be capable of asking questions. And we must become little experts in humour.
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