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Christians- What do you think?
I have always said that one of the reasons I am...uncomfortable with religion is that it claims to give you all the answers. To the big questions, anyway. Where did we come from? Where are we going? Why are we here? That's all taken care of for us, and I've said that this destroys (for me) any sense of wonder, any desire to know more about the universe, and any room for questions and discovery.
Then I got a very interesting answer to a question that I wanted to address.
Without calling this person out (although they may recognize what they said), this was part of a response: "The same principles of questioning and discovery apply when you follow Him".
Now, while I can guess what this refers to, I wanted to get a religious viewpoint on this. What does this mean to you?
7 Answers
- ?Lv 76 years agoFavorite Answer
I can only answer from my own experience.
Christianity doesn't actually hand me a bunch of answers and tell me to stop asking any more questions. As a matter of fact, it hands me a bunch of ideas and invites me to consider them, learn from them, expand on them, and maybe even leave them behind once I've done that. Christianity is one way my own personal sense of wonder is engaged. (Among the others are space exploration, science fiction and fantasy, and science, with a particular interest in the theory of evolution.)
Jesus told us that in a sense, we needed to become like newborns. That is, we needed to forget about having a bunch of cut-and-dried answers, and start learning everything from new experience. He spent much of his time arguing with people who had stopped questioning the answers they'd been handed, and who objected to anyone else questioning them, either. A sense of wonder and the experience of learning and growing, seeing things new and wondrous every day, was central to his teaching.
Of course, there have been times when some Christians have forgotten that and started insisting they had all the answers anyone needed. The Pharisees of his time have reappeared as Christians who thought they owned God, over and over. And those hidebound immovable objects have been met, over and over again, with the irresistible force of Jesus' command: We need to keep learning, keep growing, like newborns. Churches and individuals always need to be born again.
I don't know if that's what the person meant who inspired you to write this question. But it's been my experience of Christianity, over and over. And my own sense of wonder is engaged all the time, as part of being Christian.
I won't claim Christianity has a monopoly on this. But it doesn't have a monopoly, either, on the sort of people who want the answers to be limited to the ones they've framed as a desiccated memory. That happens in every form of religion. It happens among atheists. It is part of being human to be faced with the choice of growing, and thereby living, or being content with what we already know and stopping dead.
"Nothing alive will stand for being stopped."
-- Theodore Sturgeon, "Need"
- Beorh HouseLv 66 years ago
That sounds right. If God is everything that we know and don't know, and some we will never know, then how can that not be deliriously exciting? Who wouldn't want to live eternally just to experience that alone? And the gift is free, with one catch: there's this foolish thing you have to believe in first, the Blood of Jesus and his Cross. But after that, after you get there, it's cake---oh yeah, except for the old nature inside of you that clowns it all up for you and takes you off the path every single focking day of your life. But all said and done, it's a beautiful life with a great outlook.
- L. E. GantLv 76 years ago
Basically, it's our ability to ask questions and make discoveries that separate us from the so-called lower animals. It doesn't matter whether the questions are spiritual, mental, emotional or physical -- they're all valid. Except for the physical, there are only abstractions and assumptions. We need those assumptions to be able to deal with reality, whatever that is.
So, whether the questions are about religion or science or something in-between, they're all good.
In other words, there are no stupid questions; only stupid answers. (Mind you some questions are meaningless -- as Wittgenstein put it (simplified, paraphrased): only questions with answers can be asked meaningfully.
- Benoni "Light"Lv 76 years ago
That could mean any number of things such as that if you question and search for the right answers and properly interpret all the evidence that's where it leads, but I'm not that person and I don't necessarily believe that. What I have noticed and do believe is that the existence of God raises more questions than anything.
Source(s): Christian - How do you think about the answers? You can sign in to vote the answer.
- ?Lv 56 years ago
The response is exactly right, just that you are turned off by the reference to "Him" and to following Him, blindly. No one learns just by being told. Everything should be taken only as a suggestion. But we ourselves must analyze, test and question every proposition. We are to accept only those that have been proven to be true in our own experience and to reject those that are not. Listen but think for yourself. But the way is by walking the walk. Those who don't do can never know.
- ?Lv 76 years ago
That depends what him means if it means goodness then yes.
search for goodness and string theory
- Anonymous6 years ago
Obviously they think "I love you Jesus Christ!"