Questioning Scripture to Meditate (Part 2)
In Part 1 of my reaction to Haley’s post I leapt at the opportunity to argue in favor of questions and the ways they work like headlamps, illuminating different parts of a passage depending on where we direct our lights. But she ends her piece with unresolved questions, apparently seeking meaningful answers. What’s a reader supposed to do with that?
In my case, the answer is: go think about it. Over the past six months I’ve been unable to shake the challenge of responding well to these questions. I find it intriguing that her post, ending without resolution, provoked more thinking for me than anything else I read about 1 Kings.
After my first time through Haley’s essay, I attempted a quick scan of 1 Kings 22 to remind myself of the context, and found this to be one thorny passage. My mind snagged on the heavenly brainstorming, the misleading of prophets, and the ordained death conspiracy. These puzzles slowed me down, demanding careful reading. Skimming thwarted, I downshifted to a more studious pace and posture. This was going to take a minute.
Big Questions
The author of this scroll knows he is crafting a narrative to raise questions. Haley lists three of them in her closing. For convenience, allow me to summarize (and flatten) as follows:
Why would a good king do stupid things?
Does God give up on people?
How do determinism and freewill relate?
These are not plot flaws from sloppy writing but enduring questions of human experience, a literary feature inviting the reader to think.
Considering such issues has been the heart of education for centuries. Teaching the Big Questions is not a roundabout way of arguing for agnosticism. They’re most helpfully received as invitations to ponder known mysteries—mysteries to be accepted as gifts. Seriously reflecting on a question such as, “Do I have freewill?” is helpful, even when no answer is universally accepted. Long before the first university, the value of contemplation was already clear from the sacred writing of the Hebrews.
The Bible urges us to consume the word of God (Jeremiah 15:16), to ponder it (Luke 2:19), meditate on it (Joshua 1:8), work to understand it (Proverbs 2:1-6), and to be changed by it (Hebrews 4:12-13). We are told to carefully discern what these writings are saying (2 Peter 3:15-16), discuss and examine them with each other (Acts 17:11), to learn from them (Romans 15:4), and to use them, benefitting one another (2 Timothy 3:16), shaping the community of God’s people (Deuteronomy 6:7), and clearing away the lies and delusions of this world (Romans 12:1-2).
Questions with an answer, like “7 * 8 = x” initially require thinking to understand. Penciling seven rows of eight dots onto a sheet of graph paper helped me visualize and validate this claim. But beyond that, I don’t find much to think about.
Extended thinking requires a good puzzle, something unresolved I can sink my teeth into, like “Why do I do stupid things?” It’s in the chewing that I find the problem breaking down into components, helping me see further into the complexity.
Facts are part of understanding. But facts alone are insufficient for addressing the incoherence, frustration, and limitations we find in human experience. So, we wrestle. In community. It’s helpful to be able compare notes when meditating on issues like why we feel alienated, how society should be organized, or what makes something good.
How to Respond?
Like life itself, Haley’s essay is unresolved. Her questions hang in the air, smoldering. I suspect it is this invitational vibe that has me feeling a burden to respond. Finding a way to respond well turned out to be a much bigger challenge than I expected. Given how often my own questions about scripture have been greeted with concern by Sunday School teachers, pastors, and friends, I’m eager to applaud Haley’s willingness to raise these.
But to simply reply “Good questions!” is rather unsatisfying.
A second option is to respond with definitive answers. This seems even worse. For example, assume I added a comment to her post along the lines of:
Great questions Haley! Real quick:
We do stupid things because we’re sinners.
Yes, God gives up on people. Check out the last 10 pages of your Bible.
In human time it feels like freewill. Outside of time, it is more like a history.
Hit me back up if you need more explanation. : )
This reeks of dismissal. It betrays the respondant’s unwillingness to spend three seconds wondering why Haley wrote this essay about something so obvious. It is tone deaf, unhelpful, and completely ignores her set-up:
To me, these things together speak of the human person as extraordinarily emotionally and morally complex and—alarmingly—subject to utterly unpredictable changes of heart that have immense consequences. Of long-term interest:…
Haley can see the simple answers. Simple answers abound. But many of them conflict with each other. To not recognize that is to miss her point.
A third option is for me to say “Gosh, I don’t know. Now you’ve got me questioning everything!” But this also feels wrong, at least for this discussion. Yes, it acknowledges complexity and affirms the validity of her questions, but it fails to engage. Worse, it’s the kind of response that tells the asker their questions are contagious. By articulating them they’re spreading uncertainty, cracking the foundations of others.
How to Discuss?
So, what then would constitute a meaningful exchange? If scripture is raising big questions for us to consider, it seems like we should talk about them. I’d like to participate, making a productive contribution that moves the conversation forward. Yet I’m struggling to recall an article I can use as a model. Something published which refrains from settling issues the Bible leaves open, yet offers a modicum of satisfaction or at least forward movement.
Many books start with a sincere question which the author feels no one has adequately answered. But this is a set-up which will be answered by the rest of the book. Reading such a question on page one of a book, we presume the author has spent years considering and researching, finding answers and carefully articulating them with depth and nuance. That’s why we bought the book. (And wouldn’t we be disappointed if they had nothing to offer?)
To see a scholarly discussion in action often requires reference to multiple authors with contrasting views. Each author takes a relatively clear stand. Reading just one I might think the issue settled. But reading several, I begin to see the shape of a discussion with each writer advancing an argument and addressing what they see as most problematic in other perspectives.
Some grow weary of all this confidence and walk away from the lot of them to join an alternative camp of writers cautioning us against brash certainty. They are willing to say they don’t know, but the ones I’ve read are rarely willing to say much more than that. They go right off the other side resisting all certainty, praising the indescribable, apophatic, unknowable nature of the divine.
It is easy to appreciate and respect the humility of these authors. Easy to agree that any sentence about God is incomplete. And I count myself among those frustrated by the overly confident. However, the questions that tug at my heart are those which arise while trying to navigate a problematic life. I must make decisions and want to do so based on the best possible understanding of reality. Reading from this circumstance a humble caution about the delusion of confidence is of little help. I’m not asking anyone to be more confident than they really are. But questions about life are seeking practical answers. Perfection and completeness are out of reach. Yet we still make decisions, usually working from the most plausible understandings we’ve found.
Can I stake out some ground between simplistic certainty and hopeless uncertainty? Can I do that honestly, without being disingenuous? This path is narrower than I suspected.
I’m not giving up yet, but this is clearly going to require one more essay:
Questioning Scripture as Community (Part 3)