Called to Curiosity

As I Was Saying is a forum for a variety of perspectives to foster faith-related conversations among our readers with the goal of mutual learning, even in disagreement. Apart from articles written by editorial staff, these perspectives do not necessarily reflect the views of The Banner.

My 5-year-old asked for a microscope for Christmas. I’m not sure I knew what a microscope was at 5 years old. But this aspiring scientist cannot contain his curiosity. We presented him with a pocket microscope, and he immediately pulled on his boots and ran outside to look at the ice on the edges of the porch. He examined the leaves that had fallen off my ficus. He pressed the microscope against the pictures in his sea creatures book.

“Mommy, did you know that the picture is actually made of tiny little dots of different colours?” he said.

“I did,” I said, “but I had forgotten.”

But in that moment of sharing in his exciting discovery, I remembered my Grade 7 teacher showing us a blown-up image of a printed picture. I remembered my own childhood wonder of how blue and yellow dots can be so tiny they look like a green mass on the page.

I love parenting this stage—the constant curiosity, the raw wonder. It’s also, if I’m honest, exhausting. Because really, I don’t have time or energy to constantly answer questions. Or perhaps I don’t have the energy to constantly be reminded of how little I know. I often feel that I don’t have the capacity to wonder with him, to ask more questions together, and to explore what the answer could be.

Our culture doesn’t value questions as much as it does answers. We’ve forgotten to make time for curiosity, exploration, and examination. We value certainty and declarative sound bites. Twitter and Instagram accounts that get a lot of likes are the ones where creators make confident statements. Articles that get clicks are not those that ask questions but rather those that promise to deliver “Everything you need to know about _____” or “Why everything you thought you knew about ______ is wrong.” Social media is full of instructions on how to live: how to parent, how to cook, how to “adult,” how to believe. Perhaps we are too tired to ask questions, too bombarded with solutions to remain curious. What are we missing out on in our culture of certainty?

Our sense of truth today is very much influenced by the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment, by our drive toward absolute understanding and total comprehension. If we rationalize long enough, we can work everything out into clean equations and conclusions. This, in turn, has shaped our Christian faith over the past 400, and we are often uncomfortable with the mystery of faith, that some movements of the Holy Spirit are beyond distilling into tidy answers to FAQs.

Jesus’ Style

But if Christianity is all about always having the right or correct answers, why does Jesus regularly teach in such a convoluted way? Why does his statement “The kingdom of God is” always get followed by a “like”; why this insistence on simile instead of doctrinal proclamations? We might say that was the means of teaching in his cultural context, but even his disciples chide, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?” (Matt. 13: 10). Why does Jesus time and time again respond to questions of the scribes with another question?

Why, when presented with a pressing issue of how to respond to infidelity, does Jesus do something as confounding as drawing in the dirt (John 8:1-11)? How disorienting for a preacher to start doodling on the ground in response to a valid and urgent question about doctrine!

Throughout the ages people speculate about all the things Jesus was writing or drawing in the dirt when confronted by the scribes with what to do with the woman caught in adultery. But at the end of the day, the gospel writer didn’t consider the subject of what Jesus was writing or drawing was as important as the action.

So if we don’t know what Jesus wrote or drew, can we ask why he decided to bend down to the ground?

I wonder if he drew on the ground to remind his listeners of what they were made of, humans drawn from the earth by God’s hand. Perhaps he’s evoking the creation story his listeners would have been very familiar with. Perhaps in his creative gesture, he’s subtly telling them who he is, reminding them of who they are.

Perhaps he did it to demonstrate what it means to wait before responding, to resist providing rash answers on high-stakes topics. Perhaps he is setting an example of what it means to be slow to speak. In this moment he knows he holds their attention, creating this pregnant pause in which their anger can dissipate, their adrenaline can subside.

Maybe he runs his finger along the ground to give them time to think about what it actually is they are asking. Perhaps he is providing one of the quiet moments to reflect that we so seldom allow as humans. As we read this passage, we can almost feel the discomfort in this moment, the pain of self-reflection.

Perhaps, as some have confidently proposed, he is enacting the prophet Jeremiah’s words that “Those who turn away from you will be written in the dust” (Jer. 17:13), and thereby calling these accusers out on their own adultery. If so, he is doing so in a way that calls his listeners to be curious enough to put the pieces together like a puzzle.

I wonder if he wants to provide space for them to think about the person they’ve dragged out and made into an object lesson, to remember that she is made in the image of the God they believe they are serving.

I wonder if the gospel doesn’t tell us the what or even the why of this scene because it invites us into the same curiosity that Jesus’s audience fell into that day.

Jesus is asking them to give up their pride, their certainty, their reducing a person into an object lesson rather than seeing her as an image-bearer of the One who drew them from dirt.

Confounding

When I look at Jesus as an example of curiosity, I see a teacher who was constantly confounding his students. (As someone who has worked in education and ministry, I balk at this pedagogy. Clarity, I’ve been conditioned to believe, is necessary for understanding. We’ve been trained in our institutions toward clear communication, not to “tell the truth but tell it slant”.) I see a healer who, when confronted by the Syrophoenician woman, gives us an example of changing his position (Mark 7:24-29). I read of a teacher who, when asked “Who is my neighbour?” does not outline a checklist of “10 ways to tell if you should love someone as you love yourself,” but tells a story that draws his listeners into a curious examination of their prejudice, expectations, and legalism, a story that still reverberates today. I imagine that it must have been exhausting for his disciples to be constantly asking questions and seeking the answers to his.

Just as I think it is unhelpful to hold faith and doubt as two poles along the spectrum of belief, I’ve come to think about curiosity and confidence as two plates that can overlap and retract in ever-changing configurations. A friend of mine recently observed that perhaps the position of curiosity isn’t one we can constantly sustain (just as Jesus did not sit drawing in the dirt for his entire ministry). Perhaps, she says, instead of the axiom “Stay curious” we should say, “Practise curiosity often” or I might expand it to “Oscillate between curiosity and confidence” (though of course these don’t make for concise reading on a wall-hanging; perhaps the best truths in life don’t).

Curiosity and Confidence

I think many of the arguments we have about theology and praxis at the core are about what things we can remain curious about and where we need to hold biblical confidence. Can we enter into even those discussions with ongoing curiosity about what we are each saying? Can we do this with the certainty that in this life we see through a glass dimly?

My hope is that we can hold both faithful confidence and curiosity together, without making an idol of either. There is a certainty that becomes idolatry of belief, an arrogant, unshakable devotion to our values that dehumanizes the people around us and reduces our version of God. But a certain degree of confidence in our worldview is needed in order for us to function, in order to be in relationship with God, each other, ourselves, and the world. We need confidence in who we believe God is, who God has made us to be, and how we are called to be in this life. But even this confidence needs to be held lightly, needs to be something we are willing to surrender, or our understanding of God cannot grow. When I think of the ways my perceptions of God have evolved over the years, I am so glad that others were able to model for me what it means to hold a gentle and humble posture in faith. I would have remained stale, rigid, and legalistic without their example.

Picture our beliefs held up toward God with cupped hands, rather than clenched with white knuckles. With open hands we can receive and also give, but we might also have to let some things slip between our fingers. Curiosity means staying sensitive to the stories and questions of others. It means recognizing that every time we come to Scripture, we come with our own preconceived notions and understandings that might need to be challenged and revisited. Our lives cannot be transformed, our minds cannot be renewed without a sense of openness to what we might learn.

If we approach life with the certainty that we can ingest and attain the knowledge of good and evil, we cannot open our hearts to grow. We remain unchangeable. Curiosity is required in order to truly hear the Spirit’s guidance, in order to learn from Scripture, in order to walk humbly with our God.

Perhaps it is because we emphasize God’s all-knowingness that we prefer certainty to curiosity. Perhaps it is because curiosity is exhausting. But God endowed us with curiosity, with a drive toward learning. God calls us to childlike faith, and we need not spend much time with children to realize how many questions they ask, how curious they are. When we take a position of curiosity with each other and with God, we remain changeable, able to be surprised and renewed as the Spirit moves around us making all things new.