“We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers”.  Abraham Joshua Heschel

I am currently rereading “The Sparrow” by Mary Doria Russell for a book club.

It is a powerful story of a Jesuit mission, consisting of four Jesuits and four civilians, a wonderfully diverse crew of misfits, agnostics and believers, who are the first visitors to the planet Rakhat. With tremendous insight into human nature, the author produces a startling portrait of an alien culture, and the disastrous results of earth’s cultural understandings when meeting an alien world.

Shortly after arrival, and before any contact with the planet’s residents, one of the Jesuits dies unexpectedly in his sleep. The following is part of the service for the burial of the dead priest, spoken by the priest celebrant.

“The voyage was not without reward for Alan…but we are left with Anne’s question. Why would God bring him all this way only to die now?

…The Jewish sages tell us that the whole of the Torah, the entirety of the first five books of the Bible, is the name of God. With such a name, they ask, how much more is God?  The Fathers of the Church tell us that God is Mystery and unknowable.  God himself, in scripture, tells, ‘My ways are not your ways and my thoughts are not your thoughts.’

…“It is the human condition to ask questions like Anne’s, and to receive no plain answers… Perhaps this is because we can’t understand the answers, because we are incapable of knowing God’s ways and God’s thoughts.  We are, after all, only very clever tailless primates, doing the best we can, but limited.  Perhaps we must all own up to being agnostic, unable to know the unknowable…

The Jewish sages also tell us that God dances when his children defeat him in argument, when they stand on their feet and use their minds. So questions like Anne’s are worth asking.  To ask them is a very fine kind of human behavior.  If we keep demanding that God yield up his answers, perhaps some day we will understand them.  And then we will be something more than clever apes, and we shall dance with God.”

What do you think?

Do you have trouble asking hard questions?  Does it make you uncomfortable to doubt or challenge what you’ve been taught to believe?  Are you more content to just accept the status quo, rather than digging deeper into your uncertainties?

I don’t believe you can grow- spiritually, academically and emotionally- without asking questions, and wondering if there are any answers available.  Keep on asking those questions!

Doubts are not to be feared, but a sign that your mind is active and inquisitive, and open to new understandings!

“Keep yourself away from the answers, but alive in the middle of the questions.” Colum McCann

“A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place, but a seed to be planted, and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea.” John Anthony Ciardi

About Mary Doria Russell