LIVING THE QUESTIONS

In his famous work, Letters To A Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke says something that those of the Christian Faith would do well to embrace. He tells us,  

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.

We don't like unanswered questions much, do we.  We want answers and solutions and results. We want them so badly we create fabricated deadlines and criteria, so that we can have questions answered and uncertainty rejected.

Did you ever notice, though, how many questions God asks in our Scriptures?  Here are a few.  In the Garden of Eden, after Adam had sinned, God said, “Adam, where are you?” To Eve, after the Fall, he said, “What is this that you have done?” To Cain after Cain had murdered Abel: “Where is your brother?” To Jacob, as he fought with the angel of the Lord, “What is your name?” To Sarah when she disbelieved and laughed in her disbelief, “Why did you laugh?” To Moses, when Moses asked Him to part the Red Sea, “Why are you looking at me?" To Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul since I've removed the kingship from him?”

Jesus asked a lot of questions.  I never actually counted them but a friend of mine wrote a book a few years ago entitled 100 questions Jesus asked.  Here are a few.  After He had left His mother and father and made them worry themselves sick about him, “Why were you looking for me? Didn't you know I would be doing my father's business?” To his mother after she asked him to turn water into wine: “Woman, what is that between you and me?” To the man who told him that his brothers and mother were waiting for Him outside, “Who are my brothers and sisters?” To the woman taken in adultery, “Woman, where are your accusers?” To the man who wanted to know what the greatest commandments were: “Tell me who acted as a neighbor?” To John and James when they asked Jesus to make them special in heaven, “Do you think you can swallow the cup reserved for those who will stand at my right hand?” To the man who wanted Jesus to tell his brother to divide the inheritance properly: “Who made me a divider between you?” On the question of tribute, “Whose inscription and face is on this coin?” To Simon Peter, “Who do you say I am?” To Simon Peter, “Do you love me?” To Saul on the road to Damascus, “Why are you persecuting me?”  In the gospel of John chapter 14, Phillip asked Jesus to show them the father. Jesus said, “Have I been so long with you Philip and you don't know me? He who has seen me has seen the Father.”

Maybe Rilke is on to something when he says, "Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language."  Instead of rushing into answers maybe we ought simply to embrace the questions, meditate on them, process them, or, as Rilke says, "live the question."

Perhaps it would be a good thing to slow down a bit and not rush but live the questions until we actually live into wherever the questions leads.  Jesus shows us that well-timed questions can be more powerful than an explosive explanation point.  Maybe answers, too quickly arrived at and articulated, can miss the point.  Maybe life is a journey and that questions are essential to traverse the dangerous and uncertain terrain.  Maybe well-placed questions are more important than answers even.  After all, if we ask the wrong question what difference does it may as to what the answer is? 

Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.