To Question or Not to Question…That Is the Question

Growing up I was, always, taught not to question God.  I was to follow what He says, blindly, and do what I was told.  God has our plan, and we must trust in Him.

Ok, will do.

I have spent my life trying to do that, and I feel that is one of the mail reasons I dealt so well with my mothers death.  I was 10 when she died.  It was God’s plan, and who was I to question it?  My father said it best (and, yes, I later thanked him) when he told me that my mothers time on Earth was over and that she would now go to work in the Kingdom of Heaven for God.  Well, Ok.  Who can argue with that?

Almost 20 years later I began REALLY going to church, again, after spending some time away.  I never left God, I just didn’t spend my Sunday mornings at church.  At this new church, you could imagine my surprise when everyone started talking about it being OK to question God, and to question the bad (and good) things that happen in our lives.

Huh??    I spent a lot of time trying to figure this out.  At first I blew it off.  It must be a mistake…  However, it kept coming up…It’s OK to question God, they would say.  It was even said that He WANTED us to question.  So, I did what any good steward would do, and I tried to be open minded.  I tried to see it that way.  It’s OK, huh??  I even wondered, at one point, if I had made my memories up in my head…  Perhaps, I hadn’t REALLY been taught that?

I just couldn’t do it.

Eventually, I decided that it must just be a difference in the denomination.  It must just be part of what this particular denomination believes, and I could deal with that.  It was no biggie.

The more I have thought about it, and read the Bible, I have grown more, and more, to believe that I, in fact, should NOT question God.  (That, and my sister, just the other day, corroborated my memories of church and the teaching of not questioning God.  I wasn’t nuts, I thought!)

Besides the fact that questioning God gets us nowhere, except in the loony bin, God demands our obedience.  So far, in what I have read from the Bible, no where does it say that God asked someone to do something and then gave time to question, and ponder, the reasoning behind it.  He says go and do.

Mark 1:16-20New International Version (NIV)

Jesus Calls His First Disciples

¹⁶ As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. ¹⁷ “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.”¹⁸ At once they left their nets and followed him.

¹⁹ When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. ²⁰ Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

“At Once” and “Without Delay”, this is how God wants us to follow.

Luke 9: 59-62

59And He said to another, “Follow Me.” But he said, “Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.” 60But He said to him, “Allow the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God.” 61Another also said, “I will follow You, Lord; but first permit me to say good-bye to those at home.” 62But Jesus said to him, “No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”

He wants us NOW.  When he says come, He wants us to COME.  When He says do, He wants us to do.  We must believe in Him and do as He says.

Imagine if Noah had questioned God in Genesis 6: 11-22:

11Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. 12God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. 13So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. 14So make yourself an ark of cypress^c wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high.^d 16Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit^e high all around.^f Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. 17I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. 18But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. 19You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 20Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. 21You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.”

22Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

Noah didn’t try to get God to change His mind, or give more chances. “Noah did everything just as God commanded him.”

If Noah can build the Ark and get all those animals on it, can we not follow a few simple rules?

In the beginning, there was chaos.  God made order from the chaos and created the Earth; the Earth and everything on it.  He made us from the Earth.  He gave us everything we needed to live, even rules.  These rules were put in place to help keep the order that He had made.  God’s rules, not man’s.

Have you ever noticed that when man begins to follow what he wants, instead of doing what God wants, order begins to turn back into chaos?

Matthew 18:2-4New International Version (NIV)

² He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. ³ And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. ⁴ Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

He has called us to follow Him.  Trust and believe He knows what He is doing.