Can Christians Question God?

For as long as I have been teaching, I have encouraged my Christian students to embrace questioning the elusive and confusing mystery that is God. 

In Jewish tradition, questioning the justice and methodology of God is part of being faithful to the covenants God has made with the Jewish people.  If you believe in the promises, you hold on to your doubts and you raise your questions.

I remember a day when I asked a Lutheran seminary professor, why Christians were so reluctant to confront God concerning his unfulfilled promises.  He explained, whereas Jews were born into a tribe and could never stop being Jewish, Christians, through too many questions and doubts, could lose their faith.  He feared Christians could stop being Christian.  Christians, he asserted, who had been saved by the “amazing grace” of God could never feel as free as Jews to question their merciful God without feeling they were betraying the deity as well as their faith.

I suppose the real question is why are we asking questions or make accusations?  If we are not going to get an answer, what is the point of asking questions?  Jews, Christians and Muslims trust they have received promises from God.  When these promises are not fulfilled, questions and accusations are an honest attempt to exhort God to act like God.  Questioning and accusing God is not against faith.  It is an essential part of faith. 

And, by the way, questioning is quite biblical.  Of the 150 psalms in the bible, over a third are laments and complaints questioning the justice of God.  Jesus’ last words on the cross were a question rooted in those psalms and directed at God.  And the Lord’s prayer is a prayer full of imperatives exhorting God to act like God.

If you trust in the promises of God and they are not happening, the faithful act is not to close your eyes and believe blindly.  Blind faith is stupid faith.  I do not believe God gave us a mind and then wants us to turn it off when it comes to our religion.   

More than anything else prayers and liturgy give us a time and place to stand naked before God, to be honest and speak without pretense.  It’s true, we may not receive a response.  But, at least, we can say, we trusted in the promises and spoke the truth.

Can Christians question God?  As an honest expression of their faith, yes!  And, questioning God needs to be part of Christian, Jewish and Muslim public worship.  We need to train people to understand that faith and questions are not opposites.  Most people going about their daily lives may not have questions.  That’s fine.  But when craziness or absurd suffering happens to them and they experience the silence of God, they need to know about the intimate relation between questions and faith.