When I was 11 a teacher said to me, “you always have to be different, don’t you, Susan!” It was hardly fair, I was just passing on my mother’s request. I wondered later, though, how much that exasperated comment stopped me innovating and questioning through my adolescence.
The little irony I chuckle over about the quote reprinted above, is that these lyrics (in PTJ) are set to the tune for “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, look upon a little child.” You’ll remember the next line, “Suffer my simplicity.” Yet, when we ask questions with the open hearted curiosity and straightforwardness of a small child, the answers being asked for are far more complicated that any of us might realise at the time.
These lyrics were inspired by the famous Rilke quote about living into the questions. For too long the mainstream Christian church has stayed in its head, working out faith in an solely intellectual and academic way. When you live into the questions, more than only our brains are brought to bear on the problems eluding us. We apply soul and spirit to the questioning in our hearts. Our emotions get time to work on the issue. Our senses may help too, those senses which are often repressed in church rituals and debates. They talk about 360 reviews in the workplace. Perhaps ‘living the questions’ is a kind of 360 interrogation of life and our deeper Selves. More is brought to bear on the question than only logic and reason. I would not dismiss reason and logic, nor do I denigrate intellectual and academic pursuits. I owe too much to their effect on my life to do that. But, I have worked out that there is more to life than what they offer; that I have more than my reason and logic to bring to the conversation.
Years ago when I was in my first proper ministry job my supervisor asked me what was the most important thing I brought into the pulpit for my preaching. I almost came our with ‘prayer and bible study’! My mother and I had laughed over this answer in my teenage years, as it seemed to be the only ‘correct’ answer the Baptist curriculum study guides wanted. While I was still groping for the ‘right’ answer, Judith went on to say “You! You are the most important thing you bring into the pulpit.” I was shocked. I had been taught to tuck my own opinions out of the way in undergraduate theology papers. Also, I had intuited that high-church Presbyterian preaching should not be the impassioned testimony-giving of my Baptist days. I had, in fact, been keeping my self carefully tucked out of the way and not bringing myself into the picture.
It was the best piece of ministry/preaching advice I was ever given. I got that it did not give me permission to spill the proverbial guts on the floor. Nor did it allow self indulgent reminiscing. But it did require me to bring to the text the questions and queries I had about it and how that impacted with what had happened in my life that week, or in the world around me that month.
Questions do ‘widen up our world’. They do ‘stretch our faith’. And as both of those things happen, ‘our hearts unfurl’, knowing instinctively that feelings are welcome, no, are vital to fully satisfying and effective theological reflection.
If we allow ourselves to be more vulnerable through admitting we have questions, then we are gradually led to being more tolerant of others and more understanding of their hesitancies. We ‘get’ that we are all hesitant and unsure and vulnerable, in our own ways. So questions do draw us to ‘show Love more’. If we question who is benefiting in any one situation, then we find ourselves wondering why it is that the richer keep on getting richer while the poor keep on getting poorer. “Who is benefitting here?” is one of the best questions in the world to interrogate our social and economic structures. These kinds of questions help us on the way to ‘make equal rich and poor’.
Everyone is equal already, because we are all human beings. What we need to work against is that these equally important human beings are not getting equal opportunities, equal resourcing or equal rewards. Who said that an economic system needed some to be rich and some to be poor for it to ‘work’? Yet that seems to be the way we are proceeding and have for centuries. How much money do you need after the first million? Why can’t the wealthy create more jobs not less? Why can’t affluent company owners use efficiency gains to create more opportunities for employment? Why can’t profits be put into retraining? Why can’t more money be ploughed into anger management, addiction recovery and education in prisons, recognizing that in the long run that may reduce the prison population tomorrow and so recoup money being invested today? Why don’t we look at the long as well as the short term when we consider any problem?
As the hymn quoted above began: “A wise poet said one day/answers do not show the way/He said questions stretch us so/living questions help us grow.” Remember ‘gentle Jesus’ was persistent in questioning the interpretations of his day, so we are in good company as we interrogate our world.
Talking about being equally human, the book with approximately that name We are Equally Human, the second book of the coffeeshop conversations trilogy, is nearing the end of the editing process and will be going to the printers soon. Watch this space and my face book page Susan’s Writings for information about its availability in the next few weeks.
Peter Lineham has said this about it: I am especially thrilled by We are all Equally Human. A stream of people come to talk to me and I point them to books. This one is so locked into Aotearoa, its stories, and church life, that it will be so useful. I will be recommending it widely to those on the journey of relating faith and sexuality.
Yvonne Wilkie said this: As Charity discovers each unexpected, if not surprising, response to her spiritual journey of self-recognition, her coffee conversations reveal rich, insightful explanations. They move across cultural, historical, sociological, and importantly, biblical and theological pathways offering empathetic reassurance. I found myself saying ‘yes’ and ‘yes’ and finally ‘Hallelujah’!
I will keep you posted!
In the meantime, keep asking questions and living into them wherever you are, whatever you are doing and whoever you are.
Susan
jones.rs@xtra.co.nz
susan'sblog 