Living with Curiosity
My interview with Lore Ferguson Wilbert on her book A Curious Faith.
I recently read Lore Ferguson Wilbert's latest book A Curious Faith and then had the chance to ask her a few questions related to some of the key themes of the book. Read the interview below, then grab yourself a copy of the book.
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Tyler: I'm quite sure you'll be asked this often around the launch of a book on questions and curiosity, but I'll ask it anyway. At what point is questioning no longer helpful?
Lore: I’m a big believer in believers being able to trust the Holy Spirit and their own intuition in whether something has become unhelpful or not. I think we intuitively know when we’ve crossed the line from helpful to unhelpful. Whether we obey the Spirit is another thing—which is why we see so many folks wandering endlessly in the abyss of what’s been deconstructed.
I really like the way Brian Zahnd talks about renovating faith instead of deconstructing it. He writes, “My theological house is the palace in my mind for Christ the King. The theological house is important, but only because it is the palace of the King, and we must never forget that the King and the palace are not synonymous. In other words, the center of the Christian faith is not theology but Christ…I embarked on a massive theological renovation. I didn’t want to demolish my faith; I wanted to restore it.” (When Everything’s On Fire)
It’s helpful to think about the questioning process like a renovation process. Sometimes we need to repaint a wall, sometimes we need to replace our appliances and cabinets, sometimes we need to gut a space, but rarely do we need to raze the whole house. If we’re taking a wrecking ball to all of faith with our questions, then I think it’s time to step back and consider whether we’ve wandered into unhelpful territory.
Tyler: Early in the book you highlighted one of my favorite Eugene Peterson quotes: "All theology is rooted in geography." How important is knowing where you're from and where you are for figuring out your next steps?
Lore: I think it’s everything actually. I also quote Parker Palmer who wrote, “Only when I know both seed and system, self and community, can I embody the great commandment to love both my neighbor and myself.” Jesus said we must love our neighbor as ourselves and far too often we let love of ourselves dictate the ways we love our neighbors instead of letting the love we have for ourselves reveal how sacrificial love is. We’ll do almost anything to protect and preserve ourselves, right? So it’s just as important to protect and preserve our neighbors. But if we don’t consider all the elements of our geography—where we’re from, who helped form us, who helped deform us, what our blindspots are—we will perpetually only consider ourselves.
The ways we love both “seed and system, self and community” reveal our theology. We can’t hide from it, it’s as integral to our beliefs and practices as our organs are to our breath and pulse.
Tyler: Often the hardest part in wrestling with questions with God is that his answer doesn't come in our preferred timing. Jeremiah is often referred to as the weeping prophet at least in part because his questions seemed to never be given the relief of an answer. How can we learn to wait for answers?
Lore: Wait is a verb and yet we often treat it as if it’s sitting around doing nothing or at the very least, walking around in circles twiddling our thumbs. But Jacob wrestled with God in his waiting. David shepherded sheep in his waiting. Jeremiah wept in his waiting. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples in his waiting. Waiting for answers doesn’t mean inaction.
Someone somewhere once said that God is always answering us, it’s either yes, no, or wait a while, and while that may feel cliche, I think it’s wise to consider its truth. I say in the book that “despair isn’t turning our backs on God, it’s believing that he’s turned his back on us.” Waiting can appear to others as if we’ve turned our backs on God, but deep down within us, I wonder if we’ve begun to believe that he’s turned his back on us. If so, I think the way to continually actively wait is to get up real close to God and pester him with our angst. He can handle it.
I say in the book that “God made us curious because he wants to be found.” When we lose our keys we don’t wait for them to appear, we find them. We know they’re somewhere and we’re going to find them. I wonder if we could reframe our “waiting” as “finding?” I wonder what we might discover if we did.
Tyler: One of your focus questions is one from Jesus to some disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane: "Why can't you just be with me?" It's this vulnerable moment where he senses his coming isolation. What role do relationships and community play in processing our questions?
Lore: This is a tough one because for many of us, our relationships and communities have not proven to be safe places to be with our questions.
I find it salient that in Jesus’ moment of great need, his best friends fell asleep. Sure he woke them up, but they still fell asleep. Why? Because they were human and they were tired.
Some of our relationships and communities are, in very real and human ways, unable to be with us in our doubts and questions. They’re just not there yet. They don’t know how to sit in silence, they don’t know how to ask us the questions we need, they don’t know how to trust with us that God is at work, even in the unraveling. Why? Because they’ve been a part of systems that don’t cultivate space for those things. Their inability to do those things is not necessarily because they’re bad people or aren’t for our good, they just might not be there yet. They’ve fallen asleep to what God is doing.
One of the most important things I think we can do when our friends have “fallen asleep” in our moments of great desperation is to simply let them sleep. Maybe we try to wake them up once or twice, but they just don’t feel the same level of desperation we do in that moment and they won’t until they’re in our shoes. Our gift to them when that time comes, is to be a friend who’s no longer asleep, who is awake to what God is doing during a questioning period.
Even if we don’t have the community we want while we’re going through it, we can still be the community someone else needs in the future.
Tyler: No question to end, just congratulations on the achievement of writing your second book. You're a great writer and thinker. Blessings to you and your work Lore!
Lore: Thank you, Tyler! Truly means the world.