Questions are a life-long conversation with God.

In the Protestant liberal tradition, faith is understood as a journey. Questions are indispensable to the journey of faith because they help you illumine the path. A distinguishing characteristic of liberal Protestantism is its strong affirmation of the human reach toward the world, toward one another and toward God through the use of reason in the search for understanding.

It is my belief, as a liberal Protestant, that only when people are truly free to question religious authorities, received traditions, sacred texts and even God that they can truly find faith. A coerced faith is an oxymoron. No one can force you to faith—it is found freely and embraced without duress or it is not found at all. I suspect that many who post so angrily to these On Faith columns were force-fed a rigid, doctrine driven faith and their God-given desire to question was harshly stifled. They are angry and resentful of that kind of faith and frankly I don’t blame them.

The word “Question” is the first word in the motto of Chicago Theological Seminary: “Question, Teach, Transform.” So many people come to us as students not truly trusting that we will encourage them to question everything in the search for faith. I have honestly had students who have transferred from other seminaries say in class, “I have never before really asked the questions I want to ask and I have never really said what I think in a seminary class.”

It should be obvious that if, in ministry training, we teach people to dissemble about the fact that they have questions about the faith, when they graduate they will fake their faith with their congregations and the congregations themselves will have a shallow and ultimately false faith as well. If you want a hypocritical church, all you need to do is teach your clergy to be hypocrites and the rest will follow. I am sorry to say that I observe much hypocrisy in how many faiths conduct themselves in the world. I believe that a major cause of this is the failure to honor the questions in both the clergy and the laity.

I believe that our ability to formulate questions is what makes us human and is part of what we mean when we say humans are created in the image of God. I believe that the human brain is a gift of the creator and that we are to use our brains in church and not check them in the coat room when we walk in the door.