When I was younger, my parents encouraged me to seek knowledge and ask questions.  They were even tolerant when I questioned them; however, they neglected to model that I could question God.  As a product of a fundamental household, I grew up with aching, deep-seeded doubts concerning the things I had learned in church; and, possibly worse, I had lost faith and replaced it with nagging guilt. In adulthood, however, I set out on a quest to come to grips with those childhood paradoxes, and, in doing so, reignited my own sense of faith and discovered truth for myself.

First, and most importantly, I now believe that it is acceptable to question God.  Furthermore, it is unacceptable not to.  Religion is man’s interpretation of God and, thus, full of fallacies and misguided conclusions – at times made by people with the purest of intentions and at times planted by corrupt souls to further vile agendas.  I now understand that I can be spiritually fulfilled without being the least bit religious.  I agree, in part, that individuals must seek out their own truths, because we all have different questions.

A poignant example of this was my grappling with the story of Abraham and Isaac, a popular Bible tale told – and “mistold” – to children of many Christian denominations.  I learned the story, understood it to be an example of obedience, and then felt less than Christian when I became a young mother and knew that I could never put my child – any child – in the precarious situation in which Abraham had placed Isaac at the command of (by then I was certain) an unjust and unloving God.  

Years of questioning the logic and particulars of such a story had led to an unspoken distrust of the God that was capable of such horror.  Who had, in fact, commanded it.  Serendipitously, shortly after the birth of my first child, I happened across information that would reframe what I thought I knew and restore a little faith. Going back to the original Hebrew text, a pastor who is a student of it, explained that Isaac was an adult when the entire episode took place.  The obedience was his every bit as much as it was his father’s.  He was not a bewildered young boy gazing in horror as his previously loving father bound him to an alter and drew a dagger to slay him – the mental picture that I had of the scene, the picture that was often reinforced in Sunday school text and posters.  He was instead a young man, most likely capable of overpowering his elderly father, who also exercised his own faith and belief that God would provide the sacrifice by willingly accompanying Abraham to the alter site. 

Questioning God has not deteriorated my faith.  Instead, it has strengthened my position as a theist and Christian, for I do believe that Christ is deity.  Actually, being a theist was the easier of the two.  The natural things of this world have such an emotional impact on my life that I’ve searched for their origin.  I turned to physics for this, and it was not an easy study! I reluctantly admit that I had to put side some technical texts for the layperson version. 

I started with Davies’s The New Physicsfor a general understanding of matter composition, the necessary components for life, the sequencing and physical laws that must be followed, etc.  It is an excellent book and gave me the foundation necessary to continue to study origin and creation.  And that was my conclusion – that life was created. I learned that it was physically and mathematically impossible, in spite of many conflicting and well-known theories, for life to just begin accidentally.  I discovered that many of the leading physicists believe in a Supreme Being, a creator, whether or not they believe anything beyond that, and that devout atheists could not even disprove the existence of a creator (the second fundamental point for the agnostic, the first being that there is no proof of one either).  However, belief in a creator did not necessarily guarantee it to be Yahweh.

This leads me to another point:  for years I questioned whether I followed Christianity, in particular the Baptist denomination, because it was what I truly believed or because I was preconditioned to do so by Western philosophy – an accident of birth circumstances, so to speak.  When I got the guts to seek the answer, I began with denominations, studying the major Christian faiths from Baptists to Catholics and many points in between.  I learned that there is a common thread, and for me, at least, the major differences were a matter of preference and Biblical interpretation.  I boldly admitted that there were some things my church taught with which I did not agree, but I also noted that none of these things were serious enough to cause me to leave the church or denounce what I considered its major platforms:  the trinity, the blood sacrifice and deity of Christ, salvation as an act of grace not works, the existence of Heaven and Hell, the authority of the Bible, human frailty, etc.  

The larger step, the greater risk to my faith, was studying non-Christian belief systems and texts, especially Eastern philosophies and religions.  So I did this, and while I find many of the teachings and ideas to be engaging and comforting, I found no need to abandon my own belief system.  I found no other major world religion to provide a better explanation of God and the human condition. Nor did I find one to offer an organic, living God, prophet, or savior in which to believe. And in communing with the creation, my soul had long ago assured me the creator was indeed living.  

I value knowledge and learning.  Ironically, or perhaps for this exact reason, I find Romans 1:22 to be one of the most important scriptures for me personally:  Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.  It reminds me of my sixteen-year-old precocious self.  I look back now, and I’m humbled by what I did not know, and I’m reminded daily of how much more there is to know. How devastated I would be if there were not.  I am ecstatic that the mysteries of God’s universe are infinite to my finite mind.

My final consideration in the quest was morality – which is often confused with religious faith. They are not the same. Similar to the existentialist, I believe that morality must be sought by the individual and is not the same for every person or the same in every situation.  I, however, stop short of pure existentialism by believing there are some general, all-encompassing moral truths.  For example, I believe it is morally wrong to take an innocent life – and I cannot bend to situational exceptions on this issue. Thus, I am a “liberated” woman who opposes abortion for any reason, as unborn babies may be the only pure examples of innocent life on the planet.  Which begs the obvious point, I do not believe that all life is innocent.  The Hebrew language has two words for “kill” – one meaning “murder of an innocent person” (this verb is used in Exodus, the sixth commandment) and the other meaning “to slay in self-defense” or “as an act of punishment” (this verb is not used in the ten commandments).  I digress. The point is that we each establish a moral code, and that moral code may or may not be linked to religious beliefs. For me, it is impossible not to intertwine these two separate sets.  

I believe that personal freedom of choice – a freedom bestowed on us by a creator who understood the consequence of such power even at the gifting of it – defines and destines both the miracle and the plight of humanity.  All crossroads can be traced back to a series of choices, many of which may have seemed inconsequential or insignificant at the time.  In other words, one may find himself or herself in a situation where he or she feels there is no choice – and there is not – but it is not because the choice didn’t exist; it is because it was already made. God had to offer free will because without choice, there really isn’t life. 

My conclusions in this personal quest turned out to be more simple than poignant:  the creation, in and of itself, is proof of the Creator; the Creator gifted man with free will and choice; the gift came with the consequence of death, so the Creator provided Himself in human form as a sacrifice and gateway to remedy the human condition and open the door for any man who chooses to receive salvation and immortality.   

Christianity is the only major religion in which the very God who opened the door to sin and damnation by allowing His creation to have free will, sacrificed Himself and conquered death to provide the antidote to the choice the creation would invariably make and the consequences it would suffer.  Logic posits that choice is both the ruin and the remedy for mankind. What a brilliant God to offer both.