Questions

I have found that most of my life as a christian has involved asking questions, be that either to God or to others. Some of my questions have been answered and others haven't. For a while I thought that questioning things was bad, as either it showed you didn't understand (when it always seemed that everyone else did) or it implied that you were backsliding in your faith. But I love to question things, especially why we do what we do!

This is why I can really relate to Jesus' disciples and am really glad that the writers of the Gospels included the questions they asked in their accounts. These guys were walking with Jesus on a day-to-day basis. They were witnessing first hand his miracles and were getting inside information on his teachings, yet they still had questions. Admittedly, these often seemed to irritate Jesus, yet deep down, I bet that he was glad they were asking them. Why, because it showed they were thinking. It showed they were engaging with what Jesus was doing. It showed they wanted to learn.

For me, being a disciple of Jesus is to be a 'constant learner' (one of the definitions of the word disciple) and to do that, we need to have questions. Not only questions from ourselves, but also of those around us. These may be head questions like "Is there a God?", "What is the Trinity about?" or "Why is there suffering", or they could be heart questions like "Why did my Dad die?" or "Why do my friends hate me?". I believe that if we want to go deeper in our faith, we need to be prepared to ask the tough questions of life to God.

The question I often find myself asking is the same as the one Judas (not Iscariot, but the other one) asks of Jesus in John 14:22;

"Lord, why are you going to reveal yourself only to us and not the world at large?"

Why did Jesus only reveal himself to a few people when he raised from the dead? Wouldn't it just be easier if he revealed himself to the whole world and then we could get this over with?

I think I'm beginning to see why Jesus has chosen to do it this way, but I am interested to hear what your thoughts are on the matter...