Questions

ON HER DEATHBED, Gertrude Stein is said to have asked, "What is the answer?" Then, after a long silence, "What is the question?" Don't start looking in the Bible for the answers it gives. Start by listening for the questions it asks.

We are much involved, all of us, with questions about things that matter a good deal today but will be forgotten by this time tomorrowthe immediate wheres and whens and hows that face us daily at home and at workbut at the same time we tend to lose track of the questions about things that matter always, life-and-death questions about meaning, purpose, and value. To lose track of such deep questions as these is to risk losing track of who we really are in our own depths and where we are really going. There is perhaps no stronger reason for reading the Bible than that somewhere among all those India-paper pages there awaits each reader whoever he is the one question which, though for years he may have been pretending not to hear it, is the central question of his own life. Here are a few of them:

 What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? (Matthew 16:26)

 Am I my brother's keeper? (Genesis 4:9)

 If God is for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31)

 What is truth? (John 18:38)

 How can a man be born when he is old? (John 3:4)

 What does a man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? (Ecclesiastes 1:3)

 Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? (Psalm 139:7)

 Who is my neighbor? (Luke 10:29)

 What shall I do to inherit eternal life? (Luke 10:25)

When you hear the question that is your question, then you have already begun to hear much. Whether you can accept the Bible's answer or not, you have reached the point where at least you can begin to hear it too.

-Originally published in Wishful Thinking

QUIET

 An empty room is silent. A room where people are not speaking or moving is quiet. Silence is a given, quiet a gift. Silence is the absence of sound and quiet the stilling of sound. Silence can't be anything but silent. Quiet chooses to be silent. It holds its breath to listen. It waits and is still."In returning and rest you shall be saved," says God through the prophet Isaiah, "in quietness and confidence shall be your strength" (Isaiah 30:15). They are all parts of each other. We return to our deep strength and to the confidence that lies beneath all our misgiving. The quiet there, the rest, is beyond the reach of the world to disturb. It is how being saved sounds.

~originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words  

QUIRINUS

 Saint Luke says that Jesus was born in the year "when Quirinius was governor of Syria" (Luke 2:2), although it is indicated elsewhere that at the same time Herod the Great was king. Since Quirinius wasn't governor until ten years or so after Herod was dead, the two dates can't really be reconciled, although for centuries scholars eager to defend scriptural accuracy in all things have knocked themselves out trying to reconcile them.So maybe Luke made a mistake. The inspiration of the Scriptures is no more undermined by the fact that their chronology isn't infallible than the inspiration of Shakespeare is undermined by the fact that he thought there was a seacoast in Bohemia.

~originally published in Peculiar Treasures and later in Beyond Words  

RACHEL

 The life of Jacob's wife Rachel was never an easy one. In the first place, she had Laban for a father, and in the second place, she had Jacob for a husband. And then, of course, she also had her sister, Leah.Rachel was the younger and prettier of the two girls, and Laban told Jacob that if he worked hard for seven years for him, he could have her. So Jacob worked hard for seven years, but when the wedding night rolled around at last, Laban sneaked Leah in in Rachel's place, and it wasn't till Jacob got a good look at her the next morning that he realized he'd been had. Leah was a nice girl, but she had weak eyes, and Rachel was the one he'd lost his heart to anyway. Laban gave some kind of shaky explanation about how it was an old family custom for the oldest daughter to get married first no matter what, and Jacob had to work another seven years before Rachel was finally his in addition to Leah.To be married to two sisters simultaneously is seldom recommended even under the best of circumstances, and in this case it was a disaster. For a long time Rachel couldn't have babies, and Leah had four. When they weren't fighting with each other, they were fighting with Jacob, and when Jacob wasn't fending them off, he was trying to outcheat his crooked father-in-law, Laban, with the result that in the end the whole situation blew up, and Jacob cleared out with both his wives plus Laban's household gods, which Rachel pinched for luck just as they were leaving because luck was what she felt she was running out of. It wasn't long afterward that Rachel died on the road giving birth to a son whom she lived just long enough to name Benoni, which means "Son of my sorrow," although Jacob changed it to Benjamin later on.Even in death her problems weren't over. From her sons and Leah's the twelve tribes of Israel descended, and the whole story of the Old Testament is basically the story of how for years to come they were always getting into one awful mess after another with God, with their neighbors, and with themselves. Centuries later, when the Babylonians carried them off into exile, it was Jeremiah who said that even in her tomb she was grieving still. "A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping," he said. "Rachel is weeping for her children" (Jeremiah 31:15).But Rachel's children were also God's children, according to Jeremiah, and the last words were God's too. "Is Ephraim my dear son?" God said, naming one of them to stand for them all. "Is he my darling child?" And then God answered his own question in a way that even to Rachel, with her terrible luck, must have brought some hope. "Therefore my heart yearns for him," God said, "and as often as I speak against him, I do remember him still" (Jeremiah 31:20).Genesis 29-31; 35

~originally published in Peculiar Treasures and later in Beyond Words  

RACISM

 In 1957 when Governor Faubus of Arkansas refused to desegregate the schools in Little Rock, if President Eisenhower with all his enormous prestige had personally led a black child up the steps to where the authorities were blocking the school entrance, it might have been one of the great moments in history. It is heartbreaking to think of the opportunity missed.Nothing in American history is more tragic surely than the relationship of the black and white races. Masters and slaves both were dehumanized. The Jim Crow laws carried the process on for decades beyond the Emancipation. The Ku Klux Klan and its like keep going forever. Politically, economically, socially, and humanly, blacks continue to be the underdog. Despite all the efforts of both races to rectify the situation and heal the wounds, despite all the progress that has been made, it is still as hard for any black to look at any white without a feeling of resentment as it is for any white to look at any black without a feeling of guilt."There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus," Paul wrote to the Galatians (3:28), and many a white and many a black must have read his words both before the Civil War and since, perhaps even given them serious thought. If more whites had taken them to heart, were to take them to heart today, you can't help speculating on all the miserypast, present, and to come that both races would have been or would be spared.Many must have taken them to heart, but then simply not done what their hearts directed. The chances are they weren't bad people or unfeeling people all in all. Like Eisenhower, they simply lacked the moral courage, the creative vision that might have won the day. The Little Rock schools were desegregated in the end anyhow by a combination of legal process and armed force, but it was done without some gesture of courtesy, contrition, or compassion that might have captured the imagination of the world.

~originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words