Questions matter. Let's share them. Answers . . . Well, let's call them "responses." Below are mine - what are yours?
It's been a part of our Sunday School time we're bringing back this year and opening to all. Each time our kids' classes meet, they'll have time for the question box, and many of the questions below are submitted by kids. But often, these are big questions adults have too! So, don't be shy. Submit your questions here or in the box in the back of the church sanctuary. We want to teach our kids and model to each other a faith that is comfortable with questions, and open to shared discussion about the big things that matter.
A seminary professor always made a part of class open for any big questions, but he'd always ask immediately in response, "why do you ask that question?" We wonder this, too - and what is behind our questions. Perhaps by openly sharing our questions, responses, and wonderings, we can unmask our fear and the shame around having questions. God welcomes your questions - and you!
Read the submitted questions and my responses below - and feel free to add your own thoughts/responses.
- Pastor Brett Wilson
This is a great question! I wonder this, too. If God made everything, who made God?
For me, it's hard to imagine but I wonder if God has just always been - and there was never a time when there wasn't God. That's hard to wrap our brains around! If that's true, then God was never born like us, but mysteriously has just always been. In the Bible there are many references to God being "everlasting" or from all time, and even Jesus too, that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever." (Hebrews 13:8) Also John 1:1-8 uses poetic language to talk about Jesus and God being around from the start: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word was with God in the beginning. Everything came into being through the Word, and without the Word nothing came into being."
The beginning of the Bible actually isn't the very start of all time - but starts (especially in its original Hebrew) as if things are already in motion. At the beginning of the Bible, there is already God and the rich darkness and chaos from which God creates everything. I like to think of it like a big, dark, mysterious soup.
What do you think?
- PB
Hmm... What do you think? I think this is a "stump the pastor," especially with the lighthearted drawing accompanying it :).
I'd say the meaning of life is LOVE! Loving our neighbors as ourselves, loving God through loving others, loving nature and everything God made. Love is how we experience God, and what makes us feel alive.
Does it have to have a meaning? Life is a gift. Maybe it's not meant to be understood or figure out its meaning, but experienced - lived to the fullest. Doing so would be the grateful response to the God who loves and made us!
What do you think?
-PB
Hmm... I wonder what made this person ask! So, the Bible tells us Jesus is the first child to parents Mary and Joseph. But do we think they didn't have any children after this? One could imagine they likely did. For us Lutherans, considering Jesus having siblings, and temper tantrums, awkward teenage years, and everything else that may or may not be part of the human experience doesn't bother our view of Jesus as both fully God and fully human.
There are a couple places in the gospels where Jesus talks about "brothers" or "siblings" - and some people think at least four of them are named. Other people think that Jesus is just speaking metaphorically - like how people use "bro" today.
What would it have been like to grow up with Jesus? For a funny and thoughtful imagining of this, the novel Lamb, the gospel according to Biff, Jesus' childhood pal is a good easy read. Or - what would it have been like to be Jesus' younger sibling after his death and resurrection?
-PB
Oooh this question pulls at my heart strings! My first answer is - I don't know, and I wish God would!!! We aren't alone in asking this question - people have been asking it for thousands of years and in the Bible, especially the Psalms, people keep asking this over and over - with questions like, "how long, O Lord!"
My second answer/response, after I join the lament behind this question, is that God has and does come down to us. In the little things, and the people who love us. In the things we didn't think possible, and the sense of love and promise that God is with us no matter what. To make this a little more down to earth, this week, God came down to earth to me in my friends, in restful sleep, in seeing good people working to take care of others, in the beauty of fall days... What about for you?
-PB