I want to stay agitated

A mind not agitated by good questions cannot possibly appreciate the significance of even the best answers. It is easy enough to teach the answers parrotwise. But to develop actively inquisitive minds alive with real questions, profound questions--that is another story. Mortimer Adler

While at the most recent Navigator conference I got to hear Randy Raysbrook speak and it was so neat because so much of what he was saying was things I had been thinking about. He mentioned how we need to ask questions and have the childlike wonder and inquisitive minds.

I was raised in the church and had become trapped where I would say what I believed but really couldn't even tell you why. I have started to seek out, well what does the bible say about it? How have others interpreted it? There are always tons of interpretations on a single verse and even down to how a certain word should be translated. I look at it all and then can draw my conclusions have had studied it.

I have started doing it every time I think of something that I have always just believed and accepted and not just in the spiritual sense. I don't want someone telling me what to believe I want them to show me the facts so I can see it! And not that I have a huge distrust of people, I have close friends who tell me something that I go look for myself. That is how I learn best, I have to see it, think about it, study it before I can truly understand it. It has been an amazing experience and I feel I have grown so much since I have started to do it.

That is my hope with the college students I will be sharing with. When we started talking Navigators, I said to God, I have such a limited knowledge of the bible, what can I teach people? And God remind me, I'm not teaching them anything I am just bringing them to the bible, and showing them how to search for answers, what they take away and understand is between them and God.

I don't want to answer the students questions because I will not always be with them. I want to show them how to look, to read, where to go when they still don't understand. How to have conversations with people you might not agree with but appreciate their opinions and how they got there. And something I am still learning myself but actually LISTENING to others and learning. Not to cling so hard to some idea I think to be true if the facts are against it. I have read verses in the bible and totally thought I understood it but had to learn to be humble and realize I was wrong.

Tom and I got to have a couple meals with Randy and something I never noticed before was how Jesus didn't just answer questions. He said things and did things that made people curious, made people ask questions, made people want to get closer and learn more. To often as the church we are so wrapped up on answering everyones question about everything.

I have seen bumper stickers, signs, commercials, headlines all telling me to believe something, to act a certain way to think a certain way. And even for the ones I agree with it strikes a nerve. Why are we always telling people what to believe? We should be asking them questions that stretch their minds, make them think, create that curiosity for them to desire to learn more. Jesus did that..... I want to too