My own personal Disney

I’ve been at l’abri now for almost a week..5 days to be exact. the past 7 months when I’ve explained this place to people typically I get asked “what will you be studying there” and my response, for the most part, didn’t have much to it. i talked about wanting to spend time studying the bible and dialoguing with other students about their faith. Ya know..a pretty good answer and a true one. However one friend of mine, during our yearly lunch (yes.yearly…we try and meet once a year to catch up since we don’t live in the same state anymore)..anyways.. he asked me this question “well how have you been seeking god now?” [insert cricket noises] then he asks “how do you think leaving will help you seek god and how will you implement this change you hope to attain when you get back”…insert witty comment because im pretty sure I did.

Those questions really called me out. I know at first I felt defensive…who was he to ask or challenge my desire to “seek” god..but he was right. In the past 7 months I’ve talked about my trip to seek god I actually never really did any seeking leading up to it and no one else asked me if I was.

Enter labri. I thought I would be coming here to learn discipline and have time to study the bible by just reading through the old testament but it is actually something totally different, but completely needed. The past few years of my life I have gone to church, I have been in a small group, and been challenged to live my life in different ways. But can I honestly tell you that not once in the past three years have I asked any true questions of my faith and really sought out the answers?

The first day here I listened to a lecture about the importance of asking questions. Now it sounds simple and honestly reading the title I was skeptical I would actually gain any new thoughts from this exceedingly simple notion but let me tell you….that lecture kicked my butt. Let me explain why:

 Ellis potter talks about how ignorant questions are the most honest/true questions and to not apologize for not knowing because you are being brave enough to ask is a step in and of itself. Ignorance…is probably the one thing I actually try and hide from people. There are so many things I don’t understand, whether its politics, history, or what futbol team plays for what country but do I ever let people know when im confused? Heck no. I feel so pressured to have all the answers, and to show any kind of weakness or lack of understanding is almost looked down upon. If I was going to ask someone to talk to me about the first world war because I honestly didn’t remember what happened specifically a person would probably answer “you’re kidding me right? You don’t remember?” those kind of comments are so humiliating and degrading if we really think about it. so now enter in a person who has grown up in the church her whole life but really doesn’t know the bible, theology, or really anything for that matter..and then enter in groups of people that look to this person to be a leader, or knew her in the capacity of being a leader….how much harder is it for me to really ask those deep questions that seem simple but to me…I don’t know..like..who is Deborah? What is apologetics? What does righteousness really mean? What book does 1 peter come after? What..when..how..etc etc. So hearing Ellis talk about the importance of being honest with our ignorance really hit home because it meant putting my pride aside and truly allowing a person to see me in my confusion.

So here I am, listening to this lecture about asking questions and I realize that I haven’t asked questions because of fear of looking dumb and then I also realized that I didn’t want to ask questions because I didn’t know the answers.  Prime example- on the train down to greatham a kid was sitting across from me and we started talking about faith and god and in that conversation I think he asked me how I knew god was the true god…and what did I do..i gave a really quick answer and thanked god that the conductor guy came right then to get our tickets because I really didn’t have an answer. Ironically as he left he said he liked our conversation and I was trying to figure out if we really even had one. I was afraid to really try and answer his question because I myself had not really asked it. I had truly not thought about it enough to really try and figure out what my answer would be. At the end of the lecture ellis says “asking questions can be scary and you have to trust god to hold reality together”. The past few years ive avoided deep theological conversations because I was afraid of what the questions would do to my faith or what my answers would do to the person I was talking to. The beautiful thing about ellis’ comment..is that it is completely true..how big is our god that even in our questions we can trust him to, in the end, hold our reality together.

L’abri means the shelter….a shelter for people to come to and to truly be themselves and ask the honest questions and have a space to seek out the truth or to leave with even more questions to think about. I think that I have opened up pandora’s box..i feel alive and I feel like my brain hurts most of the day because I don’t think I’ve been using it the past few years. I shut off my thoughts when it came to faith for so long that now that its out of the dark I feel like a small child at Disney world. There are sooo many sights to be seen and so many things to experience, but the beautiful part for me is that I have the rest of my life to continue seeking God, seeking truth and asking questions and the end result..knowing the reality of God as true, as real, and really seeing and knowing how he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life through my humanity, through creation, through thought, through humility, through questions, and even through science.

So watch out all your philosophers, theologians, and spiritual folks, you got a pretty ignorant woman here who is ready to finally entertain some thoughts, ask some questions and probably ask you to define a lot of words.