honesty is hard to find in the Christian world as we know it. i’ve noticed this even more lately. oftentimes we rely on appearances only, not daring to dig beneath the surface of things.

why do we do this?

is it because we’re scared? that’s a fair reason, of course, but i don’t think we should let it define us or hold us back from the hard questions. and too often, we do.

is it because we don’t care? sometimes, but not all the time. i think we’re just all so busy, wrapped up in our own lives, tangled in our own emotions. {i know this feeling. i don’t condemn you since i'm there too.}

but honestly i think it’s the first reason: we’re scared. we’re scared to go deep because we don’t know what we’ll find.

in his most shallow and basic form, God is safe. he is familiar to us, he is not scary. he is safe. but i think we’re scared that, if we delve deeper, God won’t be safe. it’s the unknown, and it scares us. {trust me, i’ve been there, too. i am there right now.}

but i think i finally understand what c.s. lewis meant.


i know it’s scary, dear one. i know you’re scared of what you’ll find. so am i. but let’s go deep together, okay? let’s ask the hard questions, let’s try to understand, let’s admit that there is pain and suffering. let’s try to understand the world and God in a way we never have before. i think that, once we take this jump into the unknown, we’ll realize that our Jesus is much safer than we think.

let’s ask why. why do we believe what we do? why is there pain? let’s confront God with the hard questions; i’ve learned that he’s not afraid of them. i think he welcomes it. the deep questions strengthen our roots, and deep roots are not touched by the frost, as tolkien said.

there’s this quote i read somewhere that says, “there is a certain darkness needed to see the stars.” so in the midst of our quest for why, let’s ask God to show us the stars, too. he made them for us, you know. there are still stars, even in the midst of darkness. life is hard, but i still believe that at the core, life is still good, and more beautiful than you can ever imagine.

in the past year, this has become all the more clear to me: we have to ask why. we have to challenge our beliefs and confront God sometimes, because we can’t get just by living on the surface. it’s not possible.

instead, ask why. because the world’s too big and cruel and deep and beautiful to let such a question go unanswered.