Editorial: God Doesn’t Need Your Protection
Sometimes people ask me what it was that made me begin to question the fundamentalist faith of my childhood. I’ve thought about that question a lot. And the truth is that there’s not one clear or concise answer I can give. There were a lot of things over the years that began to build up slowly until an avalanche of questions broke the dam I had built around them.
I had a college friend that came out as gay and was immediately rejected by everyone around him. The 2015 GC vote not to ordain women affected me strongly. Reading the story of Job as an adult and realizing that it’s either a parable, or God has less empathy and respect for life than I do. These are just a few instances that puzzled me.
But the thing that kept haunting me again and again until I couldn’t silence it was my intuitive understanding that anything we can call truth has to be able to hold up to scrutiny. Or, to say the inverse, anything we aren’t allowed to question can’t hold up as truth.
Things that are true can withstand questions. Truth doesn’t need to be protected by sheltering it from investigation. That is the basis of science. I don’t believe science and faith need to be opposed to one another: they can work in harmony. And I think whatever God is, God doesn’t need me or anyone else to protect God from questions.
So ask questions. God can handle it.
Lindsey Abston Painter
Adventist Today Writer and Editor
25 May 2024
ANNOUNCEMENTS & LINKS
Today’s ATSS class (1:30 PM Eastern) with Laura Wibberding
One-click link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89254993829
Passcode: MARY
ATSS on June 1: Michael Scofield
Previous weeks’ ATSS recordings can be accessed here.
Join our Weekly Update mailing list here.
Our donation page can be accessed here.
