For the love of questions

I defied my junior high Sunday School teachers yet again on Sunday night. I went to a rock ‘n roll show, as the kids say. Well, kids of a certain generation, I guess.

My youth leaders specifically warned me about two of the three acts. Don Felder – FORMERLY OF THE EAGLES, as I imagine legal actions require him to clarify – sang “Hotel California,” which my teachers said was about drug use. (I never really understood the objection, since the song seems like more of a cautionary tale than a ringing endorsement.) Styx put on the best concert I’ve ever seen, but did you know that the Styx is a river that leads to Hades? (My Sunday School leaders whispered that “Hades” is another word for hell.)

I hated every millisecond of my Sundays in that too-small room with teachers who saw the world through the lens of fear and divided everything in it into good and bad camps. (I promised myself then that I would crank up and sing along to “Hotel California” every time it came on the radio, and I made myself a mental note to check out Styx, even though it would be another five years until I really got into classic rock.) The worst part of my “formational” experience in that setting, though, was that there was no room for questions. And as a teenager struggling with the difference between what I deeply felt to be true about Jesus and what I was being told at church, I had a lot of ’em.

My parents took my abject misery and my soul’s peril (as I refused to be baptized in this congregation) seriously, and we hopped around until we found a church that was a good fit for our whole family. There I made my pastor, many a youth leader, and my peers uncomfortable with my questions and pushback, but no one tried to shut me up. Bless those kind souls. They are one of the reasons I am in ministry today.

Now, I ask questions for a living. What a dream for a person with so many! I don’t ask these questions on my own behalf in my role as coach. I listen for what is going on in clergy and congregations and make queries that will help them come to their own realizations and reach longed-for goals. I cannot tell you how much I love this work.

Maybe it’s a curiosity mindset that the Eagles were actually referring to: “you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.” And why would I want to?