A to Z Challenge: Q is for Question

Q is for Question

I was the black sheep of my Sunday School class. I didn't want to be. I was just curious. Little did I know, my curiosity made me an outcast in my own religion.

My family was Greek Orthodox. We were a faithful church-attending family. As a youngster, I loved learning about Jesus and I knew he loved me. I held my breath when the incense got too strong, and I sang the hymns in Greek, not knowing the language. While I loved the lessons from the Bible I felt disconnected with the outward culture and doctrine in the Greek Church. It didn't help that we weren't actually Greek—my father was Egyptian and he would have raised us in the Egyptian Orthodox (Coptic) faith had there been one in the area at the time we were born. So, the cultural disconnect was very real. I didn’t feel like I fit in.

 I was the one with the weird questions: Why do we baptize babies when Christ was baptized as an adult? Why are there so many churches? Why are they all so different?

The question that set me apart as the black sheep also set me on the path to knowledge.

This was the question: If we need to be baptized to go to heaven, what will happen to my Jewish friend when she dies? After all, it was not her fault that she was born in a Jewish family. Why would God punish her for not being raised in a Christian home? And for that matter, what about all the people in the jungles of South America who never got a chance to even hear about Christ? What would happen to them?

They had no good answer. I felt alone in a church full of elites who were perfectly happy, sure of their ticket to heaven, while other people lived their lives unaware of their inevitable eternal punishment. I was only eight years old when I asked the question about my Jewish friend. When I realized their answer meant she would not make it to heaven, it changed me. I matured that day—and I was determined to find a God that loved everyone equally, regardless of circumstance.

A question can be a weapon of destruction. It can break a barrier that others never meant to be broken. But once through that barrier that same question can lead to more questions which lead to truths that were there all along—they just needed to be discovered.

A question can be a tool of construction. The more we ask, the more we learn, the more we build. We encourage children to ask questions—we should not be afraid of the questions they ask.

In A Doorway Back to Forever: Believe, Robyn is obsessed with Magic-Sense, the ability to see and hear beyond earthly sight and sound. Her questions lead her to answers beyond the doorway. 

In a sense, Robyn’s quest is much like mine when I decided to search for the kind of church that was no respecter of persons. In finding the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a doorway was opened for me into a world that transcends earthly sight and sound. Hmmm….Robyn may be onto something beyond fantasy.