15 Reasons Why I Left the Church - Reason Three

Rachel Held Evans - Left the church at 27 - still gone at age 30

I left the church because my questions were seen as liabilities.

Faith - to be sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Hebrews 11:1
Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith - Hebrews 10:22

With our focus on assurance in the Bible it is easy to fear people who have questions.  It is easy to develop an atmosphere that questions are really a lack of faith.  The biggest problem with that is that we develop a culture of I must hide my real questions about God and the Bible.  I must act only a certain way and may only ask certain questions.  I must put on my smile at church and "fake it" like I have all the answers.

I believe that you can be certain of God and have great faith, but still have unanswered questions.  That God gives us permission to have time to question, lament (nice Biblical term for complaining about my bad circumstances), and grieve like we are actually still humans.  God is not afraid of our questions, so we can't be afraid of each other's questions.  If God's ways are far beyond my ways than I will naturally have questions for God and His ways.  Ultimately God will either answer my questions or give me a peace about my lack of understanding.

I believe unquestioning faith is shallow faith.  As people question and wrestle with God, we find answers that help develop deep and grounded faith.  If we are unwilling to spend the time to ask the difficult questions we may find our faith is lacking when we face the darkest days or the brightest days of our lives.  Both the trials and blessing days will test your faith.

We need to make sure we never react in such a way as to communicate to others - "wow, that is a dumb question."
We need to learn to ask questions that will help people to open up and share their deep questions about God and life.
We need to be open about sharing our own questions about the Bible, God and the church.