Friends, I'm concerned about us...

I need to address something that's been bothering me for a long time.

I’ve spent most of my life in church pews, Sunday school classrooms, Bible studies, worship services, seminary classrooms, and now behind pulpits. I love the Church. I have given my life to serving her.

Which is exactly why I need to say this.

Somewhere along the way, many of us (church people) stopped being curious.

We inherited answers and called them faith. We inherited traditions and called them doctrine. We inherited interpretations and called them the Bible itself. We learned what to think, but forgot how to wonder.

And that worries me.

I think we’ve confused faith with certainty.

Not all of us. Not everywhere. But enough of us that it’s become part of the air we breathe. We’ve created churches where people feel pressure to have answers before they’ve even learned how to ask questions. We’ve built cultures where changing your mind feels like failure. We’ve treated growth like a threat, or worse, like something that is only visible on a graph or spreadsheet.

And somewhere along the way, we started acting like whatever we learned first is whatever we have to believe forever.

But that’s not how life works.

And it sure isn’t how discipleship works.

When I was a kid, I learned things about God that were true enough to get me started. But if I still understood God exactly the way I did at ten years old, something would be terribly wrong. The faith that first introduced me to Jesus was never supposed to be the finished product. Seeds are not failures because they become trees.

The first thing you learn is not the last thing you learn.

At least it shouldn’t be.

Yet I see Christians holding onto ideas they inherited decades ago as though questioning them would somehow betray God.

What if we’ve mistaken loyalty to our assumptions for loyalty to Christ?

What if the thing we’re defending isn’t actually God at all?

What if it’s just what we’ve always been told?

That’s a frightening thought. And maybe it should be. Because real growth always carries risk. The carpenter who learns a better way has to admit the old way wasn’t the best way. The mechanic who discovers a problem has to take the engine apart before it can run right again. The farmer who wants a harvest has to tear up the ground.

Nothing grows without disruption.

Nothing matures without change.

Nothing comes alive without leaving something behind.

Including faith.

The older I get, the more convinced I become that some of the things I feel absolutely certain about today may need to be challenged tomorrow.

Not because truth changes. Not because God changes. ot because scripture changes.

Because I do.

Because I am still learning.

Because I still have blind spots.

Because I have not arrived.

And frankly, neither have you.

That’s not weakness. That’s being human.

I worry that many churches have become places where people are welcomed as they are but expected to stay exactly the same. Of course, the church expects people to lay down their sin, but have we also expected each other to lay down our minds? Our curiosities? Our fantasies?

Or worse, we’ve become places where people learn very quickly which questions are acceptable and which questions are not. Places where curiosity gets treated like rebellion. Places where doubt gets treated like disease. Places where people quietly stop growing because growth might upset someone. But if we cannot question what we believe, do we actually believe it? Or have we merely inherited it?

If our convictions cannot survive examination, are they convictions or just habits?

If our faith requires us to stop learning, is it faith at all?

I don’t want to be part of a church that demands this type of certainty.

I want to be part of a church that demands honesty.

A church where people can say, “I don’t know.”

A church where people can admit, “I used to think that, but now I’m not so sure.” Or even a church where people can say, “I know what the Bible says in that particular place, but it seems to say something different in this particular place. What the heck?”

A church where Scripture is not a weapon used to shut down conversations but an invitation into deeper ones.

A church where people are free to wrestle.

Free to investigate.

Free to wonder.

Free to grow.

Because that’s where I’ve found life. Not in pretending I have God figured out. Not in defending every opinion I’ve ever held. Not in acting like my understanding can’t change. I’ve found life in discovering that God is always bigger than my categories. Always deeper than my assumptions. Always ahead of me.

And maybe that’s the real danger of certainty. Not that we’ll be wrong. We’re all wrong about plenty of things. The danger is that certainty can make us stop listening. Stop learning.

Stop growing.

Stop noticing where God is trying to lead us next.

A faith that never changes is not necessarily a faithful one.

Sometimes it’s just a stagnant one. And stagnant things don’t stay alive for long.

So here’s my plea:

Stay curious.

Read widely.

Ask better questions.

Refuse easy answers.

Interrogate the beliefs you’ve been given, scrutinize them.

Hold your convictions with courage and your conclusions with humility.

And never confuse the place where you started with the place where you’re supposed to stay.

Because following Jesus has never been about arriving. It’s always been about becoming. And I don’t know exactly where that road leads.

I just know that I don’t want to stop walking it.