Some of my happiest childhood moments involved wandering around alone outside lost in my big thoughts and even bigger imagination. I’ve always had a fascination with the mysteries found in nature, particularly the reality that when it looks like nothing is happening beneath the surface of the earth or the water or high in the sky, there’s always more going on than we can comprehend. One of my favorite childhood pastimes was turning over rocks, logs, and anything else that had been stuck to the ground for a while to see what peculiar things might be found in the mud. The usual suspects were earthworms and ant colonies, but every once in a while, something unexpected would appear: a tiny frog, a family of rabbits, an alien-like insect with what looked like a thousand wriggling legs, and on one very memorable occasion - a snake (a harmless one, fortunately).
Practicing the discipline of curiosity as a grown-up has reminded me of these childhood adventures. It has also helped me reconnect to a sense of childlike wonder that I think may at least be part of what Jesus meant when he said that no one can enter the kingdom of heaven unless they become like a child.
It has taken significant time and intentionality, though, for me to move past some skepticism about curiosity as a spiritual discipline. If I’m honest, it initially sounded too simple, idealistic, and not really tough enough. It also seemed inefficient and way too slow. And furthermore, I understood the concern that curiosity could be used as an excuse to avoid God, myself, and truth. It can be used that way, of course, because anything can be if those are our goals.
We’re defining curiosity here as the willingness to suspend judgment long enough for something new to unfold. Curiosity, as a spiritual discipline, involves pausing, asking questions of myself, God, and others, waiting, listening, reflecting, and responding. Curiosity asks me to relinquish my strategies around fixing myself and others as quickly as possible and to trust God to actually be the author and finisher of our faith. It involves staying with tough questions without demanding answers in specific time frames. It means that I hold off on claiming to fully understand something before I really take a deeper look at it and admit what I don’t know. Curiosity has been a relief when I’m exhausted from pulling the same weeds out of my soul every day but have no idea how to find the root, let alone the energy to dig it out. Curiosity is less about specific outcomes and time frames and more about the messy process of becoming that happens over the course of a lifetime. It involves taking the time to really see and hear myself and others clearly instead of the easier path of jumping to conclusions. Curiosity provides a quieter alternative to the compulsive need to figure everything out. It stands in opposition to a tidy, linear, upwardly mobile version of Christianity that I can’t find anywhere in the Bible.
Ultimately, I’ve been floored by how deeply meaningful this discipline has become to me. It’s one of my favorite things to talk and write about because it’s been so profoundly helpful in unexpected ways.
Practicing curiosity reminds me that I am not a problem to be solved. I am a human being, fearfully and wonderfully made in God’s image, and more deeply loved by Him than I can ever understand. I have problems, no doubt. But the core of who I am is not a jumbled mess of questionable wires that I need to hurry up and untangle. I am God’s beloved. And so are you.
Practicing curiosity also reminds me that God is not in a hurry with me. He’s got time and He’s glad to spend it on me. He’s not impatiently rolling His eyes and wishing that I’d hurry up and get it together. He knows the perfect timeline for revealing things to me and in me, and for allowing my life to unfold. He’s not forcing me to move faster than my capacity to receive or relinquish anything. God doesn’t view me as running behind so I don’t need to catch up. And neither do you.
Curiosity has helped me be at peace with questions and mystery. Jesus asked a lot of tough questions. So do children. There’s inherent humility and vulnerability in being able to say, “I don’t know” and curiosity helps me keep growing in this. My favorite relationships these days are with people who are comfortable with their questions and mine. The longer I live, the more I believe that the point isn’t so much to figure out the answers but to be more at ease with the questions, including the unanswerable ones.
Most importantly, curiosity really is helping me believe that it’s possible to allow myself to be loved by God and for that to be enough. I am not claiming to fully comprehend this or even embody it well on any given day.. But there seems to be something quiet but powerfully transformative that happens when we show up like curious little kids and expectantly look under those rocks. It really might just be worth the risk of whatever we find underneath them.
