Dear Matthew,
I’m writing to you again, because my thoughts were not finished in the last letter. When I wrote to you about the Calling Game of creation, I failed to highlight a reoccurring issue which I had glazed over. In this letter, I hope to speak to you about it directly—without distraction.
When you read about GOD calling light to dance the dance of existence with darkness (Genesis 1:3,4), what do you see? When GOD must bring order to the chaos of formlessness, darkness and the void of the earth (Genesis 1:2), what do you observe? When GOD brings dryland out of the seas (Genesis 1:9,10) and separates the waters above from the waters beneath the firmament (Genesis 1:6-8), what do you see? When the sea creatures are made and the land creatures as well as the fowls of the air and the birds in all their splendour and songs (Genesis 1:20-23), what do you see? When GOD makes man in the Image and Likeness to have dominion over the creatures (Genesis 1:26,27), what do you see? When the LORD GOD says that man being alone is not good and proceeds to make another – bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh (Genesis 2:18-23), what comes to you in that moment? Do you see it?
If you do not, I will spell it out for you. At every stage of creation where GOD is faced with a new task or for lack of better words, a challenge for creativity, how does GOD handle it? Does HE dwell on the problem or does HE solve it? He solves by HIS Word, yes? But what does HE not do? He does not ask questions. Now I know this is ironic since most of this letter so far has been about asking questions. I have asked questions to say that in the creation story, there are no questions. GOD doesn’t create by questions and because we know that all things are of GOD and made by The LORD (1 Corinthians 8:6), then there are no questions in the core of GOD’s creativity process.
You are right to say who could GOD have asked? But you would be wrong because when it is time to make man, GOD says, ‘let us…’ not “what shall we do now?” It is necessary to say that GOD doesn’t ask questions because HE knows what HE must do and when HE must do it. HE doesn’t inquire to know, HE knows. So great is HIS knowledge to know what doesn’t yet exist and to know what would be needed before the need arises. This is the knowledge we can trust, Matthew; it is the knowledge that births trust and understanding.
Am I done writing to you? No. The first question would be from the serpent who enquired on what GOD has said that instructed the activities of the man and the woman in the Garden.
Did GOD say?
Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”
– Genesis 3:1
It is from this question that questions are born. Did GOD say you can or cannot? Did GOD say you should or should not? Did GOD say you may or may not? Did GOD say you ought to or ought not to? We still live our lives today answering this question in one form or the other and this is the order of life as we know it. If all the question did was point us closer to obeying GOD or being conscious of the import of what GOD says to our lives, it would have had no negative effect. However, it did not; and still does not. Because this question is only good if it doesn’t plant the seed of doubt. Where questions seek to fortify, they could also sow doubt.
Did God really say
Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”
– Genesis 3:1
And soon, we begin to doubt ‘if GOD said what HE said’, ‘if we understood what HE said to be what HE said’, ‘if GOD could even speak to us what HE said’ and worse ‘if GOD saying what HE said is enough to plan life with’. From doubting what GOD said to doubting that GOD could have said, questions can make us travel miles away from GOD and keep us in hiding so that what we should run from we run for and the fortress that should protect us is used to project us away like ticking bombs. We end up at the point where the question begins to echo as ‘if GOD is there’.
We don’t end here. Because we now speak the language of questions, we know no other but this. We ask ‘if GOD is enough’, ‘if GOD being enough is enough for us’. We ask ‘if we cannot save ourselves’ and then we proceed to try. From not being ashamed, to shame and then to covering the shame. This is why when the LORD GOD comes to man, HE has to ask questions because we would not understand HIM in any other way. Afterall, we stopped speaking like HIM or living like HIM. From knowing HIS Will to questioning HIS Will, we affirm our doubt in disobedience and this is why we get displaced so when GOD speaks to us, HE must ask questions:
Where are you?
Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?”
– Genesis 3: 9
Who told you that you are naked? Have you eaten from the tree I forbade you to eat from?
And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?”
– Genesis 3:11
Woman, what have you done?
And the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
– Genesis 3:13
Now Adam and the woman are at the receiving end; however, questions have a way of metamorphosis from enquiry to challenge. Note how Adam answers that it is the woman God gave him and led him to fail in his duty (Genesis 3:12). And then the woman proceeded to say it was one of GOD’s creations that led her to deceit (Genesis 3:13). What we do not really notice is that Adam and the woman blame GOD. In a turn of events, what would have been a conversation unto salvation was a bout of questions. Man was fully metamorphosed from an obedient servant bearing the Image and Likeness of his master and GOD to challenger of his creator.
In that fleeting moment, man became brave and independent enough to question the GOD who did not create with questions. It wasn’t necessary to stand against GOD, he had done nothing wrong to the creation HE made so flawlessly. This is why it was only fitting to cast man away from the presence he was not happy to be in (Genesis 3:22-24).
Matthew, this is my point: in GOD’s grand design we have no need for questions, we have no need to question. What we do not know, we shall know if we ought to know. This is because the GOD who knows man needed help before man needed help is actively attentive to our being far more than we can be. In our core, there are no questions, just GOD designing things to be when it is time for them to be.
So how do we go forward from this? We practise trusting in the moments we feel obliged to question. We leave a space for GOD to fill up the answers. When you want to ask questions that question the capacity of GOD to provide or preserve or protect, we need to wait and observe if HE has not already started doing so.
However, when we indeed ask questions in this attempt to repair our faulty language, we don’t challenge; we seek to know in order to fight doubts. This New Covenant uses questions to fight doubts so I leave you with this: when the enemy comes calling with questions that unnerve you or target your faith, ask him questions too. Ask why he cares, ask why he is bothered, ask why he is not where he ought to be. We are not the only ones who should feel uneasy, let the devil sweat too.
I shall see you when I have more to say.
Your friend,
Olatunde
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