Institutional learning has a way of shutting out questions. Someone who asks a lot of questions is looked upon as an annoyance – someone who is holding everyone else back. A naturally inquisitive person can’t handle the discrimination for very long and eventually shuts up, which is a shame since she was the doorway to truth for everyone including the teacher.

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened unto you” (Matthew 7:7) What does this mean, if it doesn’t mean to persist? Shake the tree. Rattle the cage. Don’t stop until you get an answer. Pound on the door in the middle of the night until the person you want gets up out of bed and comes to open it, if only to get rid of you (Matthew 11:5-10). Jesus said that He rewards people like this.

“Don’t stop asking. Make your teachers and preachers sweat. People don’t like questions because they really don’t care about knowing the answers, or they are too uncomfortable leaving the difficult questions unanswered. As long as they think someone, somewhere, knows the answers, they are off the hook. (That’s what all those Christian books are for, right?) Obviously, the point is not to learn, but to get through the study in the allotted time, probably because that is their spiritual obligation.

Don’t let them silence you. Rock the boat. That’s what you’re there for. Rock on!”