MaryBeth LaMont

I worry about people who seem to have no curiosity about life or the world. Perhaps better put, I might say,” I am curious about them”. So many seem to take things at face value, learn about life, what’s right, what’s wrong, and acquire values at an early age and never look back to even wonder about them, let alone question any.

Curiosity killed the cat, it is often said. Perhaps. But you and I are not felines. We have a different ability to think, ponder, question, and make moral decisions. Curiosity is not what kills us, more often it can be what moves us forward.

Had the earliest humans not had curiosity, you and I might still be living in unheated caves eating raw foods. Curiosity questions as to might be a better way of doing something. Might we be able to improve our shelter, our eating, our life?

Science at its root is basic curiosity. Can we create a vaccine for COVID? How might we do so? What is needed? We look at the stars and planets at night. There is Mars! Can we get to it? How? What might it be like? What might we learn from the trip and from the landing that could help us here on earth? What is needed to get us there?

So many benefits you and I enjoy in life is the result of someone’s curiosity. We live longer because some have questioned and searched for ways to improve diet and health. Science is so curious, in fact, that it questions itself and, at times, learns through further curiosity, it has to correct itself.

You may remember Alice in Wonderland, seeing everything so new and different saying she was “Curiouser and Curiouser”. Most of us as we mature learn a great deal. Much of what we learn, however, is often how little we know; that is how much more there is to know even about even those things which we do seem to have knowledge.

Faith is an arena where too often curiosity is mistrusted if not downright prohibited. “We know it all, so leave it alone” seems to be the stance of too many in the Christian Faith. Don’t question a thing! Without such question we would not have had a Reformation. Without such question you and I, though Christians, would be refraining from pork and following Old Testament laws to the T.

The Biblical world is not our world at least in terms of lifestyle and choices available. Technology alone separates us greatly from the days of Jesus, and before Jesus, the days of, say, Moses. How do people of the Bible live today? Curiosity is a great partner in figuring this out. We can begin with the word, “how”, a word of curiosity.

We do not begin or work through any of this alone. True, some bright folks often stand out with new ideas. For those ideas to work, however, a following, that is others, need to think these ideas through, decide they make sense, and then go along. Again, the Reformation is an excellent example. The Reformation was not just about Luther, Calvin, and other leaders. Much of an entire continent bought into it.

Curiosity is not only a gift for individuals. It is granted to communities and entire faiths. Can we be curious together and navigate into both our present and our future, knowing both present and future belong to God? Do we have faith enough, that is do we trust God and God’s grace enough, to question and explore? While many may think faith ends with curiosity, curiosity may just be faith’s beginning and faith’s proving grounds.