A Faith Unafraid of Questions

I could hear the music and the people praying around me.

I knew I was lying on the floor. I remained conscious and knew what was happening around me. And yet, I could not open my eyes.

Just moments earlier, I had been standing, praying with other people. Several groups were gathered there, and music was playing as we prayed. At some point, I felt my strength leave me. A few people caught me and gently lowered me to the floor.

I could hear everything, but I could not respond the way I normally would.

Even so, I was not afraid.

There was an overwhelming sense of peace, and I felt that, in that moment, I was exactly where I was supposed to be. The music and the prayers continued, and I simply felt good being there.

It never happened again.

I admit that I wish it would happen again—not because I want to prove anything to anyone, but because I miss what I experienced in that moment.

Today, there are times when I feel far from that spiritual place.

It was precisely that longing that led me to ask what had actually happened.

Some Christians refer to experiences like this as “resting in the Spirit.” Others understand them as emotional, psychological, or physiological responses.

I cannot use what happened to me as a rule for interpreting other people’s experiences.

But about my own experience, I can say this: I lost my strength. People caught me. I remained conscious. I could hear what was happening around me. I could not open my eyes.

And I felt a profound peace.

Beyond those facts, interpretation begins.

Was it a direct action of the Holy Spirit, or was it my body responding to the intensity of that moment?

Could a natural explanation coexist with spiritual meaning?

I have no way to prove one possibility while ruling out all the others.

Not having a definitive answer did not diminish what I experienced.

It simply taught me that there is a difference between respecting an experience and turning our interpretation of it into certainty.

Perhaps this second book began right there—in the space between what I experienced and what I still cannot explain.

My hope is that through research, study, and the books I still hope to write, I may draw closer to God and rediscover something of that peace.

In my first book, my questions led me to God.

In this one, I will not set out from God in search of answers; I will set out with God in search of them.

That difference may seem small.

But it changes the entire journey.

I believe in God, and it is from that conviction that I want to better understand the world He created, the Scriptures I have learned to love, and the questions that continue to arise within me.

I write from ordinary life: from work, from caring for my family, from reading the Bible, and from the questions I carry with me every day.

They come while I am working outdoors, while I drive from one house to another, during a conversation, and often when I encounter a passage of Scripture that will not allow me to move on with an easy answer.

Over time, I noticed something interesting.

I may begin by thinking about the beginning of the universe, the origin of life, time, consciousness, or human freedom.

Sooner or later, they all seem to arrive at the same place.

They lead me back to God.

For many years, however, I carried the impression that there were certain questions a Christian should not ask.

No one needed to forbid me from asking them.

It was enough to feel that doubt revealed a weak faith, and that admitting “I don’t know” might sound like a lack of trust.

And so some questions were pushed into a corner of my mind.

My faith remained.

But so did the questions.

Today, I see it differently.

If God is truth, an honest question does not need to be treated as an enemy.

It can expose a mistaken interpretation, a rushed answer, or an image of God that never fully corresponded to what Scripture reveals. That can be uncomfortable, but it is not necessarily dangerous. Sometimes what is being shaken is not faith. It is simply a certainty we built ourselves.

That is why the words of the father in the Gospel of Mark caught my attention so deeply. He brought his son to Jesus and, faced with what seemed impossible, replied, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” In a single sentence, he expressed both his trust and his weakness. He did not try to appear stronger than he was. He did not offer a neatly organized religious answer. He brought his heart to Jesus exactly as it was.

Christ did not turn him away because of that confession. The man did not have to resolve every contradiction within himself before he could be received. He brought Jesus the faith he had, along with the part that still needed help.

Perhaps this is one of the most honest forms of faith: not pretending that we know what we do not know, and not hiding from God what He already knows.

We can believe and still ask questions. We can love God and not understand why a certain pain was allowed. We can trust Scripture and acknowledge that some passages are difficult. We can look at the vastness of the universe and ask how all of it relates to the Creator.

This does not mean that every doubt is good. Some questions seek truth, while others are used only to avoid any answer. A person can question with humility, willing to reconsider their conclusions, or use doubt as protection against anything they do not want to admit.

The difference is not always in the words being used, but in the heart of the person asking. I need to watch my own heart as well. I do not want to form a question having already decided that I will accept only the answer I like.

If I sincerely want to know the truth, I need to allow it to correct my ideas, including those I have repeated for years. Faith does not give me the right to call my interpretation infallible. It teaches me to remain before God with confidence and humility.

The Bible itself does not hide human restlessness. Job tried to understand the suffering that had destroyed his former life. Habakkuk asked why God seemed to tolerate injustice. David placed in his psalms the anguish of someone who waited and saw no answer. Thomas said he needed evidence before he would believe that Jesus had risen.

Those accounts could have been softened. Their hesitation could have been removed so that the people in them appeared spiritually flawless. But it remained. The Bible shows us real people before God: some weeping, others waiting, others trying to reconcile what they believed with what they were living through.

Job did not receive a detailed explanation for every loss. He was led to recognize the greatness of God and the limits of his own perspective. Habakkuk began with questions and ended by declaring that he would rejoice in the Lord even if the fields produced nothing. Thomas encountered Christ, and his doubt gave way to the confession: “My Lord and my God!”

Questions were part of their stories, but they did not have the final word. I began to notice something similar while writing my first book. When I returned to texts about Cain, Canaan, judgment, death, and eternity, I was not looking for a reason to accuse God. I wanted coherence. I wanted to understand how such difficult passages related to the Father revealed by Jesus Christ.

Some explanations brought clarity. Others showed me that the subject was more complex than I had imagined. And some questions remained open. Even so, my faith did not diminish. On the contrary, it stopped depending on quick answers and learned to recognize its own limits.

The first book was born from that discovery. The second begins after it. Now I want to look more closely at questions that cross the Bible, history, philosophy, and science—not to mix everything together as if these fields used the same method or had exactly the same purpose, but to understand where they speak to one another, where they need to be distinguished, and where our conclusions go beyond what we actually know.

Many conflicts arise precisely from a lack of that caution. A theological interpretation is not automatically the only possible reading of a text. A scientific hypothesis does not become a fact simply because it seems interesting. A genuine discovery should not be denied merely because it challenges a religious explanation we have grown accustomed to. And the Bible does not need to be forced to answer scientific questions its authors were not trying to address.

Throughout this book, then, I will try to distinguish honestly between what Scripture affirms, what belongs to the realm of interpretation, what the evidence allows us to observe, and what remains a hypothesis. When there is more than one serious reading among Christians, that will be acknowledged. When science does not have a definitive answer, we will not pretend that it does. When I do not know, I will say that I do not know.

Saying “I don’t know” sounds simple, but it takes courage. There is a temptation to fill every empty space with certainty. In a religious setting, we can do this by using a verse outside its context. In a scientific setting, we can present a possibility as though it had already been demonstrated. In both cases, the rush to answer can move us away from the truth we claim to defend.

There is another caution I consider essential: not using God merely to fill what science has not yet explained. The God I believe in does not live only in the gaps of human knowledge. He does not become smaller every time we discover a new mechanism in nature. If He is the Creator, then a true discovery about creation does not replace Him; it simply allows us to observe a little more of what exists.

Science investigates phenomena, measures, compares, tests hypotheses, and corrects its models when new evidence appears. Philosophy helps us organize questions about existence, knowledge, consciousness, morality, and meaning. Scripture bears witness to who God is, what He has done in history, and how He revealed Himself fully in Jesus Christ.

These fields may touch on similar questions, but they should not be confused or turned into weapons against one another. My intention is not to make science prove God, as though the Creator depended on a formula, nor to use faith to deny what can be honestly observed.

God will remain at the center of this investigation, the Bible will be our foundation, and Christ will be the reference through whom I seek to know the heart of the Father. At the same time, my interpretations will remain open to correction, because they are not God and do not possess the authority of Scripture.

For me, that distinction is very important. My belief in God is not a provisional conclusion that will be abandoned if a theory seems difficult. Yet the way I interpret a text, understand a historical event, or relate a scientific discovery to faith can mature. Revising an interpretation does not mean abandoning God. Sometimes it simply means admitting that He is greater than the explanation we have constructed.

As I think about these questions, I remember the people who may read these pages without sharing my faith. Some may have walked away because of pain. Others encountered a religion based on fear, lived with hypocrisy, or heard an image of God defined only by condemnation. Still others believe that science has made any belief unnecessary.

I do not want to treat those who think this way as enemies. Before answering pain with an argument, I need to respect each person’s story. A wound does not disappear because we quickly recite a verse. A serious intellectual doubt does not deserve a caricature either.

There are atheists and agnostics who have studied their questions deeply, just as there are Christians who merely repeat answers they have never examined. Honesty requires acknowledging that.

At the same time, there is a question I consider fair: Which God is being rejected? Is it the God revealed in Jesus Christ, or a distorted image built from experiences, abuse, religious rhetoric, and incomplete explanations? The question does not eliminate every objection, but it can create room for a more careful investigation.

I will not ask that reader to leave reason outside. Nor will I promise an argument capable of forcing anyone to believe. I simply want to invite that person to look again.

Can everything that exists be explained only by what we can measure? Do the laws that describe how the universe works also explain why there is a universe governed by laws? Is human consciousness merely material activity, or is there a dimension to it that we still do not understand? Is our search for meaning, justice, love, and eternity merely a meaningless accident?

None of these questions, by itself, proves God. But together, perhaps they reveal that some doors are not yet completely closed.

In the chapters that follow, we will enter themes that have accompanied me for a long time: who God is, how to understand the Trinity, what time is, what we can say about creation and the origin of life, where consciousness comes from, how to think about evil, Adam, free will, Judas, suffering, the cross, death, and eternity.

I do not want to turn every subject into a dispute. I want to examine them with reverence, responsibility, and a willingness to learn. If an answer makes sense, we will follow it as far as the evidence and Scripture allow. If we encounter different interpretations, we will try to understand them without turning brothers and sisters into adversaries. If we come before a mystery, we will not manufacture certainty simply so the chapter can end comfortably.

Paul wrote that now we see as in a mirror, dimly, and that we know only in part. That statement does not make truth unreachable. It simply reminds us that our vision is still limited. Truth exists, but none of us sees everything.

Recognizing that limit protects faith from two dangers. The first is concluding that if we do not understand everything, then God does not exist. The second is imagining that because we believe in God, we already have an answer for everything. Between these two forms of arrogance lies a humbler path: enough conviction to remain and enough honesty to keep learning.

That is the place from which I want to write. I do not want to win an argument while losing the opportunity to understand a person. I do not want to protect an answer simply because it is old, nor reject it for the same reason. I want to learn to ask with respect, research responsibly, and always return to Scripture without using it as decoration for ideas that were already formed.

Perhaps, in the end, some readers will still disagree with me. That will not make the journey useless. If these pages help a Christian admit their questions without feeling that they have abandoned faith, they will already have served a purpose. If they help someone wounded by religion consider that God may be different from the image they were given, there will be reason for gratitude. And if they lead one person to open the Bible again and look sincerely at Jesus, they will have accomplished more than any debate could achieve.

Before moving forward, however, I need to ask myself the same questions I am asking the reader. Am I willing to admit when I do not know? Will I accept an answer that corrects what I have always thought? Do my doubts truly seek understanding, or only defend my preferences? And does the God I claim to know come from Scripture, or from images I have gathered throughout my life?

These are not questions I leave only for the reader. Before they pass through these pages, they need to reach me. So my prayer does not need to be long:

Lord, I believe. Help me also in what I still do not understand. Do not allow my faith to become fear of the truth, nor my reason to become pride. Correct my interpretations, guard my heart, and keep Jesus Christ at the center of everything we encounter. Amen.

This is how this book begins. Not with the promise of explaining every mystery, but with the commitment not to run from them.

And before we ask how the universe began, why time exists, or where consciousness comes from, there is an earlier question capable of changing every other answer:

Who is the God we say we know?