Curiosity and Poor Eyesight | Ep. 45
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jeremy_1_04-21-2025_125131: [00:00:00] Welcome to another episode of Cabernet and Pray. This episode is going to be posted a few days after Easter, and it's got me thinking about Easter weekend and a conversation that I had with a listener of the podcast and a friend of mine who. We are able to be open together about our doubts, our questions.
We have journeyed together in this thing called Christianity for many years, and so he and I are both a safe space to each other, and so I'll, I'll leave his name anonymous to keep it safe, but he, he wished me a happy Easter on Sunday and then sent me one of the. I think funniest texts I I've received in a long time, and you may not appreciate the humor as much as I did, but I think this sets up this episode.
Well, he texts me this, he is risen. And then in parentheses, probably[00:01:00]
Jesus has risen probably. Right? And this is someone who has doubts, who has questions, and I'm right there too of like. Yeah, I, I believe most of it, most of the time, you know, and there's moments that you go, I'm not sure about this, and is this wishful thinking? And what about, and we have those tensions that we navigate.
Now, if you are a regular listener or viewer of this podcast, odds are you have some similar questions. You have doubts, you have things you're wrestling with. That you want to enjoy a good glass of wine and figure out in, in conversation together. And that is certainly one of the goals of what we do in, in these conversations.
And so today I wanna unpack this idea a little bit more of how we navigate this. And I wanna read a quote that I came across recently and, and it struck me, you know, and it's one of those quotes that I was like, wow, there's something to that. And so I wanna take this quote. Now I wanna bring it into theology and, and we're gonna [00:02:00] apply this to how we interact with and wrestle with God today.
So the quote comes from a guy named Bernard de Fontenellele, which is a pretty sweet name, and he said this all philosophy is based on two things only, curiosity and poor eyesight. I read that line and I thought, Ooh, there's something there that's really good. All philosophy is based on two things, only, curiosity and poor eyesight.
Now he's talking about science philosophy. I wanna take that quote and I wanna apply it to something bigger, which is how we approach theology, how we approach making sense of God and how we experience God. Now, if we had 2020 vision, we'd have no need for curiosity. We would just see God clearly. But as far as I know, none of us have that, none of us have the ability to perfectly see God.
[00:03:00] So we, we just catch glimpses. We, we, we get a little glimpse of that or a little insight there. We need curiosity. Therefore, our, our response to faith should not be certainty. It should be wonder. It should be a sense of, wow, this is incredible. This is big. There are some things that I'm not gonna figure out here, and so I'm going to have curiosity and wonder about those.
So today we are going to explore this idea further. This is episode 45. Curiosity and poor eyesight.
I've never shared this with anybody publicly. There's so many things happen in this conversation right now, thousand years from now, people are gonna be looking at this podcast saying, so this was the breakthrough. If this was SportsCenter, that would be like such a hot take. Skip Bales would've no idea.
Steven A. Smith would've no idea what to say. You drop that down. That is so good. The joke I always say is like, [00:04:00] how'd you learn so much? You gotta drink a lot. The power of food and beverage to lubricate an environment, resistance to change is hurting the church. I'm not in the camp that God has a penis or a vagina or a body at all.
I mean, the camp to God is a. Universe Spirit. This is the strangest podcast that I have been on. I don't even know what to do. I'm kind of geeked up about this wine. This is my second glass and it delivers a little more of a punch than I expected. So how I get a little loopy? It's your fault you told me to drink on this show.
I'll also say as a confession, I am a lightweight, so I've had like three sips of this wine and I'm already feeling it, so. This is fun. You've uncovered the mystery, you've exposed the formula. You've just duct taped together a number of things that aren't normally hanging out together, and I'm here for it.
We're gonna sit down a table. We're gonna have a glass of wine and some food, and we're gonna talk about. The beauty of Jesus. Thank you for the, the hospitality that this particular [00:05:00] podcast provides folks like myself and I know others to, to be curious around their faith practices. I really appreciate this menu, what you're doing.
It is fun, and yet you dig into the deep stuff. I've heard about your podcast for a long time, and I love that you're a pastor and that you explore the world of faith through wine that's very unique. I will never forget the first time I bought a bottle of wine. By myself, which was yesterday. If you're familiar with Drunk History, I thought it's like drunk theology, so I, oh, I got a little spicy there.
It's the peach wine, by the way, drinking this peanut regio at three o'clock in the afternoon is making me even more direct in my communication than I normally would be. I know why you have your guest drink wine. Makes sense now. Yeah, I get it. A little bit of liquid courage should really unleash the beast.
jeremy_1_04-21-2025_125131: Before we dive into this conversation, let me talk about what I'm drinking. Hopefully, if you're [00:06:00] able, you are joining me with a glass of wine as well. Today I am enjoying, this is a 2022 whole cluster Pinot Noir from the winemaker series of Stoller Family Estates. And this is a wine from Oregon. Actually, the first place I ever became a member of is from these guys.
This is using a technique with the whole cluster called carbonic maceration. Now it may sound fancy. You go, what the heck is that? Basically, instead of crushing the berries first, the winemaker seals the whole bunches into a tank. Together. This creates an oxygen free environment where fermentation begins inside the intact grapes.
Okay? So rather than, breaking them all down and it fermenting together, it's beginning the fermentation process inside the grape. Itself. And this creates a light bodied, more aromatic expressive pinot noir. And this is an [00:07:00] old world technique. So here you have new world fruit from Oregon meeting an old world technique, and it's pretty cool.
And if you can see in my glass, for those of you watching this on video, it's incredibly light. In fact, if I was just staring at this, I may not even guess that it's a pinot noir because it's so light. But just incredibly vibrant and punchy. This is a wine that usually you don't age these as much when it's done in this technique.
These are something you want to drink a little bit younger, and this is incredible. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna do the proper technique here. I'm gonna sniff it, swirl it around in my mouth, and and I'm gonna enjoy what I got going here.
That's perfect, and that is so good on a medium warm afternoon. And, and so we're not into the crazy temperatures yet, but that is an [00:08:00] easy drinker, dangerously easy drinker, and goes down smooth and just as a, a nice light red wine. So that's what I'm enjoying today. Hopefully you've got something in your glass if you're able to join along with me today.
Now let's dive into who is Bernard De Fontenelle? He lived from 1657 to 1757. He was a French author, philosopher, and early science communicator. He's most famous for his work called Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds, which is heck of a title in 1686. That's where our quote comes from today, and this is a guy who thought, imagination, and curiosity and humility.
We're essential to seeing what's beyond us, which I would suggest is perfect for a Jesus centered exploration of ministry and faith. So I would apply his quote and, and customize a little bit for our purposes to, to read like this. [00:09:00] All theology is based on two things, only, curiosity and poor eyesight. Now, when I heard him applies to philosophy, I thought, oh, that fits to theology.
As well. So let's explore why. Well, let's begin with curiosity. It's easy to think of theology more like a fixed map, a a book of right answers. You know, you, you go to the Bible and you figure out all the answers to your questions, and many people read it like this and they think certainty is the goal.
And you'll see that in a lot of churches. You'll meet a lot of Christians who. They're not asking questions anymore 'cause they have found the answers. They can point you to a verse that has ended the conversation for them. But this isn't what we find in the early church, and it's not even what we find in Jesus in his example either.
In Luke chapter two, verse 46, we find a young Jesus as a boy, and we learned something about him that I just [00:10:00] think is worth noting. It's worth slowing down a bit and going, okay, what does this teach us today? In Luke 2 46, it says, three day later, they finally discovered him in the temple. His parents are looking for him, sitting among the rights or the religious leaders, listening to them and asking questions.
So Jesus goes missing as a boy. His parents can't find him. Then they find him in the temple sitting among these religious teachers, and he's asking them questions. He's about 12 years old here. He's not preaching. He's not correcting them. He's listening and asking questions. Curiosity is literally part of the divine.
We see it modeled here in Jesus. Now, I would say you see this all over the place. Whenever you see God testing someone in scripture, I suggest as an example of God's curiosity, which path will they take? Now, I think God can [00:11:00] anticipate every possible choice we make, but I personally do not think God knows which choice we're gonna make, which in my opinion is the only way you make sense of God testing people throughout the scriptures.
Now this gets us into the topic of God's foreknowledge, which is a reminder to me. I need to probably do an episode on open theism, which I haven't fully dove into yet, which is one of my favorite things to talk about, but we'll, we'll put that aside for now. We will just focus on what we have with Jesus here as a boy, that Jesus is asking questions.
Jesus has curiosity. So if Jesus began his theological journey with curiosity. What makes you, and I think we can skip it, that we don't need it, that we'll just move beyond it. Another passage that comes to mind is Acts 17, verse 11, and this is talking about adults, and this is talking about church communities, and this is a passage you may have heard [00:12:00] before, but.
I want to point your attention to something that we don't often talk about. This aspect of this verse I'm about to read. In Acts 1711, it says, in the people of Berea were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica, and they listened to eagerly to Paul's message. They scr searched the scriptures day after day to see if Paul and Silas were telling the truth.
Now, I've always heard people talk about, yeah, you gotta search the scriptures. And that's how you verify truth. And that's great. That's a great thing to get in the habit of doing is someone tells you something, go, go exploit a scriptures and figure out how does that fit or not fit with what you find in there.
But I wanna point out the earlier part of that verse. The people of Bria were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica. Evidently there's a raiding of, of church open-mindedness, and the berean are killing it. They, they are more open-minded, [00:13:00] maybe the most open-minded of the church communities that these early disciples were interacting with.
And it's slightly a dig on those in Thessalonica and the churches there because they were not as open-minded, which makes me think like maybe there is a scale. That the early disciples had of, of like, Hey, how open-minded are these new church communities that we're, that we're creating, that we're building, that we're planting?
Or are they close-minded? Are they not open to what God is doing? I wonder if we rated churches today on a similar scale, what if we had an open-mindedness scale on churches? And so when you were considering going to a church, it would get us a, a, a number one to 10 on open-mindedness, and you would look for.
The highest number you could find. 'cause you wanna go to a church that is open-minded. This is what we find in the scriptures. They praised the communities that were open-minded, that were willing to learn and to ask good [00:14:00] questions. They probably had a healthy dose of humility. Now there's a saying throughout the rabbinic tradition and the wording shifts of this, and you'll find it said in different ways, but in essence it, it goes something like this.
God hides truth in places where only the humble will stoop to find it. Like diamonds buried in dirt. Oh, I love that image that God has truth, but God just doesn't come out right and and reveal all the truth, which is how a lot of people read the Bible like you don't need curiosity. Just memorize the verses, read it.
In fact, I'm, I'm often you know, taken aback how many times someone in a comment section on social media will tell me, you know, you just need to read the Bible. And then you wouldn't be asking the questions that you're asking a as if that that is the end all. If you read the verse and you just see what the verse says, you'll never have a question again.
And I always, [00:15:00] you know, have the response. People like, no, I, I've read it. That's not my problem. I just don't read it the way you do. I don't read it and have all my questions answered. I often have more questions. In fact, the older I get, the more questions I have about the world and certainly about God and about theology.
And it's not because I know less than I used to know. It's because I know more than I used to know. I'm, I'm more aware of how big all of this stuff is. I have a greater appreciation of that. And because of that I have more questions and this is how it often works. And so we see, those are just a couple examples, but we see throughout scripture that oftentimes curiosity, it is used as a really healthy thing.
Now let's get to the poor eyesight part. First Corinthians 1312. Paul writes this, now we see things imperfectly. [00:16:00] Puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. This is the Apostle Paul who wrote the majority of your New Testament saying, we see things imperfectly.
Which means that even Paul at his best moment, Paul, at his most articulate moment, is describing something to you imperfectly, to use his own words. Paul is saying, this is how we see now. Eventually we're gonna see more and we're gonna experience more. But right now we see imperfectly, th this is a, a nod to the fact that there is poor eyesight.
You know, we cannot see everything. Perfectly. We do not have 2020 spiritual vision to just go, this is exactly what God is like. We, we have to see with the best that we can, acknowledging there are limitations. Now, many people don't like this. We want [00:17:00] crystal clear theology. Many Christians want you to think that they have it, that they have crystal clear theology, and sadly, the more confident someone is.
In their Christianity. Oftentimes, a lot of people believe, oh, they must be right because look at how confident they are. Look at, look at, you know, they don't have any doubts at all. But maybe what we need more of is honest theology. Theology that acknowledges we have poor eyesight. We cannot perfectly see God.
We cannot perfectly understand God. As Paul says, we are seeing things. Imperfectly and we make room for that. And we adjust accordingly. We respond accordingly. Now, you may have heard of something called the the Dunning Krueger Effect. I often feel like this is what I'm witnessing around me. This is a cognitive bias where people with low competence tend to overestimate their abilities, and people with [00:18:00] high competence often underestimate their skills.
Perhaps you've seen this as well. A number of people have elaborated on this idea and how they've seen it. The philosopher, Bertrand Russell said it like this. The trouble with the world is that the stupid, a coer and and the intelligent are full of doubt. You ever notice that? Like sometimes. Those that don't really know what they're talking about are pretty sure they know exactly what they're talking about.
And those who are more intelligent, who have studied it more, researched it more, experienced it more often are the ones with doubts like, oh, I don't know about it. Could be this, could be that, or Pastor Craig RHEL said it like this. Those who are lowest incompetence are highest in confidence. Those who are lowest incompetence are highest.
Confidence. It's the Dunning Kruger effect. And Sally, this is [00:19:00] what I often find in mainstream evangelicalism today. It's what you will find in many churches today where this is the way we, we don't really explore a lot. We, we know the answer that we like, and so we don't ask the question anymore. And this is the problem where if you start asking the question, you start to go, oh, maybe I don't fit here.
There's a strong sense of certainty. Around the theology and around the practice. In many churches, and this is why many people who are deconstructing often feel like they need to leave their church because they realize as they look around them, I don't have the surety that everyone else does. I don't have that certainty that everyone else does.
I seem to be wrestling with questions that no one else cares about, and when that is the situation you find yourself in, these people often leave. That community and they try to find a space where it's safe to ask questions, where it's safe to process [00:20:00] through, Hey, this doesn't really make sense to me.
This doesn't really look like Jesus to me. Ann Lamont has said it like this. The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. See, we, we want to demonize doubt that if you are a good Christian, you won't have doubt, but I think certainty is a far bigger threat to our faith. Then doubt is because doubt leads to curiosity.
It, it leads to an awareness of I, I cannot see perfectly. I have poor eyesight and so I'm going to wrestle with these things in humility
there's a passage in Luke chapter 24, verse 16, after Jesus has died and resurrected and come back to life, he shows up to some of the disciples. But evidently, the risen Jesus' body looks different because they don't recognize him. Then they, they get this, this whole conversation, and [00:21:00] there's this line in there that I've always thought was such an intriguing line.
Luke 24, verse 16 says, but God kept them from recognizing him. Isn't that interesting line? God kept them from recognizing Jesus. Now, you, you, you would think that these people who had just followed him for the last three years just watched him get killed. And watch all these things happen to his body, would probably recognize that same body a few days later.
But God kept them from recognizing him. Why I I, I love this be because evidently there's an element there where God didn't want them just to think that they knew it all. There, there's a curiosity there. There's a, a mystique there of, hey, there's something beyond what you can grasp. And I think God continues to work in this way today, especially to people who want to feel [00:22:00] like they have it all figured out, like they don't have any curiosity or doubt.
So let me give you a wine analogy here. As we think about this, if you think about a great glass of wine, you, you're not going to fully appreciate and understand a glass of wine with one sip, right? Even with one smell. Now, you may be able to determine a lot about it, but you're going to want to go back to it 'cause it's going to surprise you.
And this is one of the fun things, even in these episodes that I do. Of times I'll open a bottle as I'm preparing for the episode. Then I'll be drinking it in the episode, and then toward the end, I'll start to notice this is tasting different. It's opening up, it's expressing itself differently. The first time you taste a wine and a glass, it may taste one way to you that you can go back to it and it's gonna taste different.
So what has changed? Have I swapped out [00:23:00] the wine in the glass and it's holistically another wine, or is there something mysterious happening? And my appreciation of it is changing. And, and this to me is, is more of an analogy of what we experience as we follow God. Theology is the same way. God hasn't changed, but curiosity trains our senses to experience God, to see God in new ways.
Curiosity and poor eyesight are companions for us to experience God in ever new ways. They are friends to embrace rather than things to be afraid of. I came across recently a book it's an ancient text called The Cloud of Unknowing, which I think is a cool phrase. This was written in the 14th century by a a, an anonymous Christian monk probably a mystic of some sort.
They think it was a monk written in middle English. It's considered [00:24:00] one of the foundational texts in Christian mysticism today, and there's this line in it. Again, this is kinda like old English, but I, I think this line is, is so intriguing to me. It says, by love he referring to God May Begotten and Holden, but by thought never.
I'll read it again by love. He may begotten and Holden, but by thought, never. Now, we'd have to modernize the English here a little bit for our time, but basically saying you can truly wrap your hands around God as you experience God and love. But if you try to do that by thought alone, you'll never be able to wrap your hands around God.
Which I think is such an intriguing idea, like you wanna fully experience and you wanna fully see God without doubt. Oh, then you need to experience God through love. But when you're coming to God through your ideas and your thought, then you have to acknowledge you're, [00:25:00] you're not gonna get there. That, that you, you're gonna have to have curiosity and poor eyesight, that God can only be truly experienced in that way through love, not through our rational explanations.
So what do we do with this? What do we do with curiosity and poor eyesight? I'll give you a few ideas of things that I would suggest would, would improve our faith, would make it healthier. Number one, stay curious. Learn to see curiosity as a strength. Let your questions drive your theology more than answers.
In fact, learn to be dissatisfied with cheap answers. When someone says, oh, I don't know, or dismisses something, go, no, no, no, that's not good enough. I, I want to keep pursuing that. I want to keep asking that. Keep exploring that. Let your curiosity drive your theology. I would say a second thing we can do is to embrace our [00:26:00] limits.
There's wisdom in realizing we don't see everything clearly. The Apostle Paul had this, we, we are seeing imperfectly. He was able to articulate that it would be better if more Christians or able to articulate that today as well, just to acknowledge we, we don't see things clearly, so we embrace our limits.
Finally, I would say focus on Jesus. When you're trying to figure out how do I see what I'm trying to see? How do I figure things out? Focus on Jesus. Jesus is always the lens that brings God into focus for us. One of the lines you've no doubt heard me say before, but good theology is theology that looks like Jesus.
So as we're wrestling through, here's a question I have. And we go, well, how do I make sense out of that? We make sense out of that in light of Jesus, of who Jesus is and the experience that we've had with Jesus. And then we go, okay, does this answer that I'm arriving at look [00:27:00] like Jesus? And if it doesn't, we keep wrestling with it.
We keep asking that question and we don't stop just because we've had some answer. We let our curiosity continue to drive us. We don't need to pretend. That we can see clearly, we can let our poor eyesight drive us forward toward curiosity, and we can let our curiosity lead us to Jesus. So I'm gonna end today.
I'm gonna give you a challenge, if you will, an assignment, a homework assignment, whatever you want to call it. Something for you to do if you're going, Hey, I, I'm into this. This is how I experience God. This seems to put words to my experience with God. Here's something that you can do this week. You can do it today to engage a next step in your journey with God.
Think about this. What is one question about God that scares you to ask out [00:28:00] loud? Now I go back to what I, I began with my friendship. I have with the, the friend who texted me he has risen probably, right? We have that safe space. Like I have friends who I can ask those questions out loud to, but I have also learned that most people don't have someone.
So what is that question for you that you would wanna ask about God, but you're afraid to ask that question because you don't know what people would say. In response, you don't know what they would think about you, what they would deduce about your faith. If they heard you ask the question, can you name what that question would be for you?
So name it and then write it down. Just write it down. Now, I want you to sit with this question over a glass of something good. Get yourself a nice glass of wine and sit with that question, stare at it. Don't [00:29:00] rush for an answer. Let God meet you in the curiosity of the question. Let God meet you in the journey of wrestling with it, and maybe as you wrestle with it, you, you'll discover, Hey, there is someone.
Who I could talk about this question with there is someone who I would feel safe enough to, to engage in this question with, and if so, maybe you bring them into it. But even if you don't have that person, this can be something you and God spend time with
you can invite the creator of the universe to enlighten you, to begin to lead you to maybe a, a partial answer to, to some explanation of that. And in that journey, you get to experience God in new ways and hopefully you get to experience the love of God in the process. All theology is based on two things, curiosity.[00:30:00]
Poor eyesight. I wanna close with something that Carl Sagan said that I, I just find intellectually stimulating. I think this is so cool and this is an idea that makes me want to go dive in and, and explore my curiosity and ever new ways. Carl Sagan wrote this somewhere. Something incredible is waiting to be known.
Something incredible is waiting to be known. Will we be the ones curious enough to discover these new things? We'll see you on the next episode of Cabernet and Pray.
