Why I Turned “No Answers” Into A Podcast
When I was in high school, a friend posed a thought exercise, “If you could ask God anything, what would you ask?” Nothing came to mind. I had no burning questions leaping to meet his query, and it didn’t feel like I needed one. It wasn’t that I thought I knew everything, but I felt that the measure of my faith and maturity was feeling confident in the answers I already had. Not needing answers from God felt like I had everything I needed, and this was a very comfortable place to be.
So how did I come to start a podcast called “Hard Questions, No Answers”? Obviously, some things changed, and to be honest, they weren’t fun changes. There are many questions we as humans avoid at one time or another. Sometimes, it’s because they make us feel uncomfortable. Perhaps they threaten to disrupt a relationship or the uncertainty makes us feel helpless.
As plausible as these reasons may be, there’s another layer that may go even deeper. Hard questions make us feel emotionally vulnerable. They force us to confront reality and often that means letting go of false realities and seeing how small in the universe we really are. I want to share a little bit of my own journey through hard questions and why I think they are important.
The Good. Starting this podcast has been an exhilarating mix of excitement and terror, adrenaline and late nights. It is extremely satisfying to be able to creatively craft a product that feels like it embodies traits I value in myself. And it is terrifying to feel like my very self is being put out there for the world to see. Unlike other major projects in my life, this one seemed to come together relatively quickly.
It was probably about three months from my nascent germ of an idea to the release of the first episode. Several times, when sitting in front of my computer screen editing an episode, I have thought, “How did I end up here?” Reflecting on that process, I believe that the reason why I was able to get this project off the ground was because the foundation was laid a while ago.
The Bad. When I was in the middle of that foundation-forming process, it felt anything but formational. It felt the opposite. I was well into my first year of graduate school to become a clinical psychologist, and everything I knew as firm in my life seemed to be disintegrating like quicksand beneath my feet. I attributed my disorientation and deconstruction to the facts that I had just left behind a supportive community in Illinois, I was being pushed academically by dense psychological literature, and I was unraveling pieces of my past in psychotherapy. It seemed understandable, albeit uncomfortable, that I would feel “a little stressed out.”
But these are not the factors I think of when I track the formational process that has resulted to some degree in this podcast. Looking back, the most influential force on my formational process has been a dark night of the soul. “Dark night of the soul” means different things to different people, but I use that term here to describe the spiritual experience of the withdrawn felt presence of God. This does not mean that God is not there, nor does it mean that I was rejecting God in some way. It was a time of inexplicable detachment from the experience of feeling God’s presence. It felt like God was right there watching me in my pain and detachment, but there was no movement from him to comfort or reassure me.
Clear as day, I can replay the memories of asking hard questions: “Where did I go wrong? Why do I feel so alone? Where is God right now? How long will this feeling last? What am I supposed to do with myself right now? How do I deal with all these painful feelings?”
I’m sure there are numerous theological opinions about the dark night of the soul and its role in a person’s life. My goal is not to have a theological discussion about the intricacies of such an experience, but to reflect as best as I can on what I have learned through that process. I’m not even sure if I’m out of the dark night; there is no fanfare declaring that it is over. Even though I don’t feel nearly as desolate as I did in the thick of it, it seems like present day has just gradually come to be.
The Hard. There are three main reflections from that time in my life that have informed my approach to this podcast.
Faith is not measured by our feelings about God feeling near, but rather how we respond when God feels far. I can think of many times in my life where God felt near: inspirational mountain-top experiences at retreats, caught up in the elation of worshipful song, revelatory moments reading Scripture. I’m not saying any of these experiences or feelings are bad by any means; however, the inadvertent, unhelpful lesson I learned was that this is how faith is supposed to feel all the time. Somehow faith had become conflated with certainty. When I relied on feelings to confirm my faith, I was not really trusting anything else but my feelings. Paradoxically, the feeling of certainty, which I thought faith was supposed to give, was the very thing holding me back from truly trusting. When I finally started to see how illusory my previous concept of faith was, I began to understand that the dark night of the soul and all my hard questions were actually an opportunity to see what my faith was really made of.
Maturity can’t occur without growing pains. We can all relate to the desire to “have your cake and eat it too.” We want the value and benefits of maturity, but we don’t want the discomfort and uncertainty of the growth process. My status quo was being challenged, and I was faced with the choice of retreating into denial or forging ahead despite the discomfort. Even when I could see the absurdity of wanting the best of both worlds, the decision was not any easier, and I questioned what I really wanted. Did I want to hold on to my familiar yet flawed ways of thinking for the sake of comfort, or was I willing to step out into the unknown to try to find a better way forward despite the pain? It’s easy to proclaim my decision to such a crossroads from my vantage point now, but I assure you, it was not so clear cut at the time.
Growth is more about the process than the arrival. There are many pressures throughout our life that push us towards arriving at an answer. Right answers get a high grade. Successful outcomes produce good work. Agreement contributes to a good relationship. While each of these things speak to a slice of reality, we can be tempted to neglect the other side of that reality: we only get to those outcomes through a process. The reason I stress the exploration process so much in my podcast is because that is where the formation happens. Hard questions catalyze our process of becoming.
If I’m being honest the titles of “good,” “bad,” and “hard” are all subjective. Though my feelings of comfort may feel “good” they may be holding me back from growth. Though the painful feelings of the dark night may feel “bad” there are things I never would have experienced otherwise. And though, difficult questions may feel “hard,” I have found that it is like a muscle: the more you exercise it the stronger it becomes.
And when I say “stronger,” I do not mean that I arrive at answers any quicker or even at all. The more I ask hard questions, the more accepting I am of “no answers.” This acceptance is not a surrender of futility; it’s not a posture of “why should we bother.” Rather, it is a recognition that growth cannot occur unless we are willing to push the boundaries of our comfort and certainty. This is a journey I have grown to appreciate, and this is why I started my podcast: I love finding other sojourners to journey with.
