You’ve probably heard the phrase, “Curiosity killed the cat.” According to the Cambridge Dictionary, it’s a phrase that’s used “to warn someone not to ask too many questions about something.”
I don’t like that phrase. I think it’s good to be curious. I think it’s good to ask questions. I think it’s even good to ask questions about religion and about God.
It’s good to be curious...
Curiosity on the part of Moses is how today’s scripture story begins.
At first, Moses is minding his own business. He’s taking care of his father-in-law’s sheep, the task to which he’s been assigned, way out in the wilderness. “Beyond the wilderness,” in fact.
The other day I was thinking about that phrase, “beyond the wilderness,” and what it might mean, when Ginger - who volunteers at Rancho Los Cerritos - told me about the shepherds who worked at the rancho in the 1800s. The rancho had over 20,000 sheep - maybe even as many as 30,000 - and the shepherds would take them out, far away from the rancho, for grazing. They’d be so far away that they’d be gone for months at a time, returning to the rancho just twice a year for shearing.
I imagine Moses’ experience as a shepherd was similar. It explains why he was “beyond the wilderness” - so very far from any human habitation.
Anyway, one day, as he’s guiding his sheep along, out beyond the wilderness, something catches his eye. Off to the side, he sees what appears to be a bush on fire.
Curiosity arises within him.
At first he wonders: did a lightning strike cause this fire? Probably not; there haven’t been any storm clouds lately. Did someone’s campfire get out of control? Doubtful; who else would be way out here, “beyond the wilderness?”
Moses looks at that bush, and ponders for a moment. Something isn’t quite right. There’s something strange about the way that bush is burning. Something unnatural.
Then he realizes: it’s not burning up! The leaves remain green, the branches are not consumed. The fire keeps on burning, yet the bush seems unaffected by the flames.
Incredible!
Curiosity then completely overtakes Moses, and he says to himself, “I gotta check this out!”
He glances at his sheep; they seem content for the moment. He knows they’ll be alright. So he turns aside. He steps off the path that his sheep have made. He follows his curiosity, to investigate this strange phenomenon.
That’s what curiosity does. It causes us to turn aside. It leads us off the path we were on. It takes us on a detour, a journey, of discovery.
And, yes, curiosity can lead us into challenging - or even dangerous - situations. I’m sure Moses had no idea how much his life would change by his act of turning aside to investigate the burning bush. I’m sure he had no idea how much the world would change by his stepping off the path to take a closer look. Curiosity certainly didn’t make Moses’ life easier.
Yet curiosity did lead him to a life beyond his imagining. Curiosity led his people to freedom. Curiosity resulted in his story, the story of his life, becoming one of the greatest stories ever told.
Because, according to the scripture, it wasn’t until Moses turned aside and stepped off the path to investigate, that God called to him from out of the bush.
I read this story, and I think: Yes! This is what the church should be doing… We should be encouraging people to turn aside, to step off the path, to explore new things, to ask questions. We should be encouraging people to ask questions about God, about faith, about existential things. We should be encouraging people to wrestle with these questions, just as Jacob once wrestled with God.
You may recall, Jacob went away from that wrestling match limping… but he also went away with a blessing.
Asking questions, wrestling with God, following our curiosity… may leave us limping for awhile, because it is a struggle. But it also leads to blessing.
It led Moses to struggle. Struggles with self-doubt, struggles with Pharaoh, struggles with his own people, and struggles with God. But it also led to exodus, and liberation, and freedom, and a new beginning.
Unfortunately, a lot of churches stifle curiosity. “Believe this,” they say… “and don’t ask any questions.”
They say that questions are a sign of backsliding. They say that questions are a sign of a weak faith. They say that questions weaken the foundation of faith.
But I say that if questions weaken the foundation of faith, then that foundation is built on quicksand. It’s time to build a faith on something stronger.
And speaking of building on a strong foundation, let us turn aside and step off this path for a moment, and follow something I’ve long been curious about.
When my family lived in northern California, one of our favorite things to do was visit Old Sacramento, a historic area along the Sacramento River featuring shops, restaurants, and an amazing Railroad museum.
Walking around Old Sacramento, I noticed that in some places, the roads dipped down low and came back up again. In other places, there were buildings that, upon entering, you would descend a flight of stairs to a lower level.
I soon learned that these were no ordinary basements. They were actually the first floor of many of these buildings… until the Great Flood of 1861-1862. In that year, not only was Sacramento underwater, but the entire Central Valley of California was underwater. It became one great lake, up to 15 feet deep in places.
Sacramento’s response to this flood was to bring in dirt and raise the levels of the streets, so that what was the first floor of many buildings became the basement, and what was the second floor was now the first floor. If you ever visit Old Sacramento, check it out.
The reason I bring this up is that this week, an article appeared in Mother Jones magazine which talked about how floods like this happen, on average, every 100 to 200 years in California. How do we know this? We know, because scientists like B. Lynn Ingram got curious.
Their curiosity led them to examine streams and riverbanks, and they took deep-core samples from riverbottoms, and studied them, searching for answers to the questions their curiosity had raised. They studied these samples and were able to determine that great floods like the one in 1861-1862 also took place sometime between 1235–1360, 1395–1410, 1555–1615, 1750–1770, and 1810–1820. And if all that is true, then it’s likely that such a flood will occur again.
Other scientists looked at these findings and were amazed. And as often happens, the answers to those previous questions led to… more questions. In 2018, Daniel Swain and a team of researchers at UCLA’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, wondered how climate change will affect these floods that happen every so often in California. They took California’s long pattern of droughts and floods and mapped it onto the climate models, and discovered that the likelihood of a great flood happening has greatly increased. They are fairly confident that we’ll see one happen in the next few decades, and maybe even a second one before this century ends.
And other scientists, like Lucy Jones, also began investigating, and they discovered that such a flood could cause four times as much damage to the state as a major earthquake on the San Andreas fault, and that we are much less prepared for a great flood than we are for an earthquake.
My point in sharing this with you isn’t to go on and on about a doomsday scenario. In fact, by knowing about these events, we can better prepare for them.
And by understanding how climate change has a way of intensifying not only floods, but also wildfires and hurricanes (both of which we’ve seen this past week) and so many other types of weather disasters, we just might motivate ourselves and our leaders to take the necessary steps to rapidly, without delay, end our patterns of consumption and energy production that contribute so drastically to a changing climate.
In other words, the curiosity that leads to understanding can then lead to action, and in the end, it can, in fact, save the world.
And like the Hebrew people, we, too, can have a new beginning.
It all starts with asking questions. It all starts with turning aside, and stepping off the path, as Moses did. Moses saw the bush and said, “I want to see why this is happening. I want to understand…”
So please: let’s get curious! Let’s encourage our children to get curious! Let’s encourage people to ask questions about the world and about God.
People who are curious are people who live in wonder. And wonder is - well - wonderful. It is probably the best way we can react when we become aware of God’s presence in our lives.
Wonder doesn’t always lead to answers. But wonder does acknowledge and honor the questions that curiosity presents.
To say that “this is the way it is with faith - don’t question it…” leaves little room for wonder. There needs to be room to turn aside and step off the path. There needs to be space to wrestle with God.
Because only from such experiences does faith grow. And only from such experiences can a new way of liberation emerge for God’s people.
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