WHENEVER new territories open up or new ideas emerge on society’s frontier, people adapt to process the change. I’d say that the Spiritually Curious and Curious Skeptic are two mindsets that have increased dramatically as a result of digital Babylon’s impact on society. We see the spread of these mentalities outside the Church; obviously, people in our pews are also reacting to this tectonic shift, and we can identify two frames of mind that Christians adopt to navigate digital Babylon and the ambiguity of spiritual openness. They are the Pioneer and the Settler archetypes.
The Pioneer embraces the changes and challenges brought on by digital Babylon, seeing it as a wild and untamed frontier to be explored. On the other hand, the Settler chooses to establish a “homestead”, staking out a plot to call their own where they can feel safe and secure. It’s important to remember that these are just two different mindsets, and neither is better or worse than the other. Each archetype has certain strengths and weaknesses, and can be used for either good or bad.
There are two types of curiosity: curiosity seeking closure, and curiosity that is open. Early theories of curiosity focused on the discomfort we experience when we don’t have a piece of information. Missing information was the motivating force. People were curious because there was something they didn’t know. Once they knew it, they stopped being curious. This is curiosity seeking closure.
But later researchers explored curiosity as proactive, positive, experience-seeking — even thrill-seeking. Many people’s curiosity isn’t a wrinkle that needs to be smoothed; they simply enjoy living in a state of curiosity. This is curiosity that is open. If finding new or missing information is a main catalyst for curiosity, then the same can be true for the motivation for certainty. We’re driven to find information that will reduce ambiguity.
Research seems to indicate that our quest for certainty is also a quest for closure, and, while therapists tell us that there isn’t anything wrong with wanting this, it can lead to some negative outcomes.
The Church struggles to engage those who are curious. Yet many could say that it was their curiosity that originally led them to Christianity and church. We must make a distinction between curiosity that is seeking closure, and curiosity that is open. While there is nothing wrong with seeking certainty (of this, I’m certain!), we must be careful to not allow the desire for certainty to resolve itself too quickly.
Dr Todd Kashdan, a leading researcher in the field of curiosity, explains it like this: “In the absence of curiosity and openness to experiences, people show an intolerance of uncertainty and a strong need for closure in their lives. While these characteristics might aid in protecting a person from anxiety and stress, their destructive influences on social relationships are far-ranging. Less curious people rely on stereotypes to describe others and find new information inconsistent with these beliefs to be threatening.”
IN CHURCHES dominated by people with a high need for closure and a high prioritisation of certainty, this can be a disaster. If someone shares our views, we praise them. If someone questions or challenges our views, we criticise, attack, and discount them. The Spiritually Curious, indulging their natural impulse to ask questions and explore possibilities, suddenly find themselves on the defensive. They are characterised as a threat, a person stirring up the pot.
Lack of curiosity is a breeding ground for stereotyping and discrimination that, in the extreme, leads to hatred and even violence, inflated confidence, ignorance that leads to poor decisions, and dogmatism and rigid thinking, which is the opposite of psychological flexibility.
Kashdan warns: “We need to be wary of the need for certainty. Seeking certitude can cause our beliefs and decision making to crystallise prematurely, and the resulting reluctance to consider new information can hurt us in the long run. From the research on this topic, we know the sad irony that the greater a person’s need for certainty, the more confident they are that their ideas are ‘right’.”
While Kashdan’s remarks are not at all aimed at the Church, or Christianity, it isn’t hard to see how they relate. In our search for truth, the Christian faith can bring satisfaction to the unknowns of life. But a premature closure to our understanding — an internal notion that we’ve pretty much figured it out — has the potential to lead us into a lesser experience of the Trinity in our daily lives. It could lead us to judge and belittle our fellow humans rather than to engage in the deep expressions of love that Christ commanded toward even our enemies. We see people with a lower need for closure as a threat to our own faith, instead of someone who simply has a different way of exploring faith than we do.
When a Christian becomes curious in a culture of certainty, they can find they have no safe place to explore their questions. The people they have come to consider family, in a culture that values closure, often don’t know how to respond to them. This can lead to doubts, and then to a need to restructure the foundation of their understanding of Christianity. This is a maturing process for most Christians, but some communities of faith cannot handle the doubts and questions of their brothers and sisters, leaving individuals feeling alone, rejected, disoriented, and disillusioned.
Christians do not need to be sceptical or judgemental of those who say that they are “deconstructing” their faith. Instead, we can recognise that they are going through an important process of exploring their assumptions and following their natural inclination to better understand what they believe, and why. And we can come alongside them, in grace and humility, to help them in their journey and make space in our communities for their exploration.
We must be honest with ourselves about our need for closure if we want to have a resilient faith. Premature certitude does not build a strong foundation, but, rather, a fragile one. If something is not fully formed, it takes very little to knock it down.
ONE very easy place to observe all this is the ongoing “debate” between what the Bible says and what scientific inquiry teaches. Because of the tension between scripture and science, I have seen many young people stray from faith to disbelief, when nothing of the sort needed to happen. It is entirely possible to have full confidence in the scriptures without dismissing modern science out of hand. The Bible itself gives us tools for this attitude.
One of the unique qualities of Hebrew wisdom is the limits it places on human knowledge and understanding, which are primarily explored in Ecclesiastes and, once again, the book of Job. Job’s friends, and even Job himself, assume that living a virtuous life leads to happiness and prosperity. Yet this is clearly not the case. Job’s friends assume he has done something wrong. Why else would he be facing so much misfortune? But Job knows he has not sinned against God. It is only when Job is in debate with God that God reveals not everything can be understood by the human mind. Despite all that has been revealed in nature, and subsequently in scripture, we still see through a glass dimly.
For Christians, God’s admonition to Job is a good reminder to maintain intellectual humility and avoid the hubris that pushes people away from the faith. Sometimes, the answer to our biggest questions is not more certainty, but more mystery.
So, we have two information-seeking trajectories: one that is motivated by closure, and the other that is open. Given this, you can see why we might misinterpret what kind of quest the curious person is on, and what they’re really looking for.
Those who are curious but are not motivated by closure are typically curious about many things. They’re like butterflies that land on a topic for a moment, and then are off to another subject. On the other hand, if closure is the objective, it becomes the sole mission of an individual to bring their exploration to a definitive end. They’re more like badgers who won’t stop burrowing until they find what they’re looking for.
If you are not genuinely interested in pursuing life with a spiritually curious person, it won’t work; you have to care about more than just the spiritual part of their journey.
If you’re a person looking for closure, finding an authority or expert — a person with credentials — is a top priority. Sometimes, getting an expert opinion can be enough to complete the discovery process. But curious people are not likely to find the authority of scripture to be enough, in and of itself, for them to accept it. Will they be interested to hear from someone with expertise on a topic? Yes, very much so. But they tend to be more interested in self-validation.
So, an actual experience with the Bible will likely go much further than simple proof texting. I’ve often found that providing counterevidence from other authorities against my position is helpful. Offering curious individuals the option to explore alternative perspectives engages their interest in looking at all sides of an issue. They enjoy hearing different opinions. By appealing to their innate curiosity, we open doors for deeper engagement and potentially transformative experiences.
WHEN I get to heaven, I will be curious to find out what ended up happening to the rich young ruler in the Gospels. Did he ever come around to placing his trust in Jesus? In all my 50-some years of going to church, almost every sermon I’ve heard on the ruler strongly implied that he probably walked away from Jesus for good, and went to hell when he died.
And maybe that’s what we’re supposed to assume. But let me offer another possibility. Maybe Jesus was also demonstrating something more important: being cognisant of the journey of discovery a person is on. We know Jesus loved this rich young ruler. We also know that he didn’t run after this ruler and beg him to stick around. Maybe Jesus just understood that trust takes time to firmly develop.
The young man walked away, but maybe not for ever. Jesus had shifted this man’s paradigm and challenged his assumptions. Jesus wasn’t interested in cheap, easy beliefism, and he was willing to give this young man space to process this new information. He left the door open for further spiritual conversation. If we trust Jesus, we should be okay doing the same.
There are many cautions about being careful not to lead others astray or cause them to stumble. These passages are severe, like Jesus’s words in Matthew: “If anyone causes one of these little ones — those who believe in me — to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (18.6).
Sometimes, we become so concerned about doing Christian life the right way that we make it intimidating for novices to even try. We’re like figure skaters who expect others to land a triple axel the first time they lace up a pair of skates. Even though we don’t consciously believe that they have to change their behaviors or believe specific theological concepts to be a true Christian, we behave that way, even unintentionally. We put a high burden on people to mimic our own beliefs and behaviors to a T, rather than allow their simple, childlike trust to mature over time.
In Mark 10.14-15, Jesus also said of children, in a rebuke to his disciples, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the Kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”
Who is more curious than a child? But older, more mature adults might argue that children are asking too many questions, don’t yet have all their intellectual faculties, and need more foundation so that they’ll stop pestering the grown-ups. And some more mature, certainty-oriented believers say the same of the Spiritually Curious.
In Acts, as gentiles are coming to faith and being filled with the Spirit, a controversy breaks out. What do the gentiles have to do now that they are Christians? Up to that point, the Early Church had been made up almost entirely of Jewish believers. Should the new gentile believers adopt Jewish practices? James’s words are clear: “It is my judgement, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God” (15.19).
He advises them of a few cultural practices that would be good for them to observe for their own benefit and to keep the peace in the community. But these practices are not challenging, nor are they barriers to becoming part of the faith. We, too, should not make it unnecessarily difficult for the spiritually curious to access Jesus.
This is an edited extract from Faith for the Curious: How an era of spiritual openness shapes the way we live and helps others follow Jesus by Mark Matlock, which will be published by Baker Books in October 2024 and is available to pre-order at £19.99 (Church Times Bookshop £17.99); 978-0-8010-1871-8.
Mark Matlock is the founder of WisdomWorks Ministries, and a Baptist minister and youth pastor, based in Dallas, Texas.