Without telling his teacher anything of what he was doing, a disciple of Rabbi Barukh had inquired into the nature of God, and in his thinking had penetrated further and further until he was tangled in doubts, and what had been certain up to this time, became uncertain. When Rabbi Barukh noticed that the young man no longer came to him as usual, he went to the city where he lived, entered his room unexpectedly, and said to him: “I know what is hidden in your heart. You have passed through the fifty gates of reason. You begin with a question and think, and think up an answer -- and the first gate opens, and to a new question! And again you plumb it, find the solution, fling open the second gate -- and look into a new question. On and on like this, deeper and deeper, until you have forced open the fiftieth gate. There you stare at a question whose answer no man has ever found, for if there were one who knew it, there would no longer be freedom of choice. But if you dare to probe still further, you plunge into the abyss.” “So I should go back all the way, to the very beginning?” cried the disciple. “If you turn, you will not be going back,” said Rabbi Barukh. “You will be standing beyond the last gate: you will stand in faith.”

Beyond our searching questions, God wants to answer us by drawing out His image that He has impressed in our heart, His will that is free to choose whether or not to trust Him. Faith’s response to God brings a knowing that is born from the living union of our trust and God’s trustworthiness. Our questions can’t receive this faith’s kind of knowing because it can only be conceived in faith's union with the Other’s faithfulness, and can only grow as our heart learns to trust and receive more of His unending faithfulness

Not only is it important to know when and when not to ask questions, but we also need to discern how questions are asked so we can better understand the direction they take us. A straightforward question that comes from a simple desire to learn takes a straight path with no obstacles to receiving. When we ask with ulterior motives, our way to an answer becomes refracted by conflicted and contradicting intentions that often find their resolution by more stubbornly insisting on where they began. If our question isn’t grounded in a personal need to know, we will not have the hunger needed to consume the answer. If we ask sarcastically to trump the other, if our question is really saying I know and you don’t, or I don’t know and you’re too stupid to know that you don’t know either — when our question masks an insidious attitude that doesn’t care to receive but is instead smug with its own judgments, then let us recognize our question is really no question at all. It is merely rhetorical. Even worse, it is a bad attitude. It is an arrogant stance playing a game, a malevolent version of the entertaining game of my childhood

It is in our nature to have many questions about God and to God. This book is rife with questions about God and His nature. I have asked Him these questions and many more in my life with Him. He has answered many of my questions and has left the vast majority of them unanswered. I used to ask Him: why did You make me full with so many questions if You always knew You would frustrate most of them? Why, God, do You give me a mind and heart that won’t be satisfied and insists on more, if You never meant to answer my unrelenting uncertainties? Why do You keep me in despair? My most vital questions became my tormentors because they wouldn’t cease hounding me and I couldn’t find anyone to help answer them, so I despaired of any answer existing. My questions sometimes tore so deep into me that they seemed to unearth the very ground of my being’s reality, nearly destroying the sense that I even exist

For those of us who are plagued by questions of vital concern, life’s deep unknowns can be petrifying. But this God, whose ways are infinitely higher than our own, is zealous to respond with truths that are much more important than the kinds of answers we are looking for. Our questions can never be more than surface expressions of the deep hungers we carry that begin and end in God. We need questions for growth and learning at many levels. But at the level beneath all questions is the unanalyzable Other, the great Given and gracious Giver of all, God, who is the source o life and all its value. We can trust life as one that He gives us or deny Him for the sake of our answers to questions that presume far beyond their reach and risk destroying hope of finding the living Answer

God often does not answer our questions as we want because He wants to do better. He wants to open the eyes of our heart to His gracious presence in all that we have blindly taken for granted. He wants to transform those disturbing questions into His certain presence settling our worries. He wants His rest to assure our life is full and complete in Him. When we learn God in His way, the anguished uncertainties of our heart recede until they are nearly irrelevant, because we are learning God asking our most vital questions and answering them with His life. When we let God be who He wants to be to us, we can rest in His holy rest as He asks our deepest, inchoate questions for us and satisfies our most true and profound needs, with Himself