How God answers the how and why

How wonderful to ask God a question and receive an answer! I recently read a passage in the Book of Numbers and felt a kind of envy. In this passage, God gives instructions to the Israelites through Moses about how to celebrate Passover. The celebration will take place in the evening of the fourteenth day of the first month (Numbers 9: 3). It's a grand plan—but there are a few hands raised:

But some of them could not celebrate the Passover on that day because they were ceremonially unclean on account of a dead body. So they came to Moses and Aaron that same day and said to Moses, “We have become unclean because of a dead body, but why should we be kept from presenting the Lord’s offering with the other Israelites at the appointed time?”

–Numbers 9: 6–7

Moses is able to reassure them:

Moses answered them, “Wait until I find out what the Lord commands concerning you.”

–Numbers 9: 8

Moses then asks God for clarification and God answers immediately.

Then the Lord said to Moses, 10 “Tell the Israelites: ‘When any of you or your descendants are unclean because of a dead body or are away on a journey, they are still to celebrate the Lord’s Passover, but they are to do it on the fourteenth day of the second month at twilight.

–Numbers 9: 9–11

If you can't celebrate on the fourteenth day of the first month, wait and celebrate on the fourteenth day of the second month. Boom!

How often have you asked God about something but felt as if the answer never came? Do you wish you could have Moses standing by every time you had a question, so he could say, "Wait until I find out what the Lord commands"?

Many years ago, I asked God on a nightly basis why He would call my same-sex attraction a sin, then "allow" me to experience same-sex attraction, but not deliver me from it. It was a reasonable question, I thought. I had already committed to a single, abstinent life and understood where the biblical boundary lines were. Now I just wanted to know why the lines had fallen this way. Looking back, I see that my question was very different from the one the Israelites asked about Passover observance. God answers all questions, sometimes with an exact answer, sometimes by changing the subject. It all depends on the kind of question you ask.

Job asked "why"

After Job was afflicted with calamity, he praised God but also asked God why He had chosen to bring such disaster upon his life:

“Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb? Why were there knees to receive me and breasts that I might be nursed? (...) Or why was I not hidden away in the ground like a stillborn child, like an infant who never saw the light of day? (...) Why is light given to those in misery, and life to the bitter of soul, to those who long for death that does not come, who search for it more than for hidden treasure, who are filled with gladness and rejoice when they reach the grave? Why is life given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in?"

–Job 3: 11–12; 16; 20–23

God did not answer these questions. So Job's friend Eliphaz famously chimed in. While Eliphaz encouraged Job that he might count himself blessed because "blessed is the one whom God corrects" (5: 17), Eliphaz ultimately told Job that he had been afflicted because he had sinned (4: 7). Bildad, Zophar, and Elihu, three other friends of Job's, offered similar "wisdom" (see, for example, 8: 20; 11: 3; 15: 4–6; 18: 5–21; 22: 6–9). When God finally weighed in on the matter, He did not answer Job's "why" questions directly. Instead, He reversed Job's interrogation and asked him more than a dozen questions of His own, all of them rhetorical because He knew Job couldn't possibly know the answers:

Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said: “Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.

–Job 38: 1–4

God took this firm stance because Job's "why" questions increasingly presumed God was acting unfairly. When Job realized he could not fathom God's wisdom, he repented (42: 6).

Job asked "why," but God answered with "who." It's the "who" of God, rather than the "why" of Job's predicament, that transformed him.

Habakkuk asked "why"

Habakkuk asked questions of God very similar to those posed by Job:

How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?

–Habakkuk 1: 2–3

God answered Habakkuk, not with detailed explanations of his reasoning, but by directing Habakkuk to Himself:

“Look at the nations and watch—and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe,

even if you were told."

–Habakkuk 1: 5

Habakkuk persisted:

Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrongdoing. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?

–Habakkuk 1: 13

Again, God replied by directing Habakkuk to Himself, in this case by way of an apocalyptic prediction of how these wrongs will be made right in the end:

“Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it. For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay."

–Habakkuk 2: 2–3

Habakkuk got the point. In his third statement to God, he dispensed with his "why" questions and instead finished with this:

I heard and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound; decay crept into my bones, and my legs trembled. Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us. (...) Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights.

–Habakkuk 3: 16; 18–19

Paul asked "how"

In Acts 15, Paul and Barnabas traveled to Jerusalem with a burning question that had come up in the Gentile flock: did Gentile males need to be circumcised to be saved? Or was faith in Christ enough? Paul and Barnabas presented their question to the apostles and elders, including Peter and James, who then consulted. James gave the reply:

“It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood."

–Acts 15: 19–20

Paul and Barnabas asked, and the elders in Jerusalem—who had authority to answer on God's behalf—answered.

But theirs was a "how" question, not a "why" question. Paul and Barnabas were not questioning the fairness or impartiality of God's plan for salvation. They'd already accepted it. They needed to know how to act in obedience to God, and now they had their answer.

Martha affirmed the truth

In the story of Lazarus' resurrection, Martha is often remembered as having questioned Jesus' reasoning for taking his time leaving for Bethany after finding out that her brother Lazarus was on his deathbed. When Jesus finally shows up late, she never asked the burning "why" question most of us would have asked: Why didn't you just come sooner? Instead, she stated the truth of the circumstances, and even more importantly, she affirmed her faith in Jesus and the sufficiency of his timing:

“Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”

–John 11: 21

There are plenty more situations in scripture where a statement of faith beats out what would have been a perfectly reasonable "why" question. Abraham, for example, had every reason to ask God "why" he must sacrifice his son, but instead told his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you" (Genesis 22: 5), demonstrating his trust in God's plan.

Conclusion

God answers every prayer. Either He answers directly or He redirects our thinking so we can ask better questions. When God instructed Moses to wage spiritual war on the Egyptians, Moses stalled by asking questions and making remarks that reveal a fundamental distrust: "What if they do not believe me or listen to me?" (Exodus 4: 1) and "Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else" (v.13). In response, God's anger burned against him (v. 14).

At the edge of the Red Sea, the Israelites got kvetchy and questioned the speed and timing of God's deliverance:

They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!”

–Exodus 14: 11–12

Moses, who by now had learned a thing or two about questioning God, reassured them:

“Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

–Exodus 14: 13–14

But God was blunter:

Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on.

–Exodus 14: 15

There is a lesson here for us all. When we ask God "why," we communicate curiosity. When we ask God "how," we communicate submission. There is nothing wrong with curiosity, except that it doesn't draw us into greater humility before God. In fact, curiosity can delay our obedience.

When I asked God why He would not change me into a better version of myself, He did not indulge me with an explanation, but rather showed me His ability to guard me just as I was. Of course, I was too busy waiting for a specific answer that I didn't notice this at the time. When I eventually asked God how to live my life in celibate obedience to Him, He showed me all sorts of different ways.

For discussion

1. Think back to a time when you asked God a "why" question and did not receive an answer. Thinking back, did God answer your prayer by directing you to Himself?

2. Is curiosity always a sign of distrust in God? Where does the line fall between trust and distrust when it comes to curiosity and wanting to know "why"?

3. When God told the Israelites to "move on" (Exodus 14: 15), what truth about Himself do you think He intended to teach them?