Discussion Jumpstarter
Study leader reference - not a definitive answer
Question 3
“Who are you to answer back to God?”—what limits on questioning God does the speaker affirm, and what kinds of questions does he still leave room for (“we as humans can pry… but there’s a limit”)?
Another way to ask: What kinds of questions about God does the speaker say are out of bounds, and what kinds does he still think we can ask?
Discussion Jumpstarter
Direct Answer
The speaker affirms that humans may ask real questions about God, but we are not entitled to pry endlessly or demand that God conform to our ideas of what he “should” do; still, he leaves room for sincere inquiry, as long as we don’t accuse God of evil.
- He says the rebuke teaches “there’s a limit to how far any of us are entitled to to pry into why God does this or that.”
- Yet he explicitly allows questions: “We as humans can pry, can ask questions about God.”
- He gives an example of overreaching: as fallen humans we think, “if I were God, this is what I would do… we wouldn’t have evil on the earth.”
- He grounds the limit in God’s transcendence: “God’s ways are different. They’re higher than ours… we’re not going to comprehend everything he does.”
- He adds a moral boundary: “it doesn’t mean that we can put wicked things on God and just say, well, you don’t understand.”