The Book of Questions by Gregory Stock was left at my house by a friend. It’s a book full of those “would you” questions that offer two extremes (like, “If you could have a million dollars to keep, or twenty million to give away, which would you choose?”), and then look for your answer.

I was browsing it this morning and came across this question:

“If God appeared to you in a series of vivid and moving dreams and told you to leave everything behind, travel alone to the Red Sea and become a fisherman, what would you do? What if you were told to sacrifice your child?”

These are obvious allusions to things that happened, in some way, to biblical figures. From reading the scriptures, we know what our ‘correct’ answers should be.

But, would I? I don’t know. Would you?

I’ve always had a number of questions about Jesus. Not huge philosophical or historical questions. More like, practical life questions. I think if most think hard enough, we’ve all had these questions.

For example, we understand that Jesus was both God and man. Fully God, yet fully man. And we understand that is a mystery which we may never understand—possibly even in eternity. But it still makes me wonder. Jesus was born to a woman, he was a child. He had a natural birth and went through the same ordinary functions that any other human being would.

We know that as a child he knew who he was. But what about as a toddler learning to walk? Did he know then? Did he know anything then? Or what about puberty? Did Jesus have the same natural inclinations that other human boys experience at that time, or are those experiences a part or by product of a fallen nature that Jesus never experienced?

These are questions that I find fascinating. In them are quietly embedded some of the most intricate understandings of what it means to be human. It’s unfortunate that the answers to those questions simply aren’t answered anywhere in this lifetime.

I started thinking of all this today because of the passage in Luke I read. Jesus is chased out the synagogue to a cliff which the people intend to throw him off of. He gets away of course, but this is what it says:

And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went away.

“But passing through their midst, he went away”? Huh? I’m forced to read this as if it said, “Somehow he got away”. We know that he was fully a man, but being fully God also, did he wield some power of the crowd that they just let him walk by? Or did some temporary metaphysical change take place and he literally walked through people?

This is one of those passages—peculiar enough to make me wonder—but offering too little information to ever come to a satisfactory conclusion.

I suppose as with many things that will be the case in this lifetime and maybe in the one to come. But if I ever get the chance, I’ll ask him about it. If I’m able, I’ll report back here and let you all know what he says!