Do you remember the old camp song, “Seek Ye First”? The song was popular at the American Baptist Church I attended as a child and teenager, the floating notes of the soprano line topping the chorus, the collective notes a backdrop against the pops and crackles of the campfire.
More often than not, the second verse sings to me when I’m at a place of indecision or disillusionment — when following in the ways of Jesus doesn’t feel as easy as I think it should be and my faith doesn’t look like it did 10, 20 or even 30 years ago:
Ask, and it shall be given unto you;
Seek, and you shall find.
Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
Hallelu, Hallelujah!
But for the added Hallelujahs, the verse is taken directly from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7:7), when Jesus implores his followers to be persistent in prayer. In a similar vein, author Liz Charlotte Grant does the same in her new book, Knock at the Sky: Seeking God in Genesis after Losing Faith in the Bible.
As the subtitle suggests, Grant implores readers to ask, seek and knock of God even when their faith feels like it’s been shaken and turned upside down and they don’t know what to do with a text that once felt so solidly, unequivocally unbreakable. Even then, when one’s faith feels like an ever-evolving door, readers should seek the God who gives permission to ask the hard questions.
More often than not, as Grant begins to guide the reader through Genesis, she starts with a single idea, verse or story from Scripture. Then, word by word, like the multiplying orb webs of a spider web, she begins to weave together a layered tapestry of thoughts and musings.
Take, for example, chapter 3: Following a single verse in Genesis (6:6), Grant tells a story of three French cave explorers in December 1994. This leads to an exploration of Adam’s loneliness, which leads to musings on a performance artist, God and humanity, and Jewish perspectives of the human-divine relationship, no sooner concluding the chapter with the following thought:
This is to say, spiritual change is normal. Doubt is not wrong but essential. There is no authentic faith without it. Over the course of a lifetime, a religious person will undergo many transitions that demolish, reassemble and reframe their spirituality. Doubt is the way we add rings to the trunk. When we doubt, we are, in fact, behaving as living beings always do: We are growing.
Grant’s is an invitation to accept the change that naturally comes with life, including in the life of faith, and to continue to ask, seek and knock after God. But hers is equally a permission to readers who haven’t always felt allowed to ask the hard questions, who wonder if there might be something more to the story when doubt creeps in. Of this asking, she writes, “Even for devout Christians, we should be unnerved by a divinity who can appear at whim, either externally or internally, and demand urgent compliance from us. As followers of the Bible’s Deity, we should ask hard questions about why biblical characters obeyed God.”
Asking hard questions — of God and of the Bible — can lead to surprise, curiosity and further intellectual engagement, Grant surmises. Even if such queries are met with silence, there still exists an invitation into listening, for here, “we also meet the universe within, who we actually are.”
“Asking hard questions — of God and of the Bible — can lead to surprise, curiosity and further intellectual engagement.”
Of these questions, Grant graciously gives readers a deeply personal commentary on the book of Genesis. Just as she doubts the old confidence of her youth, she also doubts her own uncertainty.
She asks: “What does it say about me if I change my mind about God? Is this a slippery slope about which I’ve been warned, the slide away from the presence and favor of God, this God whom I’ve sought since age 4 when I laced my fingers and asked Jesus to come into my heart while settled beneath my Sesame Street comforter?”
The interweaving of her personal story alongside the first book of the Pentateuch is exactly what readers need in order to seek God in what can sometimes feel like an ever-changing landscape of belief. Here, Grant provides solace, because “when we invite paradox, curiosity and empathy to shape us, this very openness, the act of wondering, opens us to mystery.”
And here also, Grant rewrites narratives of old, stories of the seed-plot of the Bible that too often can be taken for granted. Take the tale of Hagar, for instance: When the slave of Sarai is asked where she has come from, where she is going, and what troubles her (Genesis 16:8 and 21:17, respectively), readers are guided to knock on the door of justice and see Hagar as a child of God.
Do you see, Grant asks, “how reading the story of Hagar from this lens decenters the main characters in favor of the secondary character? And how a side reading reveals a new side of the patriarch, too? Do you see how God’s love resists boundary lines?”
In a paragraph made up entirely of questions, the author begs us not be afraid to knock, for in this knocking new interpretations are found. And God, once again, is also found.
Knock at the Sky won’t be for every reader. This work of creative nonfiction won’t fill the itch for readers who desire a more traditional approach to studying Scripture and understanding a biblical text. But for those readers eager for new understandings of God and for the sacred text they’ve long held dear, I don’t doubt Liz Charlotte Grant’s new release will satisfy the itch to ask, seek and knock after the divine once again.
Cara Meredith
Cara Meredith was raised in the American Baptist Churches in the USA but currently worships as an Episcopalian. She is a freelance author based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her books include The Color of Life and Church Camp: Bad Skits, Cry Night, and How White Evangelicalism Betrayed a Generation.