A Curious Mind
Have you ever wondered about your ability to wonder about things? It’s a wonderful gift, when you think about it. It’s the ability that has unlocked most of our discoveries, because the most fertile ground for discovery is always a curious mind. I’m sure you can learn things without being curious—some lessons will slap you in the face whether you ask them to or not—but there’s no question you’ll learn a lot more if you start with questions. Isn’t our entire scientific method just a systematic series of questions? Without curiosity, the whole world fades into nothing more than a boring necessity, the people around us flatten down into a procession of stereotypes, and God himself starts to look like some kind of tired trope or taskmaster. Without curiosity, life goes stale. Tasteless.
For the curious mind, this world is an endless feast that can never be exhausted. Nature is filled with countless wonders, waiting to be discovered. People are complex characters, with histories and experiences and hidden dreams, and my grandfather taught me that every single one of them knows something you don’t, but you can learn it from them if you ask the right questions. In other words, if you’re curious enough to want to. And then there’s God, the inventor of all the rest—wouldn’t it be interesting to get to know the One who made every other interesting thing and person in the universe? He’s revealed himself to us and invited us to come to him and know him through Jesus. How could that be anything but fascinating? Of course it might also be surprising, and it might disturb our settled sensibilities and we might have to tear up some of our old assumptions along the way, but isn’t that what learning is all about?
Curiosity is key to learning, growing, and enjoying life. It’s the reason toddlers ask so many questions, and learn so fast, but then slowly, we grow. Slowly, we change. We start to feel the pressure to impress people and prove ourselves by showing how much we already know, so the questions fade and the world fades with them, and our interest in everything fades but at least we’re cool. We put the whole feast of life on ice just to prove to everyone that we’ve already tried it—and then we wonder why it tastes so cold and bland.
It doesn’t have to be that way. There’s nothing stopping us from being curious again—nothing except our own pride and indifference. You can’t be curious if you’re convinced that you already know everything you need to know. What would be left to be curious about, in that case? So one of the conditions for cultivating a curious mind is humility. We have to admit that the boundaries of our knowledge fall far short of the full scope of reality. That’s not to say we know nothing—some people are so humble about their knowledge that they refuse to believe that anything is truly knowable at all, by anyone. And what’s the point of being curious, if you’ll never find the truth, anyway? So another condition needed for curiosity is that we must believe that the truth really is out there, and that we really can discover it. That we can genuinely learn things, and then add more knowledge, with more questions. But notice that I said that the truth is “out there”, not “in here”—because one sure-fire curiosity killer is the idea that the only truth I need is the truth I create inside myself. What’s the point of being curious about anything or anyone else, if I’m the only one that matters, anyway? Thankfully, that’s not how the world works. Reality is not my personal invention, and truth is not my personal possession. If I want to know what the world is really like, what the people around me really love, and who God really is, I can’t discover these things inside my own head. I’ve got to learn, or re-learn, how to be curious. It doesn’t matter how much knowledge I’ve already accumulated, I still have far more to learn. How could I ever discover everything there is to know about another human being? About our world, or the God who made it? The feast is endless, and it grows with the tasting. God gave us wonderful minds, and they work best when they’re full of wonder.
