In one view, it's pretty easy to answer those questions, although the answers are a little too open-ended for my satisfaction: God tells us to test Him (1 John 4:1, for example). So it's okay to test.
When does that become sin? When questioning yields an answer that doesn't trust in His will, of course.
Pat answers, sure. Tried and true, you might say, and useless.
So when is it all right to question God? It's important to realize that to some degree any answer will be very personal, but I think we can at least explore the idea.
There's a Yiddish proverb that translates to: "If God lived on earth, people would break His windows." The proverb suggests that people would defy anyone, even God.
Another Yiddish proverb, as a counterpoint, says that "If God so wills it, even a broom will shoot." (And my children wonder why I don't like them to pretend to play guns...) Another associated proverb reads: "If God so wills it, you will drown in a spoonful of water."
These proverbs fit together like pieces of a puzzle. In the first, you see defiance and resentment of any ruler - and resentment for the One who controls the universe. ("Fine, You command everything. Why did you put us in these circumstances?") In the second set, you see acknowledgement of His power.
What's your opinion of those proverbs? In my experience, the former tends to surprise people, and surprises them more when they see acceptance of such defiance in Judaism. (To be fair: I don't think it's codified in Judaism - but Judaism recognizes that people are people, and glorifies God that we are made such in His image.)
Ahhh, wait a second. I think I just hit a core concept there, and buried it in a parenthetical. If I have any dead English teachers, I think they just spun a few times in their graves.
(Seriously, dead teachers! This is a blog. Surely you don't expect perfectly constructed arguments and rational discussion. Get over it. Stop spinning. At the very worst, I'll revisit the idea in a future post and fix it. And yes, this entire paragraph is a parenthetical. I did this just to annoy you, dead teachers! So there! The rest of you: I apologize.)
Let's reiterate the core concept, just to reset:
People are people, and God is to be glorified that we are made such in His image.
Without going too deep into what being made in His image means, consider that God made us as we are.
This is a huge and encompassing statement.
God made me as I am to fulfill His will in and through my life. He gave me my physical attributes; He gave me what intellect I have; He gave me a particular emotional makeup.
For better or for worse, if I trust in Him, I also have to trust that He knows me better than I know myself. He knows my passions, He knows my doubts, He knows the kinds of failures I'm apt to make.
If God wanted me to be different than I am, He would have made me different than I am.
This includes my submission to His will.
My desire for change is just as much a part of His plan as my willingness to accept that change might not be possible.
My desire for change doesn't necessarily represent sin. It might, to be sure - but that's not an automatically given and valid assumption.
My acceptance of things as they are doesn't necessarily represent sin, either. It might, but it might not.
Desire for change doesn't mean defiance of God. For example, I think it would be a nice thing if salvation were automatic - I think we can all agree that the lack of salvation is undesirable. This doesn't mean, however, that I think I know better than God, and that I think God should have done it my way.
What it really represents is a desire for a utopia of any sort, and an inability to see a shortcut to it. It's fantasy, not conceived of as reality in any way, shape, or form, and it's not challenging God to say "It would have been nice if things were other than they are."
If it - the desire for a salfivic utopia - is challenging God, why do anything?
Do you punish children for trying to grow up, to become adults? Of course not. You say "children are children" and accept that they will try to determine their boundaries. Just as we don't punish our children for trying to grow up (although we may correct them to teach them what is proper), we exist and try to determine our own boundaries within God's will.
So my thought is that questioning God, or desiring things to be other than they are, is probably quite normal, probably expected of us to a great degree. Is it sinful to question God? It certainly can be - the nature of the question has almost everything to do with it.
Shalom.
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