Curiosity as a Christian Virtue: Keeping the doors open to wonder and seeking

This post marks the launch of a new phase in my Church Potluck media empire: regular blog posts. True to the potluck imagery, these entries will cover a wide range of topics and take on many forms—essays, devotionals, cultural commentary, and more. To inaugurate this initiative, I’m writing a short series on a theme close to my heart: the virtue of Christian curiosity. It’s such a central value that it made its way into the tagline: A Smorgasbord of Christian Curiosity.

This Sunday, the church I’ve just started attending (having recently retired from pastoral ministry) kicked off a new sermon series titled “Holy Questions.” I was thrilled. For me, questioning and seeking—being curious—is essential to a mature Christian faith, especially in the 21st century.

In her sermon, Pastor Valerie Loner mentioned that she grew up in a denomination where curiosity and questioning were discouraged. Congregants were expected to passively accept whatever the church’s teachers and preachers proclaimed. That story reminded me of a friend who, years ago, was wrestling with his faith and searching for answers. He visited a Sunday School class, and during the lesson, the teacher said something he found either inaccurate or incomplete. So he raised his hand and asked a thoughtful question. The teacher looked at him blankly, said “thank you,” and continued the lesson—without even attempting an answer.

What a missed opportunity! Jesus encourages us to ask, to seek, and to knock—and in doing so, we will receive, we will find, and the door will be opened (Matthew 7:7–8). Yet here was someone trying to make sense of his faith, and the response was silence. The door was metaphorically—and maybe spiritually—shut in his face.

My hope is that Church Potluck can be a place where curiosity is not only welcomed but encouraged. A place where asking the hard questions is seen not as a threat to faith, but as a path deeper into it. A place where, instead of hearing a cold “thank you” and moving on, people find open doors, warm conversation, and maybe even the kind of joy that comes when curious wonder and trusting faith walk hand in hand.