The kind of care that the original phrase was talking about was not the loving, nurturing kind where you care for someone you love. It’s the anxious, keep you up at night, sorrowful, worrying kind of over-caring. In a way, that is a form of curiosity… curious about all the things that could go wrong, to the point of obsession. I know many of us know what that feels like.
Some say that curiosity leads us to sin and the big, never ending, evil slippery slope of demise and moral decay. Others say that it's the doorway to faith and wonder. I’ve read people claiming that it was Eve’s curiosity that led her to eat the forbidden fruit condemning the entire human race to a sin tormented existence; I’ve read others saying that it was Nicodemus’s curiosity that lead him to Jesus in the middle of the night asking questions he couldn’t keep locked inside him anymore.
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Is God curious? Does he ever wonder about things? Seek things out? Or does he know the punch line to every joke, the last line to every story, the answers to all the questions? When he set this world in motion, was he curious about what it would be like? Did he imagine what it would feel like to hear us call his name? Or did he know that we would be right where we are right at this moment? (these thoughts are a little “care killed the cat” for me. *insert face-with-open-mouth-and-cold-sweat' emoji*).
Probably. But sometimes I like to imagine that God gets that playful, mischievous look on his face as he watches us chasing life down with all we’ve got and asks himself, “I wonder what good things they'll get up to today?”
That is, of course, assuming that his form watches and that he thinks, in the same ways that we have form and that we think. But that, my dear friends, is a conversation for another day (because I am totally CLUELESS but ever-so-curious about that…).
Here’s what I know:
Curiosity has led people to do terrible, dangerous, hurtful things.
Curiosity has led people to remarkable, life saving, world-changing discoveries.
Perhaps curiosity is neither villain or hero, but a container that we funnel our attitudes and values and beliefs into; a road we walk down carrying all our baggage and all our tools. Maybe WE make curiosity dangerous or wonderful.
Did curiosity kill the cat? Or did he just walk down the wrong path too many times?
“God conceals the revelation of his Word in the hiding place of his glory. But the honor of kings is revealed to all by how they thoroughly mine out the deeper meaning of all that God says.” Proverbs 25:2 (the Passion Translation).
God speaks through many forms: the biblical text, yes. But that’s not made up of dot point belief checklists, and moral do’s and don’ts – the Bible is story, parable, poetry, letters between friends and colleagues. He speaks to us outside this collection of books, too; through nature; creativity; the gifts of others; film and TV, story and art; even through our own hearts and lives.
I wonder if we’re curious enough to listen.
Written by Liz Milani
Hi Lizzy, This is so helpful. So well said. Brilliant!
God speaks through many forms: the biblical text, yes. But that’s not made up of dot point belief checklists, and moral do’s and don’ts – the Bible is story, parable, poetry, letters between friends and colleagues. He speaks to us outside this collection of books, too; through nature; creativity; the gifts of others; film and TV, story and art; even through our own hearts and lives.
I wonder if we’re curious enough to listen.
YOU”RE BRILLIANT! haha.
Still working on my curiosity… I think it might be the work of a life time. Liz.