Courageous Curiosity as a Spiritual Practice

This column has spent considerable time exploring what Dallas Willard called “The Great Omission,” the strange condition in which modern Christianity possesses nearly unlimited information about Jesus while often struggling to help people become like Him.

We have access to Bibles, sermons, books, lectures, conferences, videos, podcasts, and seminars in quantities that no previous generation could have imagined. Yet information and formation are not the same thing, and the word disciple has become so familiar that it risks losing much of its meaning.

A disciple is often assumed to be someone who has accepted Jesus, attends church, learns more about the Bible, and hopes to leave the earth for heaven someday. That is noticeably different from the definition we have been exploring at Soil & Roots: an apprentice of Jesus whose life is increasingly formed from the inside out so that they think, act, relate, and love more like Him while joining in His renewal of the world.

Willard once observed that he knew of very few institutions intentionally organized around helping people become less fearful and angry, more secure and generous, more capable of self-giving love, and more deeply rooted in their identity before God. He found no shortage of educational opportunities, but education is only one part of the complex process by which one person becomes more like another.

The Five Elements of Formation

Human beings create formative environments all the time.

If someone wants to become an elite gymnast, they enter a dedicated gymnastics culture. If a person wants to become a professional soldier, they join the military. If parents want a child to become a healthy adult, they form a community of care, instruction, attachment, habits, and shared life around that child.

Every intentionally formative environment I have studied includes five elements: time, habits, community, intimacy, and instruction. Those elements appear whether the group is bent toward human flourishing or human destruction.

Cults, trafficking organizations, and predatory communities such as Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion were shockingly effective at forming people into the identities and behaviors desired by those in power. They used time, repeated habits, intense community, manipulated intimacy, and constant instruction to reshape the lives of those within them.

Modern Christianity often struggles to bring all five elements together for the purpose of forming people toward love and wholeness. Instead, it tends to rely heavily on instruction as the central, and sometimes nearly sole, catalyst of spiritual formation.

Human beings are not always so simply formed.

Habits That Lead to Attunement

We are now exploring the second element of formation: habits. If a deep disciple is someone intentionally learning to become more attentive to God, other people, themselves, and creation and culture, what kinds of habits might help us awaken to Jesus’ ongoing invitation?

Judith Hougen offers a helpful distinction:

“When the intellect engages with a fact, the fact is stored as truth and belief results. In contrast, the heart believes only when it experiences…We’re created to establish belief through two pathways—cognitive and experiential…only when both pathways are engaged does belief become complete.”

I have been mulling over that quotation for some time because it is both encouraging and mysterious. Hougen may be describing something much closer to the biblical idea of belief, which involves embodied trust and loyalty, than the modern Western idea of belief, which is often reduced to intellectual agreement.

We take understandable pride in being biblically correct, but intellectual accuracy does not always mean we experience the truths we defend. Some of the most reprehensible leaders I have encountered were also among the most biblically knowledgeable, though some of the kindest, wisest, and most relationally shrewd people I have known also possessed a deep knowledge of Scripture.

The point is not that biblical knowledge is harmful. The point is that we live in an age that often values intellectual prowess more highly than character, and the church is not immune.

When the Head and Heart Disagree

When our hearts struggle to rest in truths our minds sincerely accept, we become disintegrated. We are internally disconnected because different parts of us are operating from different realities.

I trust God for salvation, yet I may struggle to trust Him for provision because my heart has not found rest in the truth my mind affirms. My mind believes God loves me unconditionally, while my behaviors reveal that I am still trying to earn His approval.

This gap between intellectual belief and experienced reality affects all four of our relationships: with God, others, ourselves, and creation and culture. Yet it also presents an extraordinary opportunity if we are willing to explore it honestly.

As we learn to bring the head and heart into greater alignment with Jesus, we become more integrated, peaceful, loving, and content. That work begins with our willingness to notice the disconnection rather than defend, deny, or distract ourselves from it.

Courageous Curiosity

One habit worth cultivating is not primarily an activity but a posture. It is the habit of becoming increasingly and courageously curious.

I participate in a large, multicultural group that explores how illness and trauma affect the human person and how various habits, practices, and relationships may contribute to healing over time. The material begins with neuroscience and biology and gradually moves into the emotional and spiritual dimensions of human life.

The course is thoughtful and helpful in many ways, though it becomes less curious when it approaches metaphysical questions, largely because of the experiences of its leadership.

During one session, the founder emphasized the reliability of the program’s science and conclusions. Then, almost as an aside, she announced, “But I think that all truth is relative. There is no such thing as absolute truth.”

Those who enjoy apologetics will immediately notice that the claim defeats itself. To declare that there is no absolute truth is to make an absolute truth claim.

That logical contradiction is not, however, the most interesting part of the story. After listening to the founder teach for many hours, it became clear that she believes many things to be objectively and universally true.

So why would she insist otherwise?

The Story Beneath the Conclusion

I suspect the answer is rooted less in philosophical reasoning and more in relational experience.

She escaped an abusive background within a destructive religious community. Her assertion that no absolute truth exists does not appear to emerge from a detached and curious investigation of truth itself. It appears to emerge from the experience of being betrayed and wounded by people who claimed to possess it.

Her heart learned that absolute truth is dangerous because people used certainty, authority, and religion to harm her. Her mind, meanwhile, continues to rely on objective truth whenever she teaches science, medicine, trauma, or healing.

She is disintegrated in this area. Her heart holds an experienced conclusion that her intellect cannot consistently sustain.

I do not say this critically. Each of us is disintegrated to some degree, and her story deserves compassion. On this subject, the pain may still be too near for her to explore the disconnect with courageous curiosity.

That is often how hidden ideas work. The heart arrives at a conclusion for good and understandable reasons, then continues to protect that conclusion long after it has begun creating new problems.

Courageous Curiosity and Spiritual Formation

Courageous curiosity is essential to spiritual formation because we cannot bring hidden disconnections into the light if we are unwilling to ask honest questions.

The word courageous matters because curiosity may lead us toward conclusions we would rather avoid. We may discover that we were wrong, that we harmed someone, that we interpreted an event poorly, or that our motives were less noble than we imagined.

We may also discover that we were wronged. Some of the ideas governing our hearts may have been formed through betrayal, abandonment, manipulation, shame, spiritual abuse, or other deeply wounding experiences.

Curiosity can therefore be painful in two directions. It may confront our responsibility, and it may awaken grief over what others did to us.

Neither journey is easy.

The Risk of Being Wrong

Becoming more curious inevitably means becoming more willing to admit error.

We may have been factually wrong, though we may also have behaved poorly within a relationship or made decisions rooted in ego, insecurity, fear, or the need for approval. We may discover that a strong conviction was actually a defense against uncertainty.

This is one reason curiosity requires humility. The habit asks us to hold our conclusions with enough openness that God, reality, and trusted people may correct them.

That openness is not indecision, relativism, or a refusal to stand for truth. It is the recognition that finite people do not see everything clearly and that confidence can occasionally hide fear.

A person of depth learns to say, “This is what I currently believe, but I am willing to keep listening.”

The Risk of Discovering Pain

Curiosity may also reveal that some of our heart’s conclusions were formed through corrupting or painful experiences.

A person may insist that intimacy is unnecessary because closeness once resulted in betrayal. Someone may dismiss dependence as weakness because caregivers were unreliable. A person may claim that emotions are dangerous because their family punished honest expression.

Those ideas may have protected the heart at one time. They may have helped someone survive an environment where vulnerability was unsafe.

The difficulty is that a protective conclusion can become destructive when it hardens into a permanent way of living. The heart may continue defending itself long after the original danger has passed.

Courageous curiosity allows us to honor why the idea formed while asking whether it remains true, good, and life-giving today.

My Own Struggle With Trust

It is not easy for me to admit that my trust in God sometimes extends only so far.

I sincerely desire deeper trust, yet my desire for control regularly competes with it. I believe God is good and present, though my thought patterns may reveal that I still feel responsible for managing outcomes, anticipating danger, and protecting myself from uncertainty.

Isaiah 26:3 tends to haunt me because the verse speaks of perfect peace for the mind that remains steadfast in God. My mind believes the passage, while my lived experience is considerably less tidy.

I would rather maintain the appearance of integration than admit the distance between what I teach and what I experience. Yet it is better to relate authentically to God, others, and myself than to preserve a partially false version of spiritual maturity.

Curiosity makes room for a more honest prayer: “God, I believe You are trustworthy, but something in me still does not feel safe. Would You help me understand why?”

How Courageous Curiosity Develops

The logical question is how someone develops this habit.

I do not think there is a simple formula because curiosity is not merely a technique. It grows as both the mind and heart experience its goodness.

Intellectually, we may conclude that asking honest questions leads toward truth, wisdom, freedom, and maturity. Experientially, however, the heart must learn that curiosity does not inevitably result in condemnation, humiliation, rejection, or loss of belonging.

Like other formative habits, curiosity develops through repeated practice within safe relationships.

When we sense God’s pleasure, can we ask what He enjoys? When a close friend insists, “I’m fine,” can we gently wonder whether something more is happening beneath the answer? When we notice ourselves overreacting, can we pause long enough to ask what fear, wound, or desire has been touched?

These are small acts of attunement, but over time they create a way of living that is increasingly attentive to reality.

The Good Kind of Safety

Courageous curiosity requires safety, though by safety I do not mean the absence of discomfort, challenge, or risk.

I mean confidence that asking honest questions will not result in condemnation, shame, coercion, or abandonment. We need environments in which the question “Why?” is welcomed even when it sounds elementary, repetitive, unsettling, or contrary.

Curiosity disappears quickly in communities where leaders interpret questions as disloyalty. It withers in relationships where disagreement threatens belonging or where vulnerability is later used as a weapon.

The habit grows where people can explore reality without having to protect themselves from one another.

This is why the inward journey with God must begin in safety. We become more willing to examine our hidden lives when we believe God is kind, present, and more committed to our freedom than to maintaining our illusions.

Why the Psalms Matter

The Psalms offer a remarkable model of courageous curiosity.

Their writers ask raw, foundational questions without filters or polished religious language. “How long?” “Why have You forgotten me?” “Where are You?” “Why do the wicked prosper?” “Will You reject us forever?”

Psalm 13 remains one of my favorites because it begins with unrestrained questions and moves toward trust without pretending the pain was never real. The psalmist does not suppress confusion in order to appear faithful.

The questions themselves become part of faith.

I also resonate with Moses, who appeared to possess very little guile and a rather large heart. He was willing to question God, challenge assumptions, intercede for people, express frustration, and ask for greater clarity.

Neither the psalmists nor Moses treated honest questions as enemies of relationship. Their questions emerged within relationship because they trusted God enough to speak openly.

Curiosity About God

Courageous curiosity invites us to remain interested in God rather than assuming we already know everything important about Him.

Religious familiarity can make us strangely incurious. We learn categories, doctrines, phrases, and expected answers, then stop noticing how surprising, mysterious, playful, fierce, tender, and free God actually is.

Curiosity asks what He may be doing beneath the obvious circumstances. It wonders how He experiences a person or situation. It notices unexpected joy, beauty, grief, resistance, or invitation.

This does not mean inventing fanciful explanations for every event. It means refusing to reduce God to the conclusions we currently possess.

A living relationship always contains discovery.

Curiosity About Others

Courageous curiosity also changes the way we relate to people.

Rather than quickly labeling, correcting, judging, or diagnosing someone, we can wonder what has shaped them. What might they be protecting? What pain may be underneath the anger? What longing is beneath the achievement, withdrawal, control, or performance?

Curiosity does not excuse harmful behavior, nor does it eliminate boundaries or accountability. It simply acknowledges that every behavior has a story and every person contains more than what is immediately visible.

This is closely connected to presence and spiritual formation. Attentive presence gives us enough time and humility to encounter the person rather than merely reacting to their behavior.

A curious person asks not only, “What did they do?” but also, “What might be happening in their heart?”

Curiosity About Ourselves

Perhaps the most difficult direction of curiosity is inward.

We are often skilled at explaining other people’s motives while remaining remarkably unaware of our own. We know why everyone else is defensive, controlling, reactive, or insecure, while our behavior is simply justified by the circumstances.

Courageous curiosity invites us to notice our thought patterns, emotions, words, behaviors, health, relationships, and use of time and money. At Soil & Roots, we call this practice Heartview.

When we overreact, shut down, spend impulsively, avoid conflict, dominate conversations, or become consumed by anxiety, curiosity asks what idea or desire may be driving the response.

The goal is not self-condemnation. The goal is greater attunement and integration.

We cannot offer Jesus what we refuse to notice.

Curiosity and the Formation Gap

This habit rarely develops through solitary effort alone.

Courageous curiosity needs time, repeated practice, supportive community, trusted intimacy, and truthful instruction. In other words, it tends to require all five elements of formation.

This is another reason the Formation Gap matters. A person may hear sermons encouraging honesty while lacking any relationship in which honest questions are safe.

They may be told to examine themselves but have no trusted companion who can help them interpret what they find. They may receive instruction about grace while living in a community where mistakes and questions are punished.

The environment often determines whether curiosity feels like an invitation or a threat.

The Humility to Keep Asking

Courageous curiosity is a prerequisite for becoming a person of depth because depth requires a willingness to keep asking, listening, and learning.

The habit involves humility, genuine interest in God and other people, and a growing security in our identity as image-bearers and brothers and sisters of Jesus. Secure people can acknowledge uncertainty without collapsing and admit error without losing their sense of worth.

When we sense disintegration in ourselves or others, perhaps we can learn to ask why with gentleness rather than accusation. We can listen carefully to the answers our hearts offer, even when those answers are incomplete, painful, or confusing.

We do not ask questions in order to interrogate ourselves into change. We ask because reality is worth discovering, people are worth understanding, and God is safe enough to meet us in what we find.

Courageous curiosity is not an end in itself. It is a way of opening the hidden life to truth, relationship, healing, and love.

Duc in altum.

Explore Further

8 Signs of Spiritual Health That Reveal Your Inner Life

How to Begin the Inward Journey With God Safely

Why Presence Is Essential to Spiritual Formation

The Formation Gap