Questions, Faith, and Formation
The Questions They Told Me to Ask: God, Scripture, and the Unseen World
Interview with Will Bourne
The conversation begins with the quiet pressure many readers know well: some questions are welcomed only when they lead back to familiar answers. Questions about God, Scripture, difficult passages, and the unseen world may already be present, but bringing them into the open can feel like crossing a line.
Will Bourne enters that space without spectacle or defensiveness. In this written interview, he speaks about honest investigation, the character of God, the reliability of Scripture, the Divine Council, spiritual warfare, and the discipline of separating evidence from interpretation and imagination.
Why did you call the series The Questions They Told Me to Ask?
The title reflects the experience of being handed a list of approved questions and approved answers before we have had the opportunity to examine either one honestly. Sometimes religious communities tell people which questions are safe. Sometimes skeptical communities do the same thing. The boundaries are different, but the pressure can be similar. We are encouraged to ask questions that confirm the framework we already inhabit and discouraged from asking questions that might complicate it. This series is an attempt to step outside that pressure. It does not assume that every unusual claim is true or that every traditional answer is false. It simply insists that truth should be able to survive sincere investigation. The title is also personal because the questions in these books are questions many readers already carry quietly. I wanted to give them permission to bring those questions into the open without shame.
Why did this project become two volumes instead of one?
The material follows one journey, but it moves through two distinct stages. Volume One establishes the foundations by asking about God, Scripture, and the unseen world. Volume Two begins where those questions converge, with Jesus, and then moves into modern theories of reality and the deeply human questions of suffering, silence, doubt, death, and hope. Keeping everything in a single book would have produced an overwhelming volume and blurred the natural turning point. Dividing it allowed each book to breathe while preserving continuous chapter numbering and a deliberate progression. Readers can enter either volume, but together they form a larger conversation that moves from the nature of reality toward the question of how we should live.
Why did you decide to engage subjects that many Christian authors avoid?
Avoiding a question does not make it disappear. It usually means people will search for answers somewhere else, often in spaces that offer certainty without context or speculation without accountability. Many readers are already hearing claims about hidden gospels, corrupted Scripture, the Nephilim, psychedelics, consciousness, and secret systems. Silence from thoughtful Christian voices leaves a vacuum. I did not write these books because every controversial subject deserves equal weight. I wrote them because readers deserve a way to examine claims without fear. The goal is not to make the strange seem more important than it is. The goal is to help people distinguish between evidence, interpretation, possibility, and imagination.
How do you keep a book like this from becoming sensational?
The first safeguard is proportion. A fascinating claim is not necessarily an important claim, and a popular theory is not necessarily supported by strong evidence. I try to identify the kind of question being asked and the kind of evidence that could reasonably answer it. Historical claims require historical evidence. Scientific claims require scientific discipline. Spiritual experiences should be taken seriously, but experience alone does not settle interpretation. The second safeguard is language. I avoid declaring certainty where the evidence does not justify it. I also avoid mocking people who are drawn to unusual ideas. Sensationalism thrives on fear, superiority, and secret access. Discernment requires patience, context, and humility.
Why does God seem different in the Old and New Testaments?
Part of the difference comes from genre, historical setting, covenant, and the portions of Scripture readers tend to compare. People often place the harshest Old Testament texts beside the gentlest scenes in the Gospels while overlooking judgment in the New Testament and mercy in the Old. That creates a distorted comparison. Jesus remains the clearest revelation of God's character, but He does not present Himself as correcting an evil God. He fulfills Israel's story and teaches His followers how to understand it. The difficult texts still require patient interpretation. Reading through Christ does not erase them. It changes the center from which we approach them.
Has the Bible been corrupted?
The Bible has a complicated transmission history, but complicated is not the same as corrupted beyond recovery. We possess a large manuscript tradition with real variants, copying differences, and translation questions. Textual criticism exists because those differences can be compared rather than hidden. It is reasonable to say that no handwritten transmission process is mechanically perfect. It is not reasonable to leap from that fact to the conclusion that the biblical message was secretly rewritten into something unrecognizable. The evidence allows us to identify areas of uncertainty while also showing remarkable stability across the tradition.
What is the Divine Council, and why does it matter?
The Divine Council is a biblical way of describing God's rule in relation to other heavenly beings. Passages in Psalms, Job, Daniel, and elsewhere depict a populated spiritual world rather than an empty heaven. Modern readers often miss that language because our categories have been simplified. It matters because it helps explain biblical references to the gods of the nations, the Sons of God, spiritual conflict, and the authority of Yahweh over every power. It also reminds us that biblical monotheism is a claim about God's unique identity and sovereignty, not necessarily a denial that any other spiritual beings exist.
Do you think demons, Satan, and spiritual warfare are real?
The biblical writers clearly treat spiritual opposition as real, but popular Christian culture sometimes fills the subject with more speculation than Scripture does. Satan is not presented as God's equal. Demons are not an excuse to avoid personal responsibility, mental-health care, social analysis, or practical wisdom. Spiritual warfare in the New Testament is centered on truth, faithfulness, prayer, resistance to evil, and allegiance to Christ. The safest emphasis is not fascination with darkness. It is formation in the light. A person can acknowledge spiritual reality without interpreting every difficulty as a hidden attack.
A Closing Invitation
The invitation is to bring the question into the light without making fear or novelty your guide. Slow down, identify the kind of claim being made, examine the evidence it requires, and allow Jesus to remain at the center of the search. Volume Two continues the conversation by turning toward Jesus, modern theories of reality, suffering, doubt, and the human longing beneath every question.
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