Greetings, my lovelies.

I finished all fifteen seasons of Supernatural Saturday night.

Fifteen seasons. Three hundred and twenty-seven episodes. Demons, angels, Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Lucifer, God, Death, the Darkness, alternate universes, prophets, archangels, and resurrection after resurrection after resurrection—because apparently dying in the Winchester family is more of an inconvenience than a permanent condition.

I laughed, I cried, I yelled at the television, and I developed opinions about fictional celestial beings that were frankly none of my business. Somewhere between Chuck being an asshole, Jack becoming God, and Dean finally getting that damn pie, something happened.

Supernatural woke something up in me.

Maybe a demon.

Winks.

Actually, it woke the witch inside me up even more. But it also unleashed somebody who’s been living in here considerably longer: the girl who questions everything.

She never really went anywhere. She was just sitting quietly in the corner, minding her own business and occasionally muttering, That doesn’t make any damn sense.

Apparently, she’d been quiet because she was being polite.

That was my first mistake.

Now she’s back, and apparently she has a backlog.

I Was That Kid

You know the kid. The one who asks why, listens to your answer, and then asks why about the answer. You answer that question, and somewhere in the middle she spots a logical inconsistency three answers back, circles around to it, and politely refuses to let it die.

That was me.

I wasn’t trying to be difficult. Okay, that’s not entirely true. Sometimes I was absolutely being difficult. But most of the time, I genuinely wanted to understand things.

If you told me something was true, I wanted to know how you knew. Who decided it was true? Had anybody checked? What happened if they were wrong? Why was everyone suddenly getting irritated when I was just asking one tiny question that somehow, through absolutely no fault of my own, had turned into an interrogation?

I wasn’t looking for trouble. I was looking for an explanation.

Unfortunately, explanations were often in short supply, while “because I said so” was apparently available in bulk.

This tendency got me into trouble with pastors, nuns when I was in Catholic school, priests, my parents, my in-laws, and pretty much anyone else who believed an answer should end a conversation instead of creating six new questions.

My basic operating system has never changed much:

• Why?
• How?
• Who said so?
• How do they know?
• Where’s the evidence?
• Does everybody agree?
• What happens if they’re wrong?
• And why are you getting irritated? I’m just asking a question.

Apparently, “because that’s what we believe” was supposed to end the conversation.

It did not.

Tell me “don’t question it,” and you might as well hand me a notebook, put on another pot of coffee, and clear your afternoon.

Then Supernatural Entered the Chat

One of the things I loved about Supernatural is that the show itself questions everything. God isn’t necessarily the good guy. Angels aren’t necessarily good. Demons aren’t always quite what you expect. Heaven has problems. Hell has problems. Free will matters, and destiny gets told to go screw itself on a fairly regular basis.

Most importantly, the humans—the supposedly fragile, flawed little creatures caught in the middle—keep refusing to stay in the roles everyone else has assigned them.

Then we meet Chuck.

Eventually, we discover Chuck isn’t merely an eccentric writer hanging around in his bathrobe. He’s God. And the farther the story went, the more I found myself staring at the television thinking, Wait a fucking minute.

Chuck writes the story. He manipulates people to get the ending he wants. He expects Sam and Dean to follow his plan, and when they refuse, he gets pissed.

Suddenly, my childhood theology department reopened for business.

Because I remembered being taught:

• God has a plan.
• Trust God’s plan.
• Obey God.
• Worship God.
• Fear God.
• Don’t question God.

And there I was watching Sam and Dean Winchester basically tell God, No. You don’t get to write our ending.

Well, shit.

Now I have questions again.

Actually, I Have a LOT of Questions

Some are serious. Some are theological. Some are historical. Some are scientific. And some are the exact same questions I’ve been asking since I was a kid because apparently nobody has managed to satisfy me yet.

Let’s start at the beginning.

Literally.

Adam, Eve, and the Mysterious Mrs. Cain

If Adam and Eve were the first two humans, I have some logistical concerns.

• Where did Cain’s wife come from?
• Who did their children have children with?
• How did we get from one family to an entire human population?
• Where do prehistoric humans fit?
• What about evolution?
• At what point in this story am I supposed to stop asking follow-up questions?

Because I feel like Cain’s wife deserves considerably more attention than she got.

And just when I thought I already had enough questions about Genesis, I learned about Lilith.

Hold Up. What About Lilith?

The version of Lilith most of us encounter today says she was Adam’s first wife, created from the earth as he was. She refused to submit to him, left Eden, and Eve came afterward.

Now, that story isn’t actually in Genesis. The familiar Adam-and-Lilith story comes from later Jewish folklore, with the first-wife version appearing centuries later.

Which is fascinating all by itself.

But naturally, my first thought was:

Was Lilith the first divorce?

I mean, think about it. Adam and Lilith are together, Lilith decides she’s absolutely not putting up with this shit, leaves Eden, and suddenly Adam needs another wife. Did they divide the property? You take the east side of Eden. I’ll take the west. Who got custody of the serpent? Was there alimony? Did God have to mediate? Because if we’re going to call her Adam’s first wife, I’m going to need details about the breakup.

Then my brain did what my brain always does and immediately created another problem.

Wait. If Lilith and Adam were together before Eve, did they have children?

And if they did, could Cain’s mysterious wife have been one of their daughters? Would that make Cain’s wife his half-sister? Did I just make this already questionable family tree even worse?

Probably.

But come on. If you’re going to introduce a possible first wife into a story where I’ve already spent decades wondering where the hell Cain found a wife, you cannot possibly expect me not to try connecting those dots.

Unfortunately, the later Lilith tradition does not conveniently identify Cain’s wife for me.

Damn. For approximately thirty seconds, I thought I’d solved Genesis.

Instead, I discovered something even more interesting: sometimes the stories people associate with the Bible aren’t actually in the Bible. They may come from folklore, later religious traditions, translations, art, literature, or centuries of storytelling.

And that opened a whole new can of worms.

Because now I wasn’t only questioning the stories.

I started questioning the Bible itself—and the “facts” I had been taught about it.

How much of what I grew up hearing was history? How much was mythology? How much was folklore? How much was metaphor or allegory? How much changed through translation, interpretation, and centuries of people retelling the same stories?

And then there’s the uncomfortable question: how much of it has been used to scare the shit out of people?

Not necessarily written for that purpose—that’s something I can’t claim without evidence, and you know me, I want the damn evidence—but absolutely interpreted and taught that way at different points in history.

Because fear is one hell of a motivator.

Believe this or you’ll go to Hell. Obey or you’ll be punished. Don’t question God. Don’t question scripture. Don’t question the people telling you what scripture means. Stay on the straight and narrow. Do what you’re told.

Well, now you’ve really lost me.

Because once fear enters the equation, I have even more questions:

• Which biblical stories have historical or archaeological evidence behind them?
• Which stories have parallels in older cultures and religions?
• Which may have originated as oral traditions before they were ever written down?
• Which were intended as allegory, poetry, symbolism, or mythology rather than literal history?
• Who decided which writings became part of the Bible in the first place?
• What writings weren’t included, and why?
• How have translations changed over thousands of years?
• How much did politics, culture, and the people in power influence interpretation?
• How much of what Christians believe today actually comes from the biblical text, and how much developed later through tradition?
• And how often has “God says” really meant “the person in authority says God says”?

That last one bothers me.

A lot.

Because there is an enormous difference between an ancient religious text existing and human beings using their interpretation of that text to control how other people live.

Those aren’t automatically the same thing.

And I want to know the difference.

I don’t want somebody telling me, The Bible says so.

Show me.

Where?

What does the passage actually say? What language was it originally written in? What did those words mean in that time and culture? Is the English translation straightforward, or are there several possible meanings? What comes before and after the verse everybody keeps quoting? Did people two thousand years ago understand it the same way we’re being told to understand it today?

And perhaps the biggest question of all:

What if some of these stories were never meant to be facts in the modern sense of the word?

Humans have always told stories. We used stories to explain where we came from before we had modern science. We used them to understand floods, storms, death, birth, stars, seasons, good, evil, love, war, and everything else that frightened or fascinated us.

We created myths, legends, folklore, gods, monsters, heroes, cautionary tales, and stories that helped communities make sense of a world they didn’t completely understand.

So why wouldn’t I at least ask whether some biblical stories belong in that conversation too?

That doesn’t automatically make them worthless.

Actually, I think it makes them more interesting.

A story doesn’t have to be literal history to tell us something important about the people who told it, what they feared, what they valued, what they couldn’t explain, and how they understood their place in the universe.

But don’t hand me a story, tell me I’m required to accept every word as literal historical fact, threaten me with eternal punishment if I don’t, and then get offended when I start checking the footnotes.

You should know better by now.

I have questions.

Noah’s Floating Zoo

Then we get to Noah.

Every animal on Earth.

Every animal?

Two of each?

Okay, fine. Let’s discuss.

• How did kangaroos get there?
• What about polar bears and penguins?
• How did everybody get home afterward?
• What did all those animals eat?
• What did the carnivores eat?
• Where was all the food stored?
• How did freshwater species survive a worldwide flood?
• Where did all that water go afterward?

And perhaps most importantly, who cleaned up all the poop?

Have you ever cleaned up after multiple animals?

I have.

Noah needed more than divine intervention. Noah needed a Shop-Vac.

Seriously. Forget forty days and forty nights. After about day three, Noah had to be standing on that deck looking toward Heaven thinking, You couldn’t have warned me about this part?

And the smell.

Nobody talks about the smell.

Jonah’s Extremely Questionable Accommodations

Then we have Jonah, swallowed by a great fish—commonly portrayed as a whale—inside for three days and somehow coming back out alive.

Sir, I need details.

• How did he breathe?
• How did he survive?
• What about stomach acid?
• Was there an air pocket?
• Where exactly was he sitting?
• What did he drink?
• Did he sleep?

And after three days inside a sea creature, was survival really the only concern?

Because once again, I have questions about the smell.

Apparently biblical hygiene is becoming an unexpected theme here.

Dinosaurs Have Entered the Chat

Oh, dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs were a major problem for little questioning me because dinosaurs weren’t something I was being asked to accept on faith. We have fossils. We have skeletons. We know they existed.

So where do they fit?

• Where are dinosaurs in the biblical creation story?
• If humans came much later, how does that work with a literal reading of Genesis?
• What caused their extinction?
• Why create them, let them dominate Earth for millions of years, wipe them out, and then eventually introduce us?

Honestly, after observing humanity for a while, I’m not entirely convinced that last decision represented an upgrade.

And while we’re discussing creatures, what about unicorns, Leviathan, dragons, and all the other strange creatures that appear in old religious texts and translations?

Were they real animals? Symbolic? Translation choices? Ancient descriptions of animals people didn’t understand?

Which leads me straight back to another favorite question:

Who decides?

Wait. There Are Giants?!

And then we have the Nephilim.

Excuse me?

You’re going to casually mention mysterious beings connected to the “sons of God” and human women and then expect me to just keep reading?

No. Come back here. We’re not done.

• Who were the sons of God?
• Angels?
• Divine beings?
• Humans?
• Who exactly were the Nephilim?
• Were they giants?
• Were they human?
• Part divine?
• Something else entirely?
• How do later stories about giants connect to them?
• And why did nobody think I might need another six chapters explaining THIS?

You cannot drop possible ancient giant divine-human beings into the story and move along like you just mentioned somebody’s cousin Steve.

I need footnotes.

And this is another one where later traditions expanded on what the biblical text says, which means—surprise!—I don’t get one neat answer wrapped in a bow.

Instead, I get history, translations, ancient traditions, competing interpretations, and scholars arguing with one another.

Which, frankly, is catnip for me.

Why Is Everyone 900 Years Old?

Then there are the ages.

Methuselah supposedly lived 969 years. Adam made it to 930, Seth to 912, and Noah to 950.

Nine hundred and fifty years.

I’m 56 and sometimes stand up too quickly and immediately regret every decision I’ve made since 1970. You’re telling me Noah was wandering around at 700 thinking, Well, I’ve still got plenty of time?

Naturally, I need to know:

• Were these supposed to be literal years?
• Did ancient people measure time differently?
• Were the numbers symbolic?
• Were the ages meant to communicate importance rather than biology?
• Why did lifespans supposedly become shorter?
• If humans genuinely lived for nearly a millennium, where is the evidence?

I know what somebody is thinking.

Stop asking questions, Rae.

No.

When you can give me actual factual proof, I’ll stop asking questions.

Nah. Who am I kidding?

I’ll have questions about the proof.

Because then I’ll want to know who found it, how they dated it, whether someone else verified it, what other explanations exist, and whether the headline I’m reading completely butchered the actual research.

See?

There’s no winning with me.

And Then There’s Revelation

Oh, Revelation.

What the actual hell is happening over there?

Four Horsemen. Seven seals. Seven trumpets. Dragons. Beasts. 666. Stars falling from the sky. Bowls of wrath. Armageddon.

It’s like somebody looked at the rest of the Bible and said, You know what this needs? More dragons.

And somehow, every generation looks at whatever is happening in the world at that particular moment and announces:

THIS IS IT.

A war becomes Revelation. A politician becomes the Antichrist. Some new technology becomes the Mark of the Beast. Over the years, I’ve heard suspicions about barcodes, credit cards, computers, and the internet.

At this point, I’m sure somebody somewhere has looked suspiciously at a self-checkout machine.

Meanwhile, I’m still standing in the back of the room with my hand up.

• Is Revelation literal?
• Is it symbolic?
• Is it prophecy?
• Was it political commentary?
• Is it some combination of all of them?
• What did the imagery mean to the people reading it when it was written?
• And if nobody agrees on exactly what all of it means, why are so many people absolutely certain they know?

Then we’re right back where we started.

One story is literal. Another is metaphor. This part is poetry. That part is prophecy. This rule applies forever. That one was cultural.

Okay.

How did we determine that?

Show your work.

Some Questions Aren’t Funny

Not all my questions make me laugh. Some never did.

If God is loving and all-powerful, why do innocent people suffer? Why do children suffer? Why does one desperate prayer seem to get answered while another receives silence?

If God knows everything that will ever happen, do we actually have free will? If we have free will, how can everything simultaneously be part of God’s plan?

Why create someone knowing they’ll ultimately end up in Hell? Why would an all-powerful God require worship in the first place?

And why would questioning any of this be considered wrong?

That may be the question that has bothered me the longest.

Why would a creator give human beings curious minds and then demand that we not use those minds to question the creator?

I can’t make that make sense. I couldn’t as a kid, and I can’t now.

Maybe that’s why the final seasons of Supernatural hit me differently.

Chuck wanted his ending. Sam and Dean wanted their freedom. They weren’t willing to accept because I wrote it that way. They questioned the author. They questioned God. They refused the ending they’d been given.

Apparently, my inner questioning child watched all of this and decided her sabbatical was officially over.

Apparently, We’re Doing This Again

Now she’s running loose in my brain dragging out boxes labeled RELIGION, GOD, DEATH, AFTERLIFE, ANCIENT HISTORY, WHAT THE FUCK IS A NEPHILIM?, WHERE DID CAIN’S WIFE COME FROM?, DID LILITH INVENT DIVORCE?, and OTHER THINGS RAE WAS TOLD NOT TO WORRY ABOUT.

And you know what?

I’m having fun.

I’m 56 years old. I don’t need every question answered immediately, and I don’t expect every question can be answered. What I want is the freedom to explore them.

I want history, archaeology, science, mythology, folklore, and the original stories. I want to know what ancient people actually believed. I want to know what the original languages say and how translations changed. I want to know what scholars disagree about and, more importantly, why they disagree.

I want to know what we have evidence for, what we suspect, what was translated, what was interpreted, what became tradition later, and what somebody apparently pulled out of their ass somewhere around 1427 and everybody has been repeating ever since.

I want the receipts.

But I also want the uncertainty.

If historians don’t know, tell me. If archaeologists haven’t found evidence, tell me. If scholars have three competing explanations, give me all three. If something I thought was biblical actually came from folklore written centuries later, I want to know that too.

“We don’t know” is an answer I can respect.

What I can’t accept is being told to stop asking because the question itself is somehow the problem.

That ship sailed approximately fifty years ago.

And maybe that’s what Supernatural woke back up in me.

Not disbelief.

Curiosity.

The part of me that wants to pull on the thread and see where it goes.

The kid who kept asking why grew into a woman who still asks why—and now she has something the kid didn’t have.

The internet.

This could get dangerous.

So thanks, Supernatural.

I thought I was watching a show about two ridiculously codependent brothers driving around the country in a gorgeous ’67 Impala killing monsters.

Instead, you reopened my theological investigation department.

Now I have questions about God, giants, dinosaurs, whales, angels, Lilith, ancient texts, Revelation, free will, Heaven, death, the afterlife, and apparently the entire nature of human existence.

Fantastic.

This should keep me busy for a while.

And if somebody tells me I shouldn’t question any of it?

Pull up a chair and bring coffee. I have follow-up questions.