It Is Good to Question (part 1)
Your spiritual health is often found more in what you ASK than what you tell
One of my favorite sentiments is, Unquestioned answers are more dangerous than unanswered questions. The power of questions, both personally and organizationally, has been demonstrated time and time again. Questions give us the opportunity to slow down, reflect, reconsider, learn, and connect with others. At least, they can do those things for us when we are genuinely curious.
Few things in the Bible paint so clear a picture of our condition as the questions we ask. In encounters with Jesus, people asked questions that revealed their religious tendencies, meaning their inclination to judge, impose upon others, label, categorize, and be superficial. Examples of questions that are asked with impure motives, absent of genuine curiosity, include:
Why does he (Jesus) eat with tax collectors and sinners?1
Why do your disciples break the law on the Sabbath?2
Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating food with unclean hands?3
Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?4
Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?5
We find a pattern of religion in these kinds of questions. They are posed with the intent to change the other, not oneself. They deal with who is in or out, labeling people as superior or inferior based on what they do. The above inquiries seek black-and-white answers that maintain a hierarchy. Their intention is to establish rules for how the “in crowd” lives while making everyone else subordinate. There may be something valuable in some of these questions, but true enlightenment is not the impetus for asking questions in this manner.
Without humility, questions can be used to discourage or harm others. You probably had that teacher in school who called on students more to embarrass them for not paying attention than to genuinely and formatively assess for understanding. We are learning that we get much more bang for our buck in education when we ask questions that reveal just where the learner really is so that we can figure out what about our practice needs to change, not to point out a deficit with the student for us to criticize.
When questions are asked in an honest, introspective way, it is beautiful. Pure wondering can lead to transformation. Someone can walk away with deeper insight, empowerment, and stronger connections with God or another person. This is exactly what we find from the woman at the well who encountered Jesus. After an honest exchange with the Lord whom she did not initially know, she returned to the town and shared her experience. Then, she asked an authentic question, “Could this be the Christ?”6
People naturally wondered what their own encounter with Christ would be like. All of the attention was on God, what He had told her about herself, even if what he told her did not put her in the best light. She went back to her town and simply wondered out loud, Could it be? Could it be that Jesus actually does not think less of me? Could it be that Jesus is willing to step over customs that limit interactions between people of different groups? Could it be that God really knows everything about us and still loves us?
She does not say to them, “I met with God and He told me you all need to get your sin problems figured out or else…”. She did not say, “So I went away and had a spiritual experience and now I have some very important doctrines to discuss with you all.”
The power of the pure question is that it allows people to walk away. See, a person may hear the woman’s question, “Could this be the Christ?,” and honestly respond, “No.” They get to choose. Let’s go back to our school days again in our minds. Did you have that teacher who always asked questions merely to make a point or keep the lesson going, not to really elicit a rich class discussion or check for understanding? Did it seem like each question was really a statement? That usually isn’t much fun.
Now back to our Samaritan woman from 2000 years ago. No one in the town heard her testimony and declared that they should start following her around. Instead, her mistakes and shortcomings were laid bare for the world in her story, but that did not affect the outcome because all of those things got smaller and less significant. With the question she posed, people reflected on the nature of God. Jesus got bigger! What stands out to me is the result of her unsophisticated evangelistic approach. It led to a two-day revival in the town because the people requested Jesus stay with them and they just couldn’t get enough.7
Could this be the Christ? It was her way of asking, “Is God up to something here?” I submit we would be better off being genuinely curious in our interactions with others, reflective times in solitude, and even when considering social and political issues, and pondering how Jesus might be at work. We don’t have to go around telling people what God is doing, what they must believe, and why they are wrong and we are right. But we can see each person in a new light and wonder as we encounter them, could this be the Christ?
When our posture changes from knowing and telling to wondering and asking, we open ourselves up to the awe in front of us that we may have been blind to for so long.
Mark 2:16
Mark 2:24
Mark 7:5
Mark 10:2
Mark 12:14
John 4:29
John 4:39-42