One of my favorite bloggers recently wrote about the importance of asking questions in the process of becoming like Jesus. I found the blog entry to be particularly challenging and loved the fact that the entire thing consisted of questions. Many in today's Christian churches are afraid of the really hard questions. But Jesus never seemed to shy away from questions. He generally turned them around on the listener and used them as a way to underline the real issues in life.
If God is real, if the Bible is true and inspired by God, if God loves man, if the Gospel is indeed good news, if following Jesus is the best way to live, if God did create the world and everything in it, why would Christians have anything to fear from honest questions by true seekers? The real problem is when people ask questions with a hidden agenda. When we face those situations, we should be like Jesus who refused to play the game.
Consider these questions from John Frye of Jesus the Radical Pastor (http://jesustheradicalpastor.blogspot.com/2005_11_01_jesustheradicalpastor_archive.html)
Full text here:
Did you notice that many of the religious questions asked of Jesus were masks for mean, if not destructive, intentions? Why is it that religion spawns this phenomenon?
Why was it that seemingly righteous, good people found it necessary to ply Jesus with textual questions, cultural questions, relational questions, historical questions-all serving as a covering for their hatred of him?
Did you know that, recorded in the Gospels, Jesus was asked 183 questions and only answered three of them? Would Jesus qualify as the "Bible Answer Man"?
Have you ever felt the oiliness of someone asking you a seemingly innocuous question with feigned interest only to discover it was a plot for them to say "Gotcha!"?
Why is it that the more I am aware of and engaged in the "emergent conversation" (which is spawning a whole boatload of questions), the more I am smelling those subtle, tricky questions intended not to learn, or converse, or explore, but to categorize, judge and reject?
Why is it that some people are so threatened by questions that you end up thinking these little audible puffs of air are going to blow their whole house down? Are they building on the Rock or on their human understandings of things? Am I being too curious?
Isn't it the height of arrogance and the death of learning to imply that questioning is wrong? Would we have anything worthwhile if someone had not dared to ask a question or two?
What does it profit a person to gain the whole world and lose their soul?
Is that not a good question!? John Frye
