Stepping from Question to Question

Paul writes – Malcolm Chamberlain has the following quote from Richard Rohr on his blogsite – read the whole post here.

"Jesus is asked 183 questions directly in the four Gospels. He only answered three of them forthrightly. The others he either ignored, kept silent about, asked a question in return, changed the subject, told a story or gave an audio/visual aid to make his point, told them it was the wrong question, revealed their insincerity or hypocrisy, made the exactly opposite point, or redirected the question elsewhere!

Check it out for yourself. He himself asks 307 questions, which would seem to set a pattern for imitation. Considering this, it is really rather amazing that the church became an official answering machine and a very self-assured program for 'sin management'.

Many, if not most, of Jesus' teaching would never pass contemporary orthodoxy tests in either the Roman Office or the Southern Baptist Convention. Most of his statements are so open to misinterpretation that should he teach today, he would probably be called a 'relativist' in almost all areas except one: his insistence upon the goodness and reliability of God. That was his only consistent absolute."

We underestimate the importance of questions co-existing with faithfulness; so often we want, or think, that what is most healthy for us is certainty – living without questions. The spaciousness that uncertainty and doubt opens up is unsettling. Having to sit with questions and listen to our inner responses can be scary.

But the reality is that good questions (and our responding to them as they are asked of them) are one significant way by which our lives, our faith, our relationships, our being church, is actually deepened. Questions, rather than certainty, help us grow, help us remain open to the activity of the Spirit, help us remain open to new possibilities, to new directions, to new ways of responding to following Jesus – a Jesus who questions and invites us to become more than we currently are; to do more than we currently do!

Questions are stepping stones; they invite us on a journey.

Comments

[Kyle]

Nice. Thanks for posting it.

[Mike]

I love this, especially your last line. I'd say some questions are not meant to be answered. They may not even have answers. The journey, as you put it, is often more important than the destination.