By Eric Rafferty
My kids are in a serious question asking phase. For example, two nights ago I woke up in the middle of the night to a voice whispering in my ear, “Daddy, do bees have families?”
What was going on in my four year old son’s mind? Exactly what it sounds like. He woke up at 2:30 and was thinking about bees and whether or not they have families. So, naturally, he got out of his bed, came into my room and woke me up to find out.
That’s the beauty of curiosity in a child. You can take a question at exactly its face value. Curiosity springs up and a question is asked because an answer is needed. Question = I want to find the answer.
When it comes to grown ups and the spiritual questions that our friends ask, I don’t think that’s always the case.
Berean questions
Of course, a lot of the time our friends’ spiritual questions do come from a place of genuine curiosity. I love seeing friends ask questions about Jesus and faith because their curiosity is provoked and they just need an answer! An international student from a very closed country came to faith in Jesus at one of the schools in my area this year. And he is one of the most genuinely curious people I’ve ever met! He’s asking questions left and right and eating it up! He knew very little about Jesus before this year, and he is hungry to find out everything he can.
He reminds me of the men and women that the Apostle Paul encountered in Berea. When they shared the story of Jesus there, people were filled with curiosity. In Acts 17:11 Luke writes that “they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.”
If we’re being faithful to tell the story of Jesus, and if we’re living a life that’s radically different from the status quo then people will be curious. They’ll ask genuine questions. And in those moments we should be ready to point them to the answer! “Be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” 1 Peter 3:15
Facade questions
But more and more I find that I can’t really take peoples’ questions at face value. A lot of the time questions can become a facade to hide behind rather than a step towards real understanding.
Sometimes questions can be a way to keep things from getting personal. This is the type of question that Jesus encountered with the woman at the well in John 4. As soon as the conversation turned to her pattern of broken relationships she asked a question about worship locations in different cultures. Keeping things theoretical is way safer than really opening up your life to change.
When I’m in a spiritual conversation with a friend and questions become a way to keep Jesus at arms length then I try to press the issue of what active faith would really look like in their life. Look at Mark 2:1-11 and try to define faith solely from the context of that story. It’s not a theoretical idea or something ethereal that some people have and other’s don’t. Faith is a visible and risky action that’s rooted in trust in the goodness of God. I had a friend in college with whom I met weekly to talk about spiritual questions. And as good as my answers were, we never got anywhere. He wasn’t really interested in theoretical ideas; he was longing for an encounter with God! When I challenged him to take a risk and try praying with me, our conversations changed dramatically. He experienced the peace and presence of God in prayer and then he was ready to leave his doubts and begin following Jesus!
A lot of the time, when our friends ask a question, (especially one that feels aggressive or heated) we can get stuck in a debate or argument by taking it at face value. A question about the crusades or Christian hypocrisy throughout history is probably not really a question of historical events. The question they are really asking might be, “why have Christians hurt me and let me down.” A question about how a good God could allow pain and suffering is probably not a philosophical question about theoretical situations. They probably want to know where God was during the painful experiences in their life. And when our friends ask questions about what the Bible says about abortion or homosexuality they probably aren’t looking to discuss Christian morals. They probably want to know if you are the kind of Christian who will actually accept and welcome them.
The point of seeking is to find. The purpose of asking questions is to find answers. So let’s meet our friends where they’re at and help them find answers to the questions that are hiding behind the facade.
You know, while Facade might be an accurate word, it carries a pretty negative connotation. Like our friends are just not being honest. In reality, they may just be trying to figure out if they can trust you. “Will you see my pain? Will you value my experience? Do you understand the full implications of what following Jesus may do to my life?”
I love trying to figure out why someone asks a question. I just wish I could catch it sooner than I often do. Like, I will walk away after having given a “great” answer and think, “oh, wait, there was probably something way deeper going on there.”
Great point, Ben! That’s exactly what I was trying to communicate in that last big paragraph. I didn’t mean for facade to sound negative. I think it’s really easy for anyone to live behind a facade (we all do at times, right?)
Trying to give the perfect answer almost never helps people step past their facade and engage on a deeper level. And unfortunately, most of the time people are right to question if they can trust a Christian with the deep areas of pain in their lives. We’ve burned a lot of bridges with cliche answers at best and outright judgment at worst…
One of the most impactful books I’ve read over and over is C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces, in which he explores our identities, masks, and facades right up to this culminating conclusion:
“When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you’ll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”― C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces
This is an important post. To help people dig through the “babble” they think they mean, to help articulate what the question really is, may be more significant than any answers we offer. Thanks for this.
Wow, great quote! Thanks for this. I’m gonna go re-read Till We Have Faces now!