question the answer
The question is more important than the answer. To press it further: the question is the answer. Jesus often answered questions with a question. He did this because he was answering (questioning?) people who needed a fixed answer and who lived according to their answer and demanded that everyone agree with their answer. They questioned Jesus to expose his disagreement with their answer so they could justifiably execute him. Jesus answered them with questions to expose the vacuity of their answer and the fear which sponsored their answer and the murderous hatred which their answer spawned.
This is why when I teach I try to not come across as dogmatically certain. In fact, usually at the end of my sentences the pitch of my voice rises, as if I’m not making a statement but putting a question. Whenever I have taught, I sometimes walk away from the platform feeling a little foolish, feeling as though I didn’t market myself very well, feeling that I didn’t help anyone at all to be impressed with me. But I always hope that I have challenged our certainties, derailed our dogmatics, called into question our answers. The questions from the community that salt and pepper our teaching times indicate to me that we are stirring up the solid, upsetting the settled, and provoking our positions. And this to me is enough. It spurs us to seek. And seeking is what should define us. Seek and you will find. Find what? Find the question.
The fine art photograph is the creation of my friend Howard Nowlan.
If you liked this post, or would like to use it, please buy me a beer!
Well said, David. Beautiful post.
Nice thoughts… I agreed with almost all of them.
My only difference is that I believe God’s people aren’t ‘the seeking’…but rather ‘the found’.
Thanks David!
– Steve M.
steve: you really don’t think we are the seeking?
Sometimes the questioning was not this great intellectual joust. Sometimes it was just a part of the cultural learning process between rabbi and prospective disciple.
Sometimes we read way too much into stuff.
David – Good to see you back blogging. I do prefer the metaphors of movement over stationary – fluid over solidified – change over rigidity. Jesus was constantly calling people away from their static belief systems (especially the religious leaders) and into an ever-new way of looking at life. I think he calls us to the same thing – to disrupt and agitate religious absolutism. Not that there aren’t absolutes… it’s just that we cannot possess them. We can only point to what is greater than ourselves, and then only through dim glass. Perhaps this is the essential nature of the cross – infinite mystery (questions) ever before us, ever calling us to deeper unity with our beloved.
I taught Sunday school for thirty years and, especially when that evolved into an adult setting, I held three points as a theme to follow: (1) Give the class opportunity to be part of the lesson, but keep them out of heated debate; (2) Follow the subject being discussed without straying too far from the trail, unless the Spirit, Himself, takes us elsewhere; and (3) Stir people up enough to go home and seek into the matter for themselves….
Nowadays in speaking at the mission and the Detention Center, even as in teaching, always there is a man’s ego that afterwards recalls something left out, a point perhaps not fully explained so well. Along the way, though, hopefully one learns that always it is He, not we.
I think you express it well, David. Your T-shirt logo above only reflects the song that came to mind as I was reading this; but maybe, in being the question, He is also the answer. Either way I think the seeking never ceases here, amd maybe not even there….
The philosopher in me likes this, but I’ve sat under too many Ian Paisley sermons to not have some reservations…
Sometimes the question is important, sometimes the answer. It depends on the issue and the context. We can never be certain about anything, but that’s a different matter, for we can still speak with conviction.
I think it is a matter of wisdom as to when we should question and when we should give answers. And I don’t think that wisdom is all that mysterious: it is borne of love, freedom, and integrity, and it accumulates with experience.
David,
” No one seeks for God.” (St. Paul Romans) The fact that we ‘are seeking’ is a sign of our lostness. We are not seeking the Living God. We seek after God’s of our own making.
This, I believe, is quite evident in the fact that we flat out refuse to live the way God wants us to and we spit in His face everyday. and no one spits in His face more than I do.
Do the sheep seek the shepherd, or the other way around?
He seeks us…and that is the good news.
Thanks David!
– Steve
Paul,
(obviously) i think we -can- be certain about a multitude of things, and speak with conviction. i don’t think david is talking here about those sorts of things.
At hand is that place where some of us remain liminal – wrestling with answers that give birth to further questions. Religion so often becomes a lock-step community which penalizes those who identify contradiction.
I think sincerity of question (i.e., well considered, weighty, with insight into paradox) almost always trumps the old apologetic hubris of “they are sincere, but sincerely wrong.”
Perhaps Jesus is always bigger than our idols of Jesus? Now there’s a good question.
A question for which I will give an answer, with conviction, but not certainty: yes, Jesus is aways bigger than our idols!
As for the rest, I am not sure that we are on the same wavelength, John L. Sorry if I have misunderstood David.
Lovely image.
Sas x
Oh, neat! A post by a pastor with a half-cropped picture of an unclothed woman! Boy, I sure am excited to be tempted to lust at your blog. It was so exciting that I had to skip the post itself. Darn, that’s too bad; I bet it would have been a great help to me in treasuring Christ.
MAs,
Careful now, critiquing the art world in this blog can get you bitten. And be very careful about having your own interpretation.
fishon
Spooky – we just kicked off a very similar discussion –
http://engagesheffield.blogspot.com/2008/06/questions-are-like-doors.html
fishon: you seem to refuse to accept the fact that you are entitled to you own opinion, as long as in putting it out there you understand that it is open for critique.
David,
fishon: you seem to refuse to accept the fact that you are entitled to you own opinion….
—-Now why would you say that? I never have had you, I have never had anyone on your blog tell me that I was not entitled to my opinion. I don’t believe I have ever accused anyone of telling me that. If you can find such a statement from me, I apologize.
“…as long as in putting it out there you understand that it is open for critique.”
—–And you really don’t think I know that with all the give and take that goes on between me and others on this blog?
No way, shape, or form did I tell MAs that he wasn’t entitled to his opinion.
fishon
It reminds me of the U2 classic — “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” — years ago as a younger more fundamentalist/black&white type of believer that song puzzled me because it seemed to say that he had “found the Lord” and salvation and even “spoke in tongues” but he STILL hadn’t found what he’s looking for. What more is there?!!….. In fact I find people who think they have found what they are looking for — I.E. have all the answers — really difficult to be around because of their rigidity and lack of humility. I just want to tell them to get their head out of their @#$% — with the love of the Lord of course!! The older I get the more I see the journey as constantly seeking and questioning — we do get rest breaks every once in a while — which is good. Somehow there is a peace in this constant journeying and questioning — but we are always between the “now” and the “not yet”.
Richard
Richard
[...] One of the posts that I have flagged of his is ‘on questions’ The question is more important than the answer. To press it further: the question is the answer. Jesus often answered questions with a question. He did this because he was answering (questioning?) people who needed a fixed answer and who lived according to their answer and demanded that everyone agree with their answer. They questioned Jesus to expose his disagreement with their answer so they could justifiably execute him. Jesus answered them with questions to expose the vacuity of their answer and the fear which sponsored their answer and the murderous hatred which their answer spawned. [...]