Questions

I am married to someone who asks a lot of questions. When Janey’s family and the two of us were walking the Bruce Trail, Robert was testing Dawnelle’s reflexes by tossing something to her, a pocket knife, I think. She squawked, and Dan asked if she’d prefer that he start tossing her questions instead. She said she’d stick to the (closed) knife throwing. Smart girl. Because questions can be just as hard to parry. “Just look at Socrates,” I said. “Who’s that?” She asked. (Teachers live for such questions).

trireme: love the eye

I told her Socrates was a fat, ugly old man, who walked around Athens asking awkward questions and getting himself in trouble because (supposedly) his questions provoked the youth of Athens to question the existence of the gods. He was called the Gadfly of Athens. Nice. He also started questioning the judgment of the authorities of Athens, who he thought were running their war with Sparta the wrong way because they kept eliminating any ship captains who lost sea battles. They were getting to the place where they finally had no competent captains left to put on those sleek triremes. (They lost the war; no surprise). But Socrates’ criticism was considered anti-patriotic, and he was handed a nice hemlock soda. Robert asked me if I thought he looked like Socrates, and that’s why I was telling the story. I thought it best not to answer. I’ve learned some questions are rhetorical.

To balance out the picture we have to remember that the Snake asked Eve a question, too, and brought down the entire human race on her answer. So not all questions are healthy or innocent.  But if you notice, God’s solution wasn’t to shut down the question even when we got the answer terribly wrong.

My friend Kathy gave a testimony this Sunday about how God tolerated her questions. She asked Him why He had included that passage in the Bible that said that women were unclean after childbirth (she has eight kids). She told Him she was angry about what that sounded like, and she shut down the conversation with Him over it for a while. She said that He just waited for her patiently, and eventually He helped her understand Him better, and now they are closer than ever. There were tears in her voice as she told her story. She said God isn’t ever shocked at our questions.  He doesn’t mind what path we take to learn as long as we get there.

I found this passage in one of Paul’s letters (my paraphrase): “When you meet together, one will sing, another will teach, another will preach, one will speak in tongues, and another will interpret…Let two or three people preach, and let the others evaluate what has been said.” It even says that when a person listening to the sermon gets an insight from God, the first speaker should sit down. I can’t even imagine this much participation and accountability in the way we normally do church. And Paul wasn’t even addressing leaders here. He was addressing the whole church. I think he expected a lot of give and take. I don’t think he minded questions.

beware

A teacher friend of mine walked into my classroom for the first time. “I see you use the socratic method for teaching,” she said. And yes, I do. I use a lot of questions to get kids thinking about literature and life. But how in the world did she know that? “Your seating arrangement,” she said. “You’ve seated your kids around circular tables to make it easier for them to see each other and talk to each other and ask questions.” Granted, this is risky; it can bring chaos into the classroom. Paul discovered this. Like me in my classroom, Paul had to establish order, telling people to take turns when they spoke. Socrates ended up paying for his questions with his life. So did God, actually, before he got death (the ultimate chaos) under control. But they all decided that questions were worth the risk. Not that I see a hemlock soda in anyone’s future here. But  sometimes when you’re on the wrong end of the questioning, it gets tempting.

non-poisonous hemlock tree